Uprooting with Intention.

by Doyin

We are grieving. We are grieving the loss of normal. We are grieving the loss of physical connection + touch. We are grieving the loss of routine. We are grieving the loss of gathering for worship, meals, conversations. We are collectively grieving.

David Kessler, the world’s most prominent expert on grief, describes it like this: “We are all dealing with the collective loss of the world we knew…the world we knew is now gone forever…this is a collective loss of the world we all lived in before the pandemic.” Weeks after I finally sat down to process this and gave myself permission to feel the grief, I recognized I was experiencing personal grief in addition to this collective grief. I acknowledged that I was grieving parts of myself.

I made a decision months ago, to be more intentional about identifying parts of myself that are not in alignment with who I want to be; that I was going to be more deliberate with my journey to freedom. The freedom you are looking for requires you to journey to the root. I wrote this during a journal entry and subsequently titled this chapter of my life uprooting with intention.

I acknowledged that I was grieving parts of myself.

Uprooting with intention is my definition for unlearning.

Unlearning lies, destructive thought patterns and dysfunctional ways of being. I have come to realize my need to consciously and intentionally unlearn.

The last couple of years have required continuous journeying to the root(s); a continuous process of accepting and allowing. Accepting all parts of myself, including the parts that terrified me and that I hid, and allowing uprooting to be a choice.

Uprooting is messy, it requires facing suppressed memories, hard truths, and understanding the ugliness that you would rather hide. It is hard, continuous work, made possible when we are able to lean on our communities and offer ourselves compassion. This process of accepting and allowing came with a range of emotions — one of which is grief. Grief that I knew was present but hadn’t really given myself permission to feel.

This time of social distancing forced me into a stillness, a gentle stillness. It came with quieting the noise that came with constant busyness. And here in the stillness and quieting was permission to feel the grief. I’ve realized that there is no unlearning without grief, because unlearning requires us to get up and leave something behind — it could be a lie, bad habit, a destructive thought pattern, behavior, a dysfunctional way of being and doing things. Whatever is left behind is a loss and all losses must be grieved. I was grieving parts of myself I’ve lost as a result of unlearning.

Unlearning is uncomfortable. Actively choosing to leave behind the familiar requires you to lean into the discomfort. A lot of the things that need to be unlearned are things that once served as protection or some other key purpose at some point. Unlearning is an act of resilience. Despite how long something has felt comfortable for, deciding today that it is no longer serving you /needed is an act of resilience. 

Unlearning is an act of resilience.

I’m still discovering the things that I want out of this life but one thing I know I want for sure is freedom. On the other side of unlearning is freedom, it is waiting for us. Freeing ourselves is the intention of uprooting. Journeying through the discomfort, getting to the root, feeling the grief, it is all worth the freedom. We owe it to ourselves and our future generations to get free.

We owe it to ourselves and our future generations to get free.

So here is my reminder to you: the freedom you are looking for requires you to journey to the root. If you haven’t already started, you can start that journey today, right now, with just a decision.