I saw this quote on social media earlier earlier this week and I've been thinking about it since:
Heal the root so the tree is stable
If you would have asked me in December 2022 what I thought the next year might bring, I would've had some cookie cutter answers that were just.. absurdly off the mark.
I wasn't even close.
The year started with my father's unplanned open heart surgery. He is still here, but right out of the new year's gate, our world tilted and so many things that I'd assumed were solid, somehow shook loose.
Dad's recovering, by the way.
2023 then brought me to the end of a relationship that has had many forms over the past two decades: college sweethearts, then the type of strangers produced by a breakup, then friends again, then two adults who promised each other a coffee catch-up for two years before we actually committed to hanging out. We pursued the spark that was re-ignited, and for some time, it stayed a steady, fed fire. And then it wasn't. The fuel and air supply dwindled, and the flame turned to embers, which then turned to the ash that you often think still has a chance to resurrect, but know deep down that it will not. It happens bit by bit, the loss of this thing in which you at one time so ardently believed. And you grieve it.
And if you overstay that since-quieted fire, your roots will suffer.
Mine did.
2023 also brought me to the end of a professional era, which quite frankly scared me, I dare say more than the dissolve of the 4-year relationship. I am a decade+ in tenure with my current company, but the demand to adapt in turn demanded me to shift nearly all the way out of the role I've held for most of that time, and into one with a description that in some ways is still open-ended.
The comfortable, familiar ground had become barren. My roots were dying.
Absolutely terrified, I accepted the move.
When I say that I collided face first with the proverbial oasis that was waiting for me, it's not an exaggeration. As of this entry, I'm barely a month into the not-new-but-new role and I am happier than I have been in at least a full calendar year, surely more if I do the actual math. My daily pauses are no longer punctuated by the dread that had grown accustomed to lurking at the edge of my periphery, ready to stake claim to my sanity each day, should one more thread unravel. Instead, they now come as breaths as the end of productive, fulfilling sentences - the work itself reciprocating small seeds of its own gratitude for me being there. For my skills and abilities which are unique on my team, and for me being uniquely positioned to thrive as I reach down to grow the vines of what I've been newly given.
And don't get me started on the people that 2023 has deposited into my orbit.
The beloved RRG shared some of its most valuable treasure with me: a collection of truly dope souls with endless curiosity and spirit for adventure, learning, and just living authentically. And when I came home and made the decision to change my indoor climbing scenery around for a little while, there were even more people who I now can't imagine not knowing. The old and the new, colliding in the spaces that I am re-opening, creating new buds that bloom more and more with each time spent in their company. I'm re-learning that the brand of bone-deep gratitude I have for these individuals, is a decadent nourishment and healing agent for my roots to absorb.
This tree is going to grow again. Not grow back, because my intentionality this time around is not to recreate it as it was. I can already feel this growth taking a shape new to itself. I tend to assume that I can anticipate the form of something just because I've dealt with or survived it before. The truth is that I have no idea what this regrowth will bring, where the branches will bend, where the leaves will be the fullest. I just know it's growing; I can feel it. I don't know the rest, and I don't think I'm supposed to know.
2023 is humbling me in the most beautiful, critical ways. It has gently but firmly closed doors that I was unwilling to close of my own volition, and continues to patiently steer me towards and through new ones. 2023 has invited me into the boldest season of change I've experienced in a long time, and has given me everything I need to heal some of these long-neglected roots.
I can't wait for this stable tree to grow.
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