Growing Toward the Roots, Gathering Trust

I learned trust not from the open sky,

but from what happens underground.

Roots do not hurry.

They move in darkness, negotiating with stones,

learning the texture of resistance.

They do not ask the soil to be kind—

they ask only to be real.

To grow upward is instinct.

To grow downward is a choice.

In the beginning, trust feels like loss:

light abandoned, applause unheard,

progress invisible to anyone passing by.

But roots understand a deeper arithmetic—

what is given up in sight

is returned in strength.

They listen before they claim.

They absorb before they extend.

Each thin filament reaches out

not to conquer the earth,

but to understand it.

So does trust.

It is built quietly,

in conversations without witnesses,

in promises kept when no reward follows,

in staying when leaving would be easier

and more impressive.

Trust thickens slowly.

Layer by layer,

experience compacts into certainty.

Not blind faith,

but a tested belief

that weight can be carried,

that storms can be endured.

Above ground, the tree may sway.

Critics measure it by height,

by how far it reaches into the air.

They forget that what holds it steady

is what no one sees.

When the wind comes—and it always does—

the tree does not argue.

It relies.

On depth.

On patience.

On the quiet labor of roots

that chose connection over speed.

To grow toward the roots

is to accept slowness,

to honor process,

to trust what is forming

long before it is visible.

And one day,

without announcement,

strength appears—

not as spectacle,

but as steadiness.

That is how trust lives:

not in sudden belief,

but in roots that kept growing

when no one was watching.