Repotting Process
There’s a moment in healing where the work shifts. First, it’s pruning. We pull the weeds, snip the dead leaves, clear the clutter that’s taken over our lives—relationships, habits, thought loops, survival patterns. And that work is important. It clears space. It lets in light. But eventually, we realize it’s not enough.
We’re still rootbound.
Tangled up in the versions of ourselves we had to become in order to survive.
That’s where I found myself when I wrote this poem. I realized I had outgrown the pot I was planted in—not just physically or emotionally, but spiritually. My survival systems were too tight. There was no room for me to breathe, to stretch, to thrive.
So the work became quieter. More careful. I didn’t need to destroy anything—I needed to repot.
I had to get tender with the parts of myself that had wrapped around everything else. I had to slowly, gently loosen the roots. Separate what was me from what I had become because I had to. And in doing that, I began to see the original shape of myself again.
The one I began as.
The one who still lives underneath it all.
This kind of growth doesn’t look flashy from the outside. There’s no sudden bloom or dramatic transformation. It’s in the slow unfurling. The new soil. The choice to stay—but stay in a way that supports the real you, not just the version of you who knew how to survive.
This is what happens when the soil shifts.
When staying becomes growing.
Repotting Process Poem:
Like a spider plant
in an overcrowded pot
new shoots sprouting
with every situation I had to survive.
Roots tangled tight,
wound around themselves.
I've been pulling weeds,
snipping dead leaves,
doing the surface work.
But what I really need
is to dig deeper
gently lift the plant from the soil,
unwind the roots,
separate what grew from survival
from what came first.
To find her again
the original.
The one before.
The one I’ve always been.
My authentic self.
A quiet invitation:
Where in your life do you feel rootbound—still growing, but in a space too small for who you’re becoming?
What might it look like to gently repot yourself—what needs loosening, letting go, or nourishing?
-The Story Witness
I hold what was buried, and I write what is living.
