Coming at it from my inner nerd?

Change is any alteration in conditions, not necessarily in a positive direction.
Growth is an alteration in condition that creates expansion, good bad or neutral.
Progress is an alteration in conditions that creates beneficial results.

That said, yeah... change is about discomfort. Growth is about finding *space* in one's head. For me, anyway.

Chewing thoughtfully,

(And speaking as an ex-farm-girl, chickens don't like the shadow of a hawk on the ground---they used to sell these hawk-shaped things to stick in the ground to cast hawk-shaped-shadows.

For me change forced on me by kidney damage from PTSD meds led to growth--or else. Loss of meds meant I had to replace Ativan and Xanax with a support group, and that change has led to growth here at DS PTSD. I don't always volunteer for growth from favorable conditions, sometimes change forces growth on me.

I'm sorry but all I can think of is old cartoons and if you have a problem with chickens get a chicken hawk.

I think as PTSD sufferers is double hard to figure out the difference...It comes to change, growth, recovery.
Change for me would mean recovery.
Growth would mean maturity.

One of my personal symptoms are those low self-esteem issues. I have seen myself as horribly defective since my earliest memories. "If you don't change your ways, you are doomed." Seems like I was damned from my earliest natural growth on. Perhaps, "Growth" allows me to work with my true nature rather than the oughts and naughts I have picked up along the way.

Perhaps.

Repeat, conclusions are not the goal of meditation.

I like the example, and the activity. Nature stories are clear to me. Interesting to me right now, when I feel stressed about multiple needs for communication with multiple parties, while I'm also tired..... I liked your story of how you had to rebuild the trails, the beds and the fences - that's the kind of needed remedies that I am facing, to sort out a few communication tangles.

Your value of meditation, that helped you just do what needed to be done, without feeling stress - reminded me that my current need is to rest, drop back, don't keep trying to fix things while feeling stress, or I can find I've ended up making more mess.

Part of my stress is that I'm angry about the difficulties in communicating - much like you might feel angry and dislike, if you are annoyed as you try to repair the damage. If you are able to just meditate - or work after rest and just accept the need to re-do, you are more likely to be slowly building growth, not just reacting by throwing your feelings around, as I want to do, so I will go rest! Self care first!

Hmmm. I think change leads to growth for better or worse (maybe lack of growth as in failure to thrive or even perversities of self).

Progress sounds good, but following my previous equation, one can progress on a harmful path.... Chew chew.

My chickens will sound the alarm if a crow or raven flies overhead...it's the shadow. Oh, but I had a smartie, a lovely little white hen, a Viking. She could always find her way out of the coop....

Arfie, note. This hen (and her Viking roo) could fly in and out of seven foot (or 9 foot?) fenced garden. One hen can do a lot of damage. Luckily our other hens are more sedentary.

Great chew. Profound. A ponderer. Thank you.