I was in Savannah last week, and the live oak trees were quietly stealing the show.
They are something else—their trunks thick with time, their branches sprawling in every direction like they have all the permission in the world to grow however they want to. This picture does not come close to doing it justice.
And maybe they do.
Some bend so low they nearly touch the ground before curling upward again. Others twist and wind around themselves or stretch out wide like they’re reaching for something just beyond. They don’t follow the “rules” of what growth is supposed to look like.
They just grow how they need to.
And I can’t stop thinking about it.
Because lately, I’ve been feeling how often we try to force ourselves to grow in a straight line. To make sense. To be easy to understand. To be efficient.
But growth—real, soul-level, Wild Awake kind of growth—is rarely linear.
It’s messy and intuitive. It winds and curls and sometimes drops to the ground before rising again.
And that’s okay.
In fact, maybe that’s exactly the point.
What we don’t see when we look at these majestic trees is their root system. But we feel it. The way they hold presence. The way they don’t need to explain themselves. The way they know where they belong.
The foundation is deep. Quiet. Steady.
I want that kind of rootedness.
And I want to keep giving myself permission to grow in the ways I need to. Not the ways that look neat or polished or predictable. The ways that feel real.
So, here’s what I’m sitting with today, as I relive walking under those beautiful, twisting giants:
What if you stopped trying to grow the “right” way?
What would it look like to grow the way you need to?
Rooted. Wild. Awake.
