The Difference Between Standing Tall and Staying Standing

A little over a year ago, I was hiking through a Costa Rican rainforest with my oldest son.

It was one of those trips you don’t fully appreciate until you’re home, flipping through photos and realizing something quietly shifted in you while you were too busy watching monkeys to notice.

Our guide used the moment to contrast two very different kinds of trees.

He started with Sequoias. Most people know them. Towering, majestic, the kind of tree that makes you feel small just thinking about one. But despite their extraordinary height, their root systems are surprisingly shallow. They grow up. Not necessarily down.

Then he pointed to a Ceiba tree standing just off the trail.

The Ceiba doesn’t compete on height. What it does instead is send massive buttress roots sprawling outward in every direction, creating a foundation so wide and deep that it looks almost defiant. Like it looked at the rainforest and said: go ahead. Try me.

Our guide explained that it’s exactly this root system that allows the Ceiba to withstand the storms that flatten other trees. The powerful winds. The torrential rains. The conditions that are simply part of life in a rainforest.

I thought it was a fascinating fact.

More than a year later, I think it might be the most important thing I learned on that entire trip.

Because here’s what I’ve come to believe most of us are quietly doing with our lives: we’re trying to become Sequoias. We pour our energy into building something that looks impressive from the outside. A career with the right title. A home that reflects our success. A marriage. A portfolio. A reputation we’ve spent decades carefully tending.

And I want to be clear. There is nothing wrong with any of that. I’ve spent over 20 years helping women build wealth, grow their income, and create lives that reflect what actually matters to them. I believe in those things deeply. But I’ve also watched enough women navigate enough storms to know that the true test of strength is not how tall you’ve grown. It’s whether you stay standing when the weather turns.

And the weather always turns.

Sometimes it arrives as divorce, or the loss of a parent, or a health crisis you didn’t see coming. Sometimes it’s a career that no longer fits, or a role that defined you for so long that when it changes, you’re not quite sure who you are without it. Sometimes it’s subtler than any of that.

What strikes me most about this season of life is that we stop being so obsessed with growing taller. We start caring about growing deeper. More rooted. More connected to what actually sustains us.

We begin to understand that resilience isn’t the absence of being shaken. It’s the ability to stay connected to what matters most when the ground beneath us shifts.

That lesson from the rainforest has stayed with me ever since. Not because it taught me something about trees. Because it taught me something about us.

So here’s the question I keep coming back to: are you building a Sequoia life, or a Ceiba life?

Because eventually, the storm shows up. It always does.

And when it comes, your roots will matter far more than your height.

If this resonated, I’d love to hear what roots feel most solid in your life right now. And if you’re in a season where the ground feels a little unstable, know that you don’t have to navigate it alone. That’s exactly what The Empowered Sisterhood is here for. Learn more at https://www.watchherthrive.co/empowered-sisterhood.