Rise Rooted

Sometimes I have found more comfort sitting beside a tree than talking to anyone.

Especially when grief felt too large for language.
When heartbreak hollowed me out.
When the structures I trusted cracked open beneath me, and I lost sight of who I was becoming.

Again and again, I found myself with my back against a tree trunk, breathing and feeling held.

Sometimes I trusted the presence of trees more than words.

I wept at their roots, lay beneath their branches, and rested beside them until my heartbeat softened, and I remembered my place in the living world.

Photo by walkerssk on Pixabay

Long before I understood anything about trauma, somatics, or soul, I loved trees.

As a child, I climbed them instinctively. I felt alive, held, and at home in their arms.

Then, like many people in our culture, I was slowly trained away from this intimacy.

I learned to sit indoors for long hours, prioritizing productivity over presence.
To value intellect over instinct and live increasingly from my head rather than from my body, imagination, or relationship with the Earth.

But something in me never forgot.

Years later, after illness, loss, wilderness initiations, and many seasons of guiding others into deep encounters with nature and soul, I began to understand something that trees had been teaching me all along:

Trees grow underground before they grow upward.

Photo by Dave Meier on Pixabay

Roots come first.

Our culture often teaches us to rise quickly, be industrious, optimize ourselves, and remain endlessly available. Many people are trying to grow upward without ever being deeply rooted.

But trees do not apologize for their stillness. They do not bloom year-round or rush their becoming. They do not sever themselves from the Earth in order to reach up.

Scientists continue discovering the extraordinary intelligence of forests — the communication networks between trees and fungi, the ways forests share nutrients, the deep interdependence beneath what appears separate above ground.

A forest survives through its relationships. Nothing in a forest thrives alone. Soul may work similarly. Not as an isolated individual journey, but as a living participation in something larger than ourselves.

For me, trees have been companions in healing, guides, and teachers in love, community, depth, and mystery.

There were times in my life when human love felt unavailable or tangled with pain. Trees offered a steady, grounded relationship. They opened my imagination to hidden worlds beneath the visible one.

I remember sitting against a tree and feeling my body soften in a way I could not force through effort or analysis. My nervous system relaxed, and something inside me felt received. Trees have taught me that love does not always arrive through words.

Sometimes love arrives through presence, through simply remaining. In that continuity, something deeper could finally arrive — understanding, grief, even belonging.

Over the years, I have come to feel that trees carry a form of wisdom our culture desperately needs. They show that interdependence does not require sameness. That strength need not depend on domination. That belonging is possible without possession.

They remind us that grief and decay nourish life, and that what appears dead may still be feeding the future underground.

There is a line I once wrote in a poem to a tree:

Help me, tree, to love myself.

Trees invited me into a different experience of being alive — one not organized around self-rejection, speed, performance, or disconnection from the body and Earth.

They taught me a spirituality with roots.

Not one based primarily on transcendence or escape from the world, but one rooted in intimacy with my body, longing, and love.

I believe many people are hungry for forms of soul and spirituality that include the body. For ways to restore a relationship with imagination, Earth, and deep belonging.
Hungry for meaning that is lived rather than merely believed.

Recently, my friend Matt Syrdal and I recorded a podcast conversation exploring many of these themes — soul, rootedness, mythic imagination, spirituality, the living Earth, and what it might mean to reinhabit a deeper relationship with mystery. In the second half, we guide listeners into a deep imagination journey through the forest.

You can listen to our conversation here:

Listen: Rise Rooted

Out of these conversations and shared explorations, a new offering emerged called Rise Rooted.

Together, we will explore soul, mythic imagination, embodiment, spirituality, ecological belonging, and what it means to cultivate roots in a culture that often pulls us away from ourselves, one another, and the living Earth.

The offering weaves conversation, reflection, imaginal practice, and contemplative exploration for those longing for forms of spirituality and soul work that are grounded, relational, and alive.

Explore Rise Rooted

The name emerged naturally from something trees have modeled for centuries:
that how we root shapes how we rise.

That perhaps the soul does not awaken through climbing above the world, but through entering more deeply into relationship with it.

Trees have been showing us this all along.

Many of us are beginning to remember.

If this piece speaks to you, you can explore more writings, programs, and offerings through Rebecca Wildbear