Pondering Roots as a Creative Survivor
Originally published at Lilacs in Paradise.
Something I’ve always felt a struggle with is nurturing a strong foundation.
Think: roots, a sense of being grounded, community ties, family. My parents were teenagers when I came along and they married, divorced, both remarried, and both divorced again all before I was 13 years old. I moved constantly with my mom, before my dad got custody and we moved again- in a world of split parents, my story isn’t really that unusual in this aspect- but there’s an impact common to so many of us who grew up this way. . .
I switched schools so many times between the 5th and 9th grade that I never really established friendships, and by the time I got to high school I was hesitant to try. I didn’t grow up with faith, so I didn’t have a church family to fall back on either. I had my sisters and we had each other and that was it. (This one isn’t a sad story, I’m just sharing the scene. Hang tight for the real story!!)
Then, adulthood hit.
Woah, amiright?
At 18, my husband and I started to consciously build our home life. . . I wanted my home to be a safe space for my still-kid siblings to come to. I practiced a morning routine, tried to cook whole and healthy meals, opted for cozy, warm decor. . . I learned a lot online about how to be a good little adult, and I really did my best with it. But I was also dreaming big! And it wasn’t rare to find me up into the wee hours (er, a lot like I am right now as I write this, hehe), creating something or writing a story, or just journaling away on an important bit of healing and growth that was just bursting through me.
After a while, life started happening to me, as I felt at the time.
My grounded little home was broken by juuuust-barely-above-the-poverty-line-ness plus my having a chronic illness. Thank you, United States pathetic excuse for healthcare. Not that I’m not grateful for what I have access too- but it’s still a pathetic system. An $11,000 hospitalization that also essentially got me fired from a full-time job with good health benefits (working for the hospital, to add to the irony of the situation) was the first of our house of cards to fall, and it’s just kinda been a whirlwind ever since. Already on the verge of losing what little stability we’d built in our young marriage, my husband and I tried to move to Oregon. We dreamed of the better healthcare there, choosing to see what we could control and learn from the situation.
We tried for months to make ends meet, staying in a small Oregon town with friends and looking into buying the cheapest houses on the market. We came really close to buying a tiny little home for something like $50,000. But it fell through, and having nearly worn out our welcome with our gracious friends in town, we moved back to Idaho with our tails tucked. We had to start over- and wow were we shaken!
We were broken. . . but not without hope!
My source of hope?
I’ve dreamed of living on the Oregon Coast since I first saw the ocean here at 11 years old.
Eastern Oregon was an epic failure- and I took it as evidence that the west coast was calling my heart!
As I finally let my heart make this decision, I realized: I’m going to have the same problems on the coast as I already have now. It won’t change anything, I’ll just have these struggles in a new place. And I made that agreement with myself- I promised to be okay with that and to understand that I was still going to need to work through these things I’d been struggling with. Poverty, chronic illness, mental health struggles, nightmares, all of that doesn’t just vanish because I live near the ocean.
Now that I’ve been here a few months, I can say that was so very true. I’m glad I realized it before- because when I struggled to be happy in my first couple weeks alone here, I wasn’t at all alarmed. I was a little disappointed that I’d been right, but I wasn’t surprised.
What did surprise me, though, was how much coming here would disturb my already weak roots. . .
After the whirlwind of the previous several years and a lifetime without stability. . . I thought I had no roots.
Being a renter moving from apartment to apartment with every lease coming up didn’t exactly feel like having a home- but when you move from that to an RV with no address at all? Oh boy! THAT is truly free from any root.
At first it was liberating- I thought maybe I didn’t need to strive for roots after all, maybe I didn’t need them.
Until. . . I realized I was floating away- running an online business with lots of online friends in my little RV with minimal phone service or wifi and no real address (ie. no way to be contacted, it was super easy to just *poof* vanish if I wanted to). . . It was just a mess. I’m an air sign to my core, and the harshness created by all of this space, isolation, and now total lack of roots left me cold and empty in the middle of my own dream come true.
And then?
I realized a new sort of dream:
I want to have a home in my heart.
A real home. One I can come home to, always and anywhere. One where the light is left on for me, showing me the way back in case I ever get lost. I want roots. I always strive to bloom- to make something beautiful and good out of chaos and cruelty- but when I’m so focused on the blooming, without the roots, it’s easy to whither away.
I’m a dreamer by nature. I can’t not try new things and get excited and create incredible experiences. That’s going to happen no matter what I focus my energy on- and that’s something I didn’t understand before. I was afraid I had to choose between being grounded (stable, consistent, reliable, pick your word) or being creative (inspired, playful, open to serendipity, expansive).
My real dream come true doesn’t have anything to do with the location.
It’s about the balance.
I’ve been building these healthy habits and routines and seeking stability and groundedness for a weak reason all this time: either because I felt like I “should” do it, or to give it to others. I never let myself truly, deeply commit to the balance between creativity and stability.
Now I know: It is possible to be both- flying high in my soul and also growing deep, strong roots in my heart.
This is why starting today, and on through 2020, my big focus will not be on my big huge dreams, but rather on nurturing and coming to know and value my beautiful roots. I have a feeling I can do both, and in fact I think in honoring and tending to my roots, I’m going to end up naturally freeing up space and time and energy to work toward my dreams as well- because I won’t be wasting all this effort rejecting, running from, fearing, and avoiding certain aspects of myself.
I’m going to write a short story playing with this concept of growing the roots before trying to bloom. I’ll share it on my Writing page when it’s ready if you’d like to see it.
Thank you for joining me for another pondering post. I hope it has inspired you in some way.
