August: Roots Before Wings

This year, and perhaps the last several, have felt like a pause. July felt like that more acutely.

Life slowed.

Sometimes it even felt like nothing was happening.

Or that maybe I’d stepped off the path while everyone else around me kept moving forward.

Growth and change isn’t always visible, though.

I’ve continually been returning to this image of a seed beneath the soil.

Nothing about it seems remarkable from above. If you judged the seed by only what you could see, you’d assume the ground was empty.

But under the surface, life is happening. Tiny roots stretch into the darkness before a single green shoot ever reaches toward life.

I keep seeing my life as this thing that is growing under the surface.

Me, growing under the surface.

For August I drew the Ace of Cups.

Aces are beginnings. According to the Tabula Mundi, they are singular. The germ of the suit. The seed of their element. The root.

For months I’ve found myself writing about seeds, planting and growing. About the growth that is happening unseen under the surface.

Roots aren’t particularly glamorous. No one stops to admire them. Yet they determine everything that comes after.

They anchor and nourish. They prepare for a life we cannot yet see.

The Ace of Cups belongs to the suit of emotion.

The guide describes it as first form. The bright and fertile mother. The receptiveness that becomes form. The beginning stirrings of love, beauty, devotion, and creation.

Receptiveness.

This is a word that has stayed with me.

Receiving isn’t always easy.

It asks us to trust that not everything meaningful in our lives has to be forced into existence.

Like love.

Love isn’t something we can manufacture. We can’t force it to arrive or make another person feel it.

Yet love itself is abundant.

Love, whether that is romantic, spiritual, creative, or a deeper love for life itself, cannot be held in a clenched fist.

It asks for open hands.

It asks us to receive.

This is what the Ace of Cups invites me to do this month.

To not only receive love, but to become receptive.

These are not the same.

One is outcome, the other is a posture.

It is meeting life with an open heart.

Allowing beauty to find me.

Allowing creativity to emerge.

Allowing joy, connection, and grief to play their roles in shaping me, rather than resisting them.

This season is not a season of waiting, but one of preparing.

It isn’t a season of passivity, but a season of receptivity.

For me, love has both roots and wings.

Roots make love enduring.

Wings allow it to become expansive.

But the roots come first.

Before anything reaches toward the light, it first grows downward.

Roots create stability. They gather everything the plant will need one day to bloom.

Before love can become something we can hold, it grows the roots that will sustain it.

Roots of trust.

Of openness.

Of self-respect.

Of hope.

Those roots become the place from which love can grow.

They create roots safety.

And from safety comes the courage to dare.

To believe that something beautiful is growing before you can see it and to remain open even though you don’t know what comes next.

To have the courage to allow yourself to hope again after disappointment.

And sometimes it means allowing yourself to be seen before you know how it ends. Opening your heart enough that there is space and room for something new to root.

As much as I’d like to move faster, this season is still reminding me to slow down.

It is asking me to become someone capable of receiving what comes next.

To trust that even when life feels paused, I am still growing, root by root.

Always,
Your Trusted Friend ❤︎