Autumn and the roots system
9th of October 2026
Autumn to Root down, to build a foundation
Autumn is here with its wind swirls and rainy sentiments. Annual plants are beginning to let go of their vitality, biennial and perennial ones are bringing all of their energy to the roots system.
“I’m done”, I wrote in my diary.
I’m truly done.
Done overriding my body to the point of breakage, done saying “yes” when all of me is clearly screaming “No”, done making everyone comfortable as an unnecessary and engrained habit, done wanting to change without truly committing to practice the steps that welcome the transformation I so desperately wanted.
Done.
Last night, at 11 pm I was stuck in bed, the left part of my lower back was so inflamed it felt like something was perpetually stabbing my back no matter the position I was trying to find. A pain that was incapacitating me on all levels. This pain blocks me in ways no other pain ever did. It’s the support structure of my back, crumbling and then rebuilding itself in a cycle that sparks from feeling unworthy, unsupported, that I don't have my back.
6 years. I experienced this for 6 years. On and Off. 2023 and 2024 were the years my sciatica pain was hanging out with me the longest. We started this massive home building project in 2024. Imagine the mental, physical and financial stress.
The past 2 years I learned that my body comes first, it’s the first most important aspect of my life and if I’m not caring for my boundaries, if I abandon myself for the sake of approval and other people’s comfort, my body will break. It has done that for so many years.
Last year, I began strength training. Not only physically but the physical is the reflection of the internal. That’s what I truly believe.
Strengthening my body, my muscles, has been a steady, at times boring but very successful way to increase my vitality, energy, life force.
But sciatica pain still showed up, not as often as before, but when it did flare up, it’d be quite potent.
Why? Well, the main reason is my ingrained habits of overriding and de-valuing myself. Strength needs to be trained, it’s the courage to act on the “yeses” and “nos” I daily feel and practise trust. Trust in the wisdom of my body, trust in my intuitive feelings, trust in the natural world and its cycles.
So there I was, laying in bed, in so much pain, that I made a decision: this is going to be the last year I’m going to feel this pain and I’m going to resolve once and for all this cycle of getting triggered, overriding and de-valuing myself. Because yes, I became quite sharp at detecting what causes this pain.
Hence, this Autumn and Winter are times of re-building a strong foundation within, strengthening the roots system of my life.
If you build any structure, you first must get to know your ground. What kind of ground are you working with? Is it sandy, marshland, or stoney? Knowing your ground is so important to plan and find the right materials and practices to build a beautiful building on top of strong foundations.
When it comes to re-building your foundation, you must get to know what ground you are dealing with, what history you have, your traumas, your triggers, the current nervous system capacity you have.
It’s about being curious: What triggers me? Where am I exploiting myself or letting others exploit me because I don’t feel like deserving a better treatment/life? Where am I overriding and blowing circuits? What makes me collapse?
What gives me joy? What is easy for me to do? What gives me pleasure?
All of these questions were so important for me to get to know what type of ground I’m dealing with.
It’s hard to not judge and shame ourselves when the answers to these questions begin showing up. And it’s very important that we don’t judge and shame the ground we’re dealing with.
Nature includes all sorts of grounds. None is better than the other. What matters is that we get to know where we are, what we stand on. Only then things can take root and blossom.
It can take years to fully feel, deeply know without judgment, your terrain. It took me more than 30 years.
So here I am, fully aware of my ground. Now is the time to build the proper foundations of the identity I want to embody.
Foundations are intentions paired with actions, the “unseen” work, the repetitive practices, thoughts and behaviours that lead to the embodiment of the self and the house we want to inhabit.
Many of my actions, repetitive practices and behaviours haven’t been in service of what I want to embody. And it’s all part of the process, to stray away from the road, to remove the bricks you’ve created because the foundations weren't solid enough.
The past years I’ve been slowly and imperfectly moving away from the edge of compounding unsustainable behaviors that brought me to burnout, feeling lost and depleted and in pain.
My foundations are tailored to a ground I now deeply know, the practices and thoughts and actions I’m choosing are considering what has been and moving towards what works better.
And so this Autumn is all about focusing on the root system, expanding it, strengthening with the physical practices and the courage to express and share my Yes and No, thus supporting the embodied and sovereign woman I’m constantly becoming.