We Were Never Meant To Stand Alone

What the redwoods taught my family about belonging, loss, and the roots that hold us.

Before I knew anything about resilience, I knew the redwoods.

Every summer, my family drove north to Richardson Grove, to a little cabin above the Eel River. Slow hot days at the water. My mother’s meals off one small stovetop. My dad picking wild blackberries, then playing ukulele by the fire while we all sang beneath trees that had stood for a thousand years.

My mother called it her outdoor cathedral. I understood what she meant… there are places that quiet something in you, that remind you how small and held you are.

Years later, we returned to that cathedral for a different reason: to bury my mother’s ashes, and my brother’s, at the base of two redwoods.

I always thought I loved those trees for what happened beneath their branches. Lately I think the real lesson was happening beneath our feet.

The secret is underground. Redwoods are among the tallest trees on Earth, yet their roots are shallow… they survive by spreading outward, tangling with the roots of the trees around them. A grove holds itself up together.

We look at a redwood and admire the individual. We rarely see the root system.

We do the same with people. She’s so strong. I don’t know how she does it. We admire the tree and miss the friend who kept calling, the hand that stayed on the hospital bed, the person who showed up with dinner.

Maybe resilience was never a solo act. Maybe the strongest people are standing because their roots are tangled with someone else’s, holding, unseen.

Find your grove. I used to think strength meant doing it alone. I don’t believe that anymore. Some seasons we’re the tree offering shelter. Other seasons, the wind is too hard, and we need someone else’s roots to hold ours. Both are strength.

Some of the people who formed my earliest roots aren’t here anymore. But what they gave me still is… my mother’s love, my father’s music, my brother, those summers. Woven in. Still tangled with mine.

The redwoods really are a cathedral. But the holiest part was never just what towered above. It was what was happening underneath, all along.