The word ROOTine came up for me the other day when I was texting with my daughter who is on a life-changing journey, travelling in SE Asia:

Looking back on your life from a mom’s perspective as to when you have felt the most happiest is during developing an idea and planning transitions.  When you have gotten “grey” is when things settle into routine.  Your core competencies are definitely on experiencing and facilitating those transitions… what’s beautiful is that by identifying that this trip is about making space for change, that you yourself have the power to facilitate change, has opened you to also embrace DEVELOPING ROOTS.  

As long as where you land, where you you work, who you love, fosters that change power in you–  you will be happy.  Some people need routine and no change.  Predictability.  You- no.  That’s why you will love being a mom as it’s all about facilitating growth and change in your children.  The routine or ROOT-ine in that and in loving a partner is not at all suffocating- as long as you continue to develop yourself. 

The word ROOTine made sense to me as it came up in my text to her.  When I personally feel the angst of being disconnected from the predictability and routine of home (like this past Friday when I headed over to the island for 5 nights to work and and spend time with friends), I know that is the time for self-reflection and mindfulness.  In the way that works for me.

I don’t seek sameness in my life- that is certainly why I immerse myself in the creative process- it is about CHANGE.

My psychological or even physiological makeup is not one that suits the routine of a 9 to 5 predictable schedule.

I find a rich sense of freedom in the uniqueness of my personal routine.  In what makes me relax IN MY WAY.

So, I guess the angst that arises is when the flow is disrupted?  I’ve been thinking about this a lot.  Is it ROUTINE or ROOTS?  I am fully rooted in my purpose- blessed to have found it.

My niece Emma just sent me this poem and it seems fitting:

What to Remember When Waking by David Whyte

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake, coming back to this life from the other more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world where everything began, there is a small opening into the new day which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.

What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.

To remember the other world in this world is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth, you are not an accident amidst other accidents you were invited from another and greater night than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window toward the mountain presence of everything that can be what urgency calls you to your one love?

What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?

In the trees beyond the house?

In the life you can imagine for yourself?

In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

The ROOTine is where I find my flow.  And when the flow is disrupted, I feel uneasy.  And that’s OK.