The Root That Held Too Tight

I was at work when I saw their truck parked next to my yard through my Ring camera app. My heart sank a little.

I knew it was time to fully say goodbye, though if I’m honest, some part of me had already done so about a year before. Even so, I couldn’t let go. I kept denying it was time.

They started working, and I watched, piece by piece, as my beloved tree - our only tree - slowly disappeared.

Twelve years ago, my husband and I started looking to purchase our first home. After visiting a few properties, our realtor took us to a calm little neighborhood to see a home sitting on a corner lot, tucked between two cul-de-sacs.

As soon as we approached it, the first thing I saw was that tree. Just a regular tree, the only one in the backyard. A simple wooden swing hung from one of its tall branches, and an overwhelming feeling of belonging came over me before we’d even stepped inside.

That tree, with its swing, made me feel like home before the house did.

That corner of the yard became my favorite place to be. Even though no adult could really fit on that swing, my first puppy claimed it as his own - grabbing the tail of the rope and pulling it in every direction, making it dance back and forth, left and right. It delighted him, and watching him always brought a smile to my face.

Over the years, as we added two more pups to our family and lying in that yard under its shade became our favorite place to be. The pups would play while my husband and I read, or talked for hours in its shadow.

That tree became the background to so many pictures of the sky I took over the years, and home to more birds than I could count.

Then, its leaves started thinning out a little more each year, until a neighbor finally said the thing I didn’t want to hear: “Honey, that tree is dead.” I refused to believe it. After all, there were still a few leaves here and there.

After surviving its last harsh winter, I couldn’t deny it any longer. It started falling apart - a branch here, a branch there, without warning. We feared a large one would eventually come down on the fence, or worse, on one of our dogs.

So when the tree removal truck finally arrived, I knew it was time. Knowing didn’t make it any easier to watch. It wasn’t really about the tree itself (or maybe it was, a little), but mostly it was everything the tree had helped us build. The joy. The memories.

I’m glad we chose not to have the stump ground down. An arborist had once mentioned to us that a wrapped root could slowly kill a tree from the inside, and I found myself curious whether that was what happened there, how old the tree really was, and why it had declined so quickly. I took a close up photo of the rings and did some research of my own.

What I learned surprised me: based on the pattern and what I described about its life in our yard, a root had indeed wrapped around itself instead of growing outward, tightening with every season until it slowly suffocated the very tree it was meant to hold up. From the outside, it still looked like it was holding on. Underneath, it had been strangling itself for years, trying, fighting to hang on for as long as it possibly could.

It made me tear up. That tree meant something more to me.

Later, it made me think about how similar that was to us and I sat with it for a long time.

Because I did the same thing. I held onto a version of my life that had stopped feeding me convinced that letting go meant falling apart, when really, the holding on was what had been slowly cutting off my air. I called it loyalty. I called it not giving up. It took me years to see it was just a root wrapped the wrong way.

The tree hung on as long as it could. And so did I.

I still miss the swing. I still miss the shade, the paws chasing it across the grass. Some things you release because you understand the lesson. That doesn’t mean you don’t grieve what’s gone. 🌻

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✨ I'll ask you the same thing I asked myself, standing in front of those rings: what have you been holding onto a little too tight?

✨ If this stirred something, What the Trees Know About Letting Go is another one about roots, release, and what nature already understands - you might like it too.