Becoming the root
Notes on being what you're waiting for
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It is high summer and smoke is blanketing the sky from a fire up the coast. The smell is familiar, tinged with memory. Late July always brings a muggy, sticky feeling that only seems to be soothed by the knowing that autumn is coming soon, that something will shift eventually. This year in particular, July has swept me away from myself. It’s as if I’m floating around like swirling smoke, like a dandelion puff waiting to land somewhere, only to be blown about even more. I forget what it is to write, to have the creative energy to pour into a project or idea or essay, to know what to do next, to move my body regularly, forget what it is to feel rooted.
I have been telling myself that the uprootedness is a problem, that I need to “get back to normalcy”, that something steady will return soon. Yet life tells me that might not be the real solution or relief here, or in the near future. When I listen, this is what life itself says: Nothing is going back to how it was. Your task is not to root back into something familiar and known, but to find steady ground amid the continual uprooting. To anchor within the swirl. To not wait until change stops, but to anticipate it with openheartedness. To feel your sturdy spine and take the risk. To see within the smoke. To trust yourself to become the root. You are the root. You are the root. You are the root.
So much of my life has been spent waiting for something to swoop in and save me, to be my rootedness. My first hours on this earth were spent waiting to be found, waiting for someone to come and protect me, waiting for home. That waiting became the blueprint I lived from. I imagine my curled up self often, her terror and aloneness, her need for a mirror, her utter confusion, her hunger, her sweet body longing for a soft landing place. I imagine every version of myself that searched and searched and searched for something to root into, some certainty, some knowing, some promise. I imagine the many sources of rootedness I clung to, bursting underneath the weight of my clinging. I imagine the moments I realized rootedness needed to burst forth within me, not just around me. I imagine that stinging, that relief. And I turn toward it now, in the midst of giving into the devotion to become the root instead of searching for it within a world that is rapidly changing into a shape we don’t yet know.
As I practice becoming rootedness itself, becoming the buoy, becoming the anchor, it’s as if I’m taking all those younger versions of me in my arms and allowing them to soften into my own steadiness. I’m the one who will seek out connection, relationship, nurturance. I’m the one who will learn to let it in, feel it, allow it to seep into the quietest corners of me. I’m the one who will stand within the tornado and feel my feet sinking into the earth. I’m the one who will protect my own child. I’m the one who will insist upon dignity, upon beauty, upon care. I’m the one who will say yes, or say no, or say I don’t know. I’m the one who will stay soft when I feel like a floating dandelion. I’m the one who will listen to my knowings and lean on support within uncertainty. I’m the one who will practice humility, who will take risks on behalf of possibility, who will lean toward what I long for. I’m the one who will pivot when something isn’t working. I’m the one who will reach out to a beloved friend when I can’t hold something alone. I’m the one who will demand a better world for all beings. I’m the one who will receive their love. I’m the one who will face the truth with willingness. I’m the one who will choose, decide, act upon. I’m the one who will let the elements hold me inside of the blur. I’m the one who will sit down to write, even when writing has felt far away – who will trust what wants to return. Who will trust what wants to stay. I’m the one who will practice being the root. It starts here.
Things will keep changing, most likely at a pace I, perhaps we, cannot keep up with. The world as we knew it is gone. Fires are burning, systems are crumbling, certainty is an illusion, and there is no going back. Each season brings its own new shape, its own insistence on becoming someone different. Every thread of breaking news highlights the fallacy of certainty. When I find myself clinging to some symbol of rootedness around me, I want to remember to become it instead. To offer it with a kind of gentle fierceness. To set down the need for a savior and go toward what I need, what I want to see. To remember interconnection. To notice what it feels like to feel my spine, my outward heart, my lowered shoulders. To lean on those who can hold it all with me. I want to remember rootedness can be a practice, one that wobbles and stills. I want to keep widening my ability to stay with myself as I’m floating about, knowing a landing place will come when I surrender my need to know exactly when, or how, or where. I want to stay curious about what it means to become the root within a season, perhaps a lifetime, of so many things being uprooted so as to make room for something entirely unfamiliar and profoundly more beautiful, more real, more true. In that way, uprootedness is simply the beginning of what wants to become. It is the starting place. Anything can happen from here. How freeing.
May you sink into your own trust of yourself.
May you find the steady places that mirror your own steadiness.
May you feel your spine, your feet on earth, your body held by more.
May you notice your younger selves thanking you for being the adult now.
May you trust others will step forward when you need to step back.
May your fear be tended to by your willingness to keep moving anyway.
May you grieve what isn’t as a pathway toward facing what is.
May you allow uncertainty to become a birthplace for your longings.
May you become the rootedness you are looking for.
Thanks, as always, for being here.
△ We’re not good enough to not practice
△ This precious conversation and duo
△ Such a loss; so held by his art/heart through the years
△ Amie McNee on allowing slow creation
△ Currently on my bedside table
△ My daughter’s artwork
With care,
Lisa
Thank you for reading. Everything I share comes from my own heart; this publication, and all I do, is created without the use of AI.
Love this sentence.
“To not wait until change stops, but to anticipate it with openheartedness.”
As always, such a beautiful devotion, both to self and to community. Thank you for holding us with your words and thank you for allowing yourself to be held. It is so good to be reminded that no matter how adrift, we all still have ourselves to find grounding in, and each other, to find grounding with.