Rewiring Roots

Why doesn’t anyone prepare you for the losses that come with growth? I expected the pushback because bitterness, jealousy, and envy aren’t hard to read—at least not for me. What I wasn’t prepared for was the deep disconnection from the people and places I bonded with during critical, pivotal moments in my life—connections that felt irreplaceable. Being forced to move past them left a gaping wound.

They became a massive part of my identity. They became part of my core being. I uprooted and rebuilt my foundation to accommodate many of them, only to have to shift again and rebuild an entirely new foundation without them. How does one come to terms with such a deep loss? How do you move forward without being forever scarred?

It’s no easy task disconnecting after being deeply connected to people or places. I used to judge people for having a hard time moving on until I found myself drowning in the same pond—forever humbled and forever changed. It’s easier to walk into the unknown with a village. It takes a whole other level of consciousness to willingly disconnect from everything and walk into the unknown with nothing. It takes a different kind of mental toughness to be willing to take the losses alone and to win with nobody to share those victories with.

Human connection is written into our basic biology. No matter how we try to analyze it logically, there’s no logical explanation that can override the paralyzing fear of growing alone—of knowing you are moving in the right direction, yet all the people, places, and things that matter simply don’t have the capacity, or perhaps don’t believe in you or your vision enough, to risk the journey with you.

I now understand the temptation to stay stuck. The familiar is comforting, and being uncomfortable isn’t easy to carry in one area of life, much less all of them. When your reality has been uprooted and the road ahead is literally a day-by-day process, you want to hold on to something—anything—that feels like an anchor.

The problem is that sometimes the anchor you cling to is the very thing sinking you and keeping you from ever reaching the best version of yourself. Yet try explaining that to your body’s natural biological instinct to protect itself and stay safe. Safety has never created an exceptional human being. In fact, safety is the reason many of us grow old with regrets about a life lived cautiously, only to realize we’ve run out of time to change.

I never used to choose safe. I’ve always taken life on the chin and chosen the path of growth—until I didn’t. I experienced what it means to become stagnant and then regress. After working so hard to climb, there was simply too much chaos for me to sustain the weight of both. Of course, the old saying, those who have nothing to lose will help you lose it all, rang true. I’m still working through that.

I clung to my own downfall. The root of me—my family tree and what they represented to me from the dawn of my existence—became my undoing. Wanting them to approve of me, support me, and have a place in my life was the most devastating of needs. Moving back home to be closer to the people I had escaped, in a city that never held growth for me, was a crippling blow with consequences that will take a long time to outlive.

There was no way to rewrite what I had always known. I was desperately hoping that, after all this time, they would have found the tools to turn a different page. But sadly, I was the only one who had changed. In all the years I stayed away, my roots remained the same. New seasons, new decades, new places in life—but the roots were still dark, ignorant, and unmoving at their core.

There will never be a safe place there for me. There will never be a home to go back to. No matter how much time passes, the connection will have to remain severed, and that has created a well of confusion about who I am. If I can’t find a safe place among the roots of me, then where exactly is my village? How long do I have to build this vision alone?

Despite our egotistical belief that any one human can be self-made, no one becomes successful entirely alone. We can only be the sole driving force for so long before we plateau. One person simply doesn’t have the lifespan or mental capacity to learn and manage every area of success.

Who we become is deeply connected to where we come from and the connections we build around us. So, if we don’t come from healthy, growing roots, then what can we honestly expect from our own legacy? Even if our minds and hearts are filled with big dreams, where do we find the tools to execute them? How do those of us who want to grow—but don’t come from the right foundation—rewire, heal, and do it fast enough to attach ourselves to new roots?

After all, we are all searching to be planted in soil that helps us blossom, instead of merely surviving in soil that holds us back. Sometimes the strongest roots aren't the ones we're born into, but the ones we choose to grow.