Repotted

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Sometime last fall, I bought one of those cute little money trees at the local grocery store. His trunk was all twisted and braided, with maybe 6 or 7 sad looking leaves total springing from the entire plant. He wasn’t well.

What can I say, I have a thing for underdogs.

I’ve taken good care of this guy (who for some reason I’ve never named, and I tend to name everything) and he’s slowly been growing into himself, a canopy of leaves now springing proudly above his knotted little trunk. It was roughly at the same time that I bought him and brought him home that my home itself felt twisted and full of struggle, my marriage as tangled as this money tree’s sad little stem, and as sparse as its leaves that were vying for sunlight, and love, and attention.

In retrospect, I can see the pathetic fallacy in action.

We also attract our vibe – never forget that.

So long story short, whether this little plant picked me, or I picked him – it was evident I wanted to fix him. To make him better. To make him strong. To help him grow, to flourish, to reach higher and wider and sink his roots in deep to find nourishment.

I wanted to give him what I couldn’t, and hadn’t been, giving myself.

And so it’s been over the past several months that I’ve tended to him daily, pruning away leaves that aren’t serving him to allow others that are to grow. I feed him music and daylight, water him well, and ensure I turn him regularly so he grows steady and true, well balanced, and not too far one way, or too far the other.

If you read my last post, I’m Still Here, you’ll know that I recently separated, moved, sold my marital home, and am starting with a fresh clean slate – again. I’ve been working at giving myself the same attention I have this plant, watching it thrive with small efforts, repeated daily.

Watching it come back from what was otherwise an inevitably sad and lonely fate.

And guess what?

It’s true what they say – we are all just houseplants with more complicated emotions.

I’m growing too.

I’m recovering.

I’m healing and sinking my roots in deep, finding pockets of nourishment deep within myself that are satisfying both my soul and the body I carry it around in.

About two weeks ago, I noticed my little plant was seeming sluggish and his leaves were more pale than normal. Something was off, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t because I was making him listen to Lady Gaga’s Chromatica album on repeat for days on end.

I’ve learned his musical tastes are as diverse as mine.

And then it dawned on me that I had never repotted him and he was root-bound. He had outgrown his little pot, and was in dire need of claiming his space. He needed to stretch out, to relax, to give his roots a chance to breathe.

He needed to leave his old pot behind, because it wasn’t serving him anymore. It was holding him back, and in turn, making him sick.

And this is what we all do.

We stay stuck in our old pots too long, until our situations become dire and we make drastic, terrifying changes in these scary last ditch attempts to save ourselves.

We allow ourselves to become root-bound, because it’s easier to stay where things are familiar than face the growing pains and risks of moving on.

We would rather struggle to survive than deal with the discomfort of repotting ourselves.

This past March, I finally repotted myself.

And as each day goes by, it becomes easier to breathe.

Easier to treat myself better.

Easier to find the sunlight.

Easier to see myself growing, twisted trunk or not.

And though at first I longed for the familiarity I had left behind – my old pot, my old home, my old life – it’s now many long days later that I can look back and see how sick that old pot was making me. Regardless of my years of being sober, my years of recovery, my years of inner work I’ve been doing to try and figure myself out, and all the years my roots felt twisted and tangled and tight, I still found myself sick in the soul.

Sometimes, our environments are as toxic as our habits and thoughts, and they are codependent on one another.

The thoughts lead you to believe you belong there, in a pot you long ago outgrew. That though the soil has been tapped and there’s nothing left to feed on, this is where you belong. Despite all the nutrients that help you grow being long depleted, you’re still trying to force growth in a tired and dried up place.

And then there’s the worst and most toxic thought of all – that you deserve it.

I’m lucky and grateful and partly ashamed that I was pushed out of my old pot, that as the universe tends to do, it got fed up of waiting for me to admit what I already knew, so it shuffled my life around for me so I could find a new home to sink my roots into.

So I could find the nourishment I’d long been needing and missing.

So I could be in a better place to heal myself, just like I helped to heal my little money tree.

xo SJ

"If you don’t like where you are, move. You are not a tree."
- Jim Rohn

Just look at how happy he is!