Growing Pains and Door Frames: A Measure of How Far We’ve Come

Whenever people asked me what was new in my life, it was easier to answer with what was new with my kids than myself. They were constantly changing: outgrowing their clothes, joining a soccer team, balancing equations, learning to read or playing the drums.

We lived in the same home from the time I brought them bundled from the hospital until my son turned 11 and my daughter, 8. Every few months I’d take a Sharpie and make them stand flat on their feet and mark their height next to their initials. For 11 years, these black and red marks inched their way up the doorframe.

Growing Pains

My next-door neighbor and I shared a pediatrician. I was surprised one day when she told me our doctor had suggested she see an endocrinologist. Her younger son already towered over mine. I asked her about it at our next checkup, and she explained that she only refers someone when their growth is stalled, not when it is slow. She pulled up my son’s growth charts to show me the gradual slope. “See?” she said. “He is growing—just at his own rate.”

I can only hope that applies to adults as well.  When my daughter reached that age, she’d occasionally wake up screaming in the middle of night. If it wasn’t her ears or a nightmare, I’d rub her legs until she fell back asleep. Again, I asked the pediatrician if this was normal, and she promised me that growing pains were real, but not to worry unless they became disruptive. She explained that it isn’t the bones that hurt but the muscles being stretched. My daughter’s Sharpie marks ticked up the same door frame.

I’m not overly sentimental. I didn’t save every piece of my kids’ art (I saved my favorites; I’m not a monster). I haven’t held on to every outfit or stuffed animal, only a few. However, while packing up to move, I asked my husband if we could keep the door frame. He sighed, walked out to the garage and came back in with a crowbar. We moved on, but I brought the door frame with me.

I couldn’t bear to paint over it or leave it behind. I kept the evidence. Proof that they used to be small. Of who they were. But also what my pediatrician taught me—that growth can be gradual and sometimes it will hurt enough to make you cry out in the night. That it stretches us to become more. I’m trying to figure out these parts of me, who I’ve been and how I’ve grown. I need those same lessons. I’m not sure how to mark it. I want my own proof.

Measuring Progress

My favorite part of my job as an educator is professional learning, but a good amount of my time is spent measuring growth, ensuring average yearly progress. We test the hell out of kids, and I hate it, but one of the things I appreciate is a shift away from average scores and more towards growth.

Most states have adjusted how they grade districts to factor this in. After each round of benchmarks or standardized tests, I’m required to crunch the data, to show any gains (or losses) from the previous years. I am constantly measuring and color-coding growth.

A few weeks ago, I had my mid-year review. My boss went down the list and checked off everything in the highest column. We talked through the criteria, and as much as I mostly want to hear I’m doing a great job, I stopped before signing it and said she needed to give me something to work on. She hesitated for a second, and I offered up a place where I could use some work. She helped me set some goals. I wanted my own evidence for what I was doing right and where I needed to re-focus or stretch. Still all these years later, I’m seeking Sharpie marks.

I’m generally good at setting goals and taking incremental steps to reach them. I thrive on accountability and am not above making my own sticker chart or celebrating the smallest of wins with pie. My daughter would call me a “try-hard,” and that is somehow not a compliment. I’m driven, but I’m not type A. It often confuses people, but maybe it is that I care way more about growth than I do success. I want to do better and be better but don’t care all that much about being the best. I need to see progress to feel motivated enough to keep going. And that is the rub.

Becoming Who You’re Supposed to Be Doesn’t Happen Without Growing Pains

For several years, I’ve been working with a therapist. I’ve been unpacking my past and my hang-ups. Like most hard things, sometimes I start off feeling worse instead of better, and I finally realized this is because I don’t know how to measure internal growth. Progress here is hard to name. I don’t think this kind of work is linear; I think it comes in layers, and I feel frustrated each time I find myself coming back around to the same spot. There are no green bar graphs or performance reviews. There is no such thing as adequate yearly progress for my heart.

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” —E.E. Cummings

Occasionally I’ve set some goals, but they mostly shift and change before I can set the next right step. I know it helps to keep showing up and that sometimes it feels like being ripped open. I feel the shifts even if I can’t name them. I know that I feel safer and steadier and softer. Mostly I just feel more of everything.

I think sometimes I’d like for the kind and patient woman across from me to just tell me where I’ve grown and what I should be working on, but I know that it is best if I do the work. I’m tired of doing the work, except I am the work.

There is an E.E. Cummings quote I love: “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” I feel like this is what I’m trying so hard to do. It takes courage and a million layers and ache. I want there to be a finish line, a finality to who I am. Except that sounds a lot like death. I’d rather grow and ache and rest, then celebrate and do it all over again. Layer after Layer. Inch after inch. Shift after shift.

I wonder if Cummings should have written “to grow up and become who you really are and were.” That maybe this is all an undoing as much as it is a becoming. At least it is for me.

How Much Have You Grown?

My kids are now teenagers. I don’t really mark doorframes anymore. We did it a few times in our new home, but mostly that season has passed. I asked, years after we’ve moved in and filled all the closets and garages with too many things, where it ended up. My husband found it in the garage and I brought it inside. It was just a dusty piece of broken wood covered in Sharpie marks, initials and dates. But is also evidence of growth.

I moved it into the corner of my home office. I smile when I lean back and see it. But I want the same evidence and reminder for myself. So I go into the garage (which might as well be half of a Lowe’s store) and find a long thin piece of wood. I get a Sharpie. I start with moving away from home and I inch my way up. I mark progress with single words and events. I read back over some of my emails and essays. Some years are lost, but there are enough. I mark it over and over again. I leave plenty of room at the top for things I haven’t learned yet.

I place my own evidence into the same corner of my office next to my rescued door frame. I think I made the assumption that my kids growing up would only be about them—their progress and experiences—but in many ways, it has also been about my growth. Surely, I have grown as much as they have, maybe more. Their pediatrician reminded me that growth can be gradual and sometimes it will hurt. And all of it counts.

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Much of the progress we make in life rises out of our growing pains and struggles. Darlene and Julie share 8 ways to grow into a strong woman in this podcast episode: Become a Strong Woman While Making These 8 Pit Stops – 222