Where I Stand to Rise

My roots were never just soil and history.

They were the hands that held me steady,

the prayers spoken before I knew my own name,

the quiet sacrifices no one celebrates

but everyone stands on.

I come from people

who learned how to bend without breaking—

who taught me that strength

is a soft thing first,

a steady thing second,

and only looks like hardness

when the world misreads survival.

My roots are memory and muscle,

less about where I was born

and more about what kept me whole

when life tried to scatter me.

But what are roots without branches?

What good is grounding

if you forget you were made

to reach?

My branches are the parts of me

that dream in directions

my ancestors never had language for—

the hopes that stretch past circumstance,

the prayers that lift their heads

even when fear tries to press them down.

I grow upward

because someone before me

chose not to stop growing.

I rise outward

because the soil beneath me

never asked me to stay small.

There is tension in becoming—

the pull toward who I was,

the pull toward who I’m meant to be—

but maybe that’s what a tree is:

a life held together

by the courage to stay rooted

and the faith to reach further.

And if I become anything worth remembering,

let it be this:

that I stood because of what grounded me,

and I rose because of what called me forward.