Rootlessness, Climate Change, and the Seasons of Becoming

Grief is a kind of weather.

It rolls in without asking.

Some days it’s a storm, so sudden, wild, uncontainable.

Other days it’s that fog that never quite lifts, just softens everything around the edges.

And then there are the droughts, oh how we know this in Texas—the quiet days when nothing falls, and how heavy it all feels.

But it’s always there, shaping the landscape.

Teaching us how to grow in unfamiliar climates.

I keep coming back to the question: how do we move through such change — through uprooting, loss, and the slow, tectonic shifts of becoming?

This past week in Texas, the grief has been so heavy — not just in the air but in the ground itself. It has not only affected the lives of Texans but brushed itself around the world. The floods came without mercy, reminding us again of how fragile our place is as we walk this earth, how easily the foundations we stand on can be swept away.

And still, even as nature unmoored—or rather uprooted—me with Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina, it was nature that helped me find my footing again. Walks down to a once wild river in Texas, sitting quietly along the waters most mornings, listening, feeling the gentle breeze stirred by ducks heading to their feeding grounds. The resilience of wildflowers, the Bluebonnets pushing through the rocks and shells — these moments stitched something back together in me.

It felt like remembering.

An invitation back into relationship.

Into the love that I hve always held for this Erth.

But we can’t ignore that the relationship is strained. We’ve forgotten how to live in reciprocity. We’ve built our lives on control, extraction, speed. We leave the house, get into a car, work all day in a building, back into a car and into the house. Maybe a cloud was noticed on the way, or a bird caught the eye.

We’re not living in tune with nature, we’ve distanced her and thus ourselves — and now the Earth is speaking back, loudly. Are we listening beyond the rhetoric, the false narratives? Are we being quiet in ourselves, so we can hear the natural world in her shifting?

Living in denial of climate change, of disconnection, of systemic imbalance, only deepens the damage. It’s not just the environment that's out of balance — our own bodies, communities, and cultures are mirroring the same fragmentation.

We need a new way.

A slower way.

One rooted in reverence and response, not reaction.

A way of living that doesn't wait for catastrophe to come before we wake up to what matters.

In seasons of becoming, it is grief that often prepares the soil. In our grief, we find clarity. We shed illusions. We see what was never sustainable. And from that place, if we’re willing, we can begin again — more rooted, more whole, more aligned with the truth of the land we live on and the lives we are meant to live.

I believe it takes courage in this, to navigate our own inner turmoil, so we can meet this moment, responsive and grounded.

May we remember that healing is not separate from the Earth beneath us.

May we return to the rhythm of the seasons.

May we lean into the language of rivers and wind.

May we build lives that honor the grief and from that scacred ground, grow something whole.

Beneath all of this, I want to offer my heartfelt love to those who lost their lives in the floods this weekend — to their families and friends, to the first responders, and to all who have shown up each day in care and service. To those holding space, in whatever way they know how, with presence, with kindness, with action — your quiet offerings matter. You bring energy that meets the world with compassion. May we meet each other with tenderness and become part of the healing.

Grounded in gratitude,

Christina