Roots

Sep 30

3 min read

Updated: Oct 4

The dampness in the air rested on my cheeks, and dew had settled across the garden, wet beneath my toes. The glowing embers of the fire still held a little warmth, while the torches cast just enough light to see the garden around me. I sat quietly in the sanctuary I had built, surrounded by the last fullness of summer—the flowers still blooming, the vines still climbing, everything holding on to what the season had given it. Yet there was a sense of release in the air, the subtle shift toward autumn, when growth begins to give way to letting go. Above me, the sky was clear and the stars were shining bright, scattered across the darkness like points of direction.

Looking up at them, I was transported back to a frigid winter night many years ago, beneath a sky just as clear. There was no garden then, no warmth, no sanctuary. Only an old farmhouse, a young boy asleep on the floor inside, and a woman wondering if she had made the right choice.

Snow settled on my eyelashes, and the world was eerily still as I stood beneath that vast winter sky. I didn't know what came next or whether I was headed in the right direction, but something about those stars steadied me. For reasons I couldn't have articulated then, the uncertainty seemed to soften, replaced by a quiet sense of peace and gratitude, and the feeling that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

Looking back now, I can see how much of my life was taking root during those years, even when there was little evidence of growth. I was learning, starting over, changing direction, letting go, and trying again. There were seasons when I thought I was moving forward and seasons when I felt completely still. All the while, something was growing beneath the surface.

For a long time, I thought growth was supposed to be visible, something I could measure from the outside through accomplishments, finished projects, or evidence that I was moving forward. I understand now that some of the most important growth happens beneath the surface—a decision, a shift in belief, a question we can no longer ignore—long before there is anything visible to show for it.

You can look at a garden and see everything growing above the soil, but not the roots spreading beneath it, reaching for water, finding their way around stones, quietly anchoring what will eventually emerge. A stem appears, then a leaf, then a flower—evidence of something that had been growing long before it could be seen.

As I looked around my garden, I thought of all the seeds I had planted without knowing exactly what they would become. I watered, tended, waited, and learned to trust what I could not yet see.

As I sat in the garden that evening, I could see so much evidence of growth: the flowers, the vegetables, the vines, the trees, the paths, all the things I had planted and tended and watched change over the summer. I could also see how much of my life had grown from things I once couldn't have pointed to or explained—a question, a decision, a single step taken without knowing very far beyond it.

I thought about the woman who had stood on that farmhouse deck twelve years earlier, simply trying to figure out how to live. Looking back now, I can see that she was already doing something that would become essential to everything that followed: learning to trust herself.

I think about her often, especially when I am standing in the garden, because I understand roots differently now. So much of what anchors us begins long before we can see what it will become.

The stars above my garden that night were the same stars I had looked at twelve years earlier, but I was not the same woman. Beneath the harvest moon, its glow revealed how much had taken root.

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