Grieving What Won’t Grow
Honoring the necessary losses along the liberation journey
🌬️ Before We Begin: Root in the Ritual of Release
Find a quiet moment. Settle your body into stillness. Let your hands rest—on your heart, your lap, the earth.
Breathe in — I am allowed to grieve what once served me.
Breathe out — I am allowed to outgrow what no longer does.
Breathe in — This grief is not weakness; it is wisdom.
Breathe out — I trust the compost as much as I trust the bloom.
Whisper to yourself:
“Just because it rooted… doesn’t mean it was meant to rise.”
Now, we begin.
The Sacred Grief of Liberation
We speak often of blooming, of rising, of stepping into power.
But less often of what we must lay to rest.
There are parts of us that cannot come with us.
Stories that once protected us.
Roles that once felt holy.
Movements we once gave everything to.
People we wanted to take with us, who chose not to go.
Liberation doesn’t only ask for your action. It asks for your release.
It asks for mourning. For funerals of old selves.
For the sacred discomfort of saying: “This cannot grow with me.”
What Isn’t Blooming Might Be Pointing You Toward the Soil
There’s something uniquely painful about trying to nurture what will not grow.
You pour energy into something
a job, a relationship, a community, a version of yourself
and it simply doesn’t thrive. Or worse: it depletes you.
In these moments, we often double down.
Try harder. Smile wider. Produce more.
Because in supremacy culture, if something fails…it’s your fault.
You didn’t try hard enough. You didn’t love hard enough.
You weren’t enough.
But that’s a lie of the empire.
Sometimes what won’t grow is telling the truth:
It was never yours to carry forward.
It has completed its cycle.
It served its season.
Let
it
go.
Nature Grieves and Grows — Simultaneously
In autumn, leaves die with beauty.
The tree does not clutch at them.
It lets go.
The forest floor is full of decay, not as failure, but as fertility.
Death is not the opposite of growth; it is part of the process.
And so it is with us.
We are not here to force blooming in sterile soil.
We are not here to cling to what was because we fear the void.
We are here to compost.
To mourn.
To return.
Because real liberation is cyclical, not constant spring, but season after season, honest and (w)holy.
This Week’s Root Reflection:
What have I been trying to grow that no longer wants to bloom?
Ask gently.
Don’t force the answer.
Let it come in the silence.
In the ache.
In the knowing you’ve been carrying for a while.
What needs a sacred goodbye?
So… what are you still watering, hoping it will bloom?
Maybe it’s a role you’ve outgrown.
Maybe it’s a relationship that only thrives when you shrink.
Maybe it’s a version of yourself that was rooted in survival, not liberation.
If something in you whispered “yes”…
Then the rest of this article is for you.
Let’s walk the rest of this together, in breath, in truth, in ritual.
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Because grieving is not weakness.
It’s the wisdom to know when to let go, and the courage to do it with love.