I am resistant to rooting. The yogis recommend it: to imagine that I am a tree and my roots extend from my spine deep into the ground to make strong and expand upward and outward. But my body resists this movement, even simply in the form of imaginative meditation.
The roots I were raised in weren’t safe. They strangled me, stabbed me, sedated me into a life that I didn’t want to live. Their strength and my size left me no agency. Eventually, when I grew bigger I was able to slip out of their grippling grasp.
In recovery I forced myself to root. All I wanted to do was move, but my body was bound to the bed of healing. I worked to afford the various modalities required to heal from childhood incest and illness, built a beautiful home for myself- my sanctuary, and otherwise stayed in bed and processed the many memories stored within the cellular structure of my being.
Then one day it came to a point where staying hurt more than leaving. Rooting into recovery restricted me from the running that my feet so desperately desired to do and I had healed enough now to do it. So, I sold all of my things, put just what I needed into a few bags, and ran away. For nearly two years now, I have been following my feet and the beat of my heart, and the continued communication in my bones crying, “I still need so much more.” This time has been for sacred integration: the place where the past, the present, and the future all align themselves within me.
Now, I have arrived at the point where I ask myself: Is it time to root again? Is this what will help me to rise? But again I am resisting. My external material life remains unimpressive, but my internal life is flowing with riches more frequently than ever before. And naturally the universe presents to me another option in the form of a metaphor.
I walked through a redwood grove a few weekends past in high heels and a flowing gown, to stand by a dear friend’s side as she wedded her beloved. The minister, a new friend, preached during the ceremony that redwood roots, instead of growing deeply to secure the strength of their height, reach outward and find their stretch by holding onto the roots of other redwoods. Maybe this is my way, too: to reach wide and to rise strong. I feel it happening.
My fear of getting hurt keeps me from reaching sometimes, or the anxiety that maybe people don’t want to hold onto to me, or the lie that I don’t give as much as I take and so burden those around me. And so I pull out my tools from recovery: I recall my boundaires that keep me safe, I trust the truth in the love of others and don’t twist it into hate, I remember the difference between interdependency and codependency as I receive the hold of others as gift and grace.
But I must not forget that as I connect, I must also drink water from the ground and fill myself with nourishment. I cannot focus so much on the holding on or the being held that I forget to take a sip of the abundient nutrients that the earth offers.
Self-denial is a strong narrative in women’s history, in Christian history, and in the history of all those raised by narcissists. It served as this perfect trinity as a Christian woman being sexually abused by my father and emotionally abused by my mother. Breaking this pattern of self-denial feels dangerous. Not breaking it leaves me in a constant state of depletion. I remind myself that I can choose to be a woman differently, that I have left the Christian framework as its fixed mindset doesn’t nourish my growth, and I have been away from home now for nearly a decade.
After all these years of surviving, recovering, reaching, and rising, I am thirsty. It’s time for a drink.