Roots

Roots can have quite a number of meanings and interpretations, but to me, they all have positive connotations. Deep roots go far into the ground, producing increased stability and reaching far for sustenance and greater support. Family roots have the same function.

Roots are your grandparents and great grandparents and all your deep and broad extended family; but your roots also include your faith and all the values you were taught growing up and still accept as valid once you have become adult. They include, as well, those tenets of personal belief that you have embraced, on your own, as being important and vital.

Sometimes your roots can include physical items also---such as a family Bible or other book, or an heirloom piece of jewelry or art. Roots could also possible encompass property/land (as Tara was for Scarlet in Gone With the Wind), perhaps a specific homestead, the place you were raised, your grandparents home, or even an entire small town where much of your family lived and proliferated, maybe even named for or by your family.

But whatever "roots" mean to a specific individual, they are vital! As with a tree or flower, through roots come your individual characteristics and your life sustaining force: essential nutrition and strength and stability. We all need to cherish our roots.