Grounding Pains

For most of my life, I have had a pattern of running. Whenever situations around me became too stressful, I would coil up my roots, harden my walls, and run. Movement became my norm. Avoidance and bypassing all feelings that made me feel vulnerable and uncomfortable became my automatic solution to all problems. In keeping forward momentum and retaining thick walls, I was safe from pain, but I was also disconnected from stability and understanding real love. It's easy to love yourself for your strength, but as I'm learning, it is much harder to love yourself through all the pain, discomfort, and weaknesses.

Let's breathe and walk through the grounding pains together. Stable roots cannot be grown without the inevitable pain, but as you will find, they are so worth it.

Step 1: Commit to Stability

After the initial recognition of personal uprooting patterns, there is a stressful phase where a part of you wants to commit to stability, while another part wants to leave room for escape routes. While leaving some space for flexibility and change may seem like a positive, this split mindset will only create more tension as the ingrained parts that prefer to run regain fuel, popping up more and more frequently, turning everyday stresses into big leave-or-not life decisions. Rather than invite this mental and emotional divide, take that foot that is halfway out the door, pull it back in with the rest of your body, and breathe. Commit to staying.

View this commitment as a relationship, one that you truly love and want to reliably show up for, and vow to make the change and grow roots. By letting go of the escape option, you will experience less mental stress as you won't have to make as many decisions throughout the day, and by viewing the commitment as a relationship, you will be better prepared to remain through all the ups and downs.

Step 2: Get Comfortable with Feeling Uncomfortable

Grounding is a deceiving process because while it may look like you are finally relaxed on the outside, especially in comparison to the ungrounded on-the-move life you had before, on the inside, you are anything but relaxed. There is a shedding that occurs in stillness and silence, one that flakes down walls, leaving you open and vulnerable to all the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings you were previously hardening and running from. Don't fight this shedding.

Take another breath and breathe through the process, knowing that you are growing and getting emotionally stronger with each loving acceptance of these feelings. Take it from me, while hardening yourself off from heartbreak and powering through trauma may feel good and effective in the moment, eventually in stillness, the pain you were denying will catch up. You can't run forever.

However, you can also take it from me that there is much beauty and strength to be gained in this nonjudgmental shedding and softening process. In this vulnerable phase, you will uncover unconditional love, both with yourself and with others, and you will also make great strides in changing your old destructive habits. Keep in mind as you sit through the discomfort and breathe through it rather than distract yourself or push the pain away, you are taking part in a natural process. Like the leaves that turn and fall from the trees, you are also changing and shedding. The more you accept this natural processing of emotions, the better you will get at breathing through and grounding this energy. All emotions, thoughts, and experiences want to be processed and worked through the body to help grow roots. In fact, you need this abundance of vulnerable and uncomfortable energy in order to ground.

Remember that growing pains are normal, and these feelings won't kill you. Keep breathing, keep shedding, keep grounding, and know that with every inch of roots gained in the ground, you are becoming that much stronger and more stable.

Step 3: Invest in Your Space and Nourish Your Soil

Much like crops that need healthy, nutrient-rich soil to grow, we too need a nourished home-base to grow. Invest in your nest. Take a part of your budget and save it for cozying up your home. While this step may seem superficial and materialistic, trust me--taking the time and money to create a home-base you love pays off.

While I was living on the road, I prided myself on hardly needing anything, and when I first moved here to Vermont, I held onto that mindset for a while. By holding onto my minimalist ways, however, I realized my apartment felt cold and empty, and on top of that, my one-foot-out-the-door split mindset was saving money for my cut-and-run uprooting ways. I had to completely switch my financial patterns and make my home a priority, which has done wonders for my root-growing work.

No matter what your budget, it's important to make your space warm, inviting, and uniquely yours. The more you love your home, the more likely you will be to stay. Your nest will nourish, hold, and protect you as you breathe through the rooting pain, and so it's important to return the love and invest the support back into your home.

Step 4: Gradually, Branch Out

In the past, as soon as I have started to feel my roots grow and the unconditional love seep through my leaves, my automatic reaction is to...BRANCH OUT AS FAST AND TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE WITH THIS NEWFOUND LOVE!

Breathe.

Take a long, long, loving breath and breathe. While this is absolutely the most rewarding part of the grounding process, it's also a critical time where pacing is vital. If you extend and grow above the ground faster than your roots, you will topple over. Breathe and enjoy this light seeping through your system. Allow it to flood your own being and spread this life-source energy down to your roots into your foundation where it is needed most. Enjoy the branching out and connection, but don't forget to save some light and love for yourself. Your branches are only as strong as your roots, and the universe's unconditional rays can only permeate so far into the ground.

You have to make sure you're doing the work in allowing the light to process through into the ground. You have to save some unconditional love for yourself by saving time for personal grounding techniques such as meditating, enjoying nature, taking a bath, writing, petting your cat, going for a leisurely walk, or anything that helps you slow down and enjoy the feeling of unconditional love. While it's beyond beautiful and exhilarating to spread this love to others, don't ever forget that you deserve it too.

Happy grounding, unconditional loving, and breathing through it all! No more running, fighting, hiding, or denying, my friends. Life is too precious to prefer it all as a blur that can't touch you. You are not a tumble weed. You are a big, beautiful maple tree. Feel and ground it all.