A story of becoming, belonging, and the lessons whispered by nature.

Prologue — The Little Girl in the Trees

It began when I was a little girl.

In my backyard stood a circle of tall pine trees. Beneath their branches, I created a world of my own.

I would sweep the pine needles from the ground, making little rooms beneath the trees. One corner became a cozy place to sit and read. Another became a place to lie on the earth and color.

It was my first home within nature.

I didn’t know it then, but the trees were already teaching me something about creating a space where I could simply be.

As I grew older, I entered the worlds we are all born into. Homes, institutions, religions, beliefs, and societal expectations began painting a picture of who I was supposed to be.

And for a long time, I believed that picture.

Until one day, I began to question it.

Who am I?

Who am I not?

Who was I before the world told me who to become?

I began removing the layers. Leaving behind old beliefs, expectations, relationships, and identities that no longer felt like mine.

And somewhere along the way, I entered the Darkness.

At first, darkness seemed like something to escape. But eventually, it became my friend.

The darkness was a womb.

It gave me rest. It gave me space to heal. It allowed me to release the things I had been carrying for so long.

And in that stillness, I began to discover an entirely different kind of education.

One that didn’t come from books, institutions, or the opinions of others.

It came from nature.

And my teachers were trees.

Tree One — The Great Tree of Life (a dream where god spoke to me)

*An image of the tree I saw in my dream. It was the biggest that ever existed!*

The lesson of the roots and the water.

The first tree came to me in a dream.

It was the largest tree I had ever seen.

Magnificent. Ancient. Almost impossible to comprehend.

Its roots rose from the earth like enormous tree trunks lying across the ground. They were so large that I could walk among them.

As I made my way around the tree, I discovered a little stream flowing over its roots.

The water sparkled as it cascaded across their beautiful shapes.

I had never thought of roots as beautiful before.

But there they were, magnificent in their own right.

As I followed the water, the stream grew deeper. I looked toward my left, and suddenly I found myself surrounded by an enormous waterfall.

Water rushed all around me.

And then God asked me a question.

“How many drops of water are in this river?”

I looked around at the endless movement of water.

How could I possibly count them?

How big was a single drop, anyway?

And in an instant, the answer came.

Every drop of water represented an experience in my life.

Every joy.

Every heartbreak.

Every disappointment.

Every moment I wished had never happened.

All of it was water.

And suddenly, I felt a cooling sensation moving down my throat, as though I had been wandering through a desert and was finally receiving the water I needed to live.

I understood.

The experiences I had called hardships were not simply things that had happened to me.

They had nourished me.

They had watered my roots.

They had helped me grow.

And without them, my tree could never have become what it was becoming.

The lesson: Nothing I had lived through was wasted. Even the hardest experiences could become nourishment for my growth.

Tree Two — The Entangled Trees

The lesson of losing yourself in another.

After that dream, I began noticing trees differently.

One day, while walking along a trail in my neighborhood, I came across something extraordinary.

At first, it looked like one enormous tree with branches growing in every direction.

But as I moved closer, I realized it was actually two trees.

Their bases were so intertwined that they appeared to have been planted directly on top of each other.

I studied them.

One looked strong and healthy.

The other looked weak, almost as though its life was being drained away.

And immediately, I recognized something familiar.

A relationship.

One person thriving while the other slowly disappears.

One person growing stronger while the other grows weaker.

I thought about how easily we can confuse being deeply connected with being completely entangled.

How we can become so intertwined with someone else’s life that we forget where our own begins.

I stood there looking at those trees, not yet realizing how important they would become to my story.

The lesson: Love and connection are not meant to cost us our own life force. Being intertwined is not always the same as being supported.

Tree Three — The Perfect Y

The lesson of equal partnership.

Years later, during another relationship, I was walking up a hill when I noticed a beautiful tree standing at the top.

The sun was shining.

The day was beautiful.

And there it stood, almost perfectly symmetrical.

Its trunk rose from one base before dividing into two equally strong trunks, forming the shape of a Y.

Both sides appeared healthy.

Both were growing upward.

Both seemed to carry the same strength.

I stopped to admire it.

Perhaps, I thought, this is what a healthy relationship looks like.

Two people united at their foundation.

Two people growing together.

Neither taking more than the other.

Neither disappearing.

For that season of my life, the tree represented what I believed partnership could become.

A shared foundation.

Equal strength.

A beautiful life growing together.

But that relationship eventually ended, too.

And I would come to understand that the trees had more to teach me.

The lesson: A healthy relationship requires mutual strength, but even two strong people may not be meant to grow in exactly the same direction forever.

Tree Four — The Heart-Shaped Tree

*Do you see how the top of the tree is shaped like a Heart?!*

The lesson of changing direction.

The next tree stood beside a stream.

Its trunk leaned so dramatically toward the water that it looked as though it might fall.

But something extraordinary had happened.

At one point along its trunk, there was what looked like an explosion.

A branch had broken away, leaving only a small trace of growth.

And from that very place, the trunk had changed direction.

Completely.

Instead of continuing toward the water, it turned diagonally upward in the opposite direction.

But that wasn’t what first caught my attention.

It was the leaves.

The entire canopy was shaped like a heart.

A beautiful, full heart.

And suddenly, I saw myself.

I had experienced a rupture in my life.

Something had broken.

My direction had changed.

What I once thought my future would look like was no longer where I was going.

But the tree had not stopped growing.

It had simply found another way.

And somehow, after all that bending and breaking, it had grown into the shape of a heart.

I began questioning the idea that two people must follow the same path, at the same pace, in the same direction, forever.

Perhaps love could be something different.

Perhaps changing direction wasn’t failure.

Perhaps the heart could remain whole even when the path changed.

The lesson: A broken branch does not mean a broken life. Sometimes the most beautiful growth comes after an unexpected change in direction.

Tree Five — The Friendship Trees Beneath the Stars

The lesson of connection without entanglement.

One evening, I was walking around a pond beneath the night sky.

And there they were.

Two trees.

They stood apart from each other, each with its own trunk, its own roots, its own foundation.

They were nearly identical in size.

And although their trunks were separate, their branches reached toward one another until they gently touched.

There was something light about them.

Something peaceful.

Neither tree was holding the other up.

Neither was taking from the other.

They were simply growing beside one another.

And then I looked toward the sky.

Directly above them was the Big Dipper.

It appeared to be pouring its celestial waters down upon the trees.

The stars sparkled like droplets.

The night sky glowed with a beautiful cosmic energy.

It was as though the universe itself was watering this friendship.

I wished I had taken a photograph.

The scene was so perfectly arranged that I wondered whether anyone would believe me.

But I knew what I had seen.

And I knew what it meant to me.

During that season, I had begun developing deep, healing friendships with women.

Friendships where we could hold space for one another.

Where we could share our stories.

Where we could heal together without losing ourselves.

These trees showed me a kind of love I hadn’t fully understood before.

A connection that didn’t require becoming one.

The lesson: We can be deeply connected while remaining beautifully ourselves. True friendship allows each person to have her own roots.

Tree Six — The younger Tree

The lesson of unexpected support.

During a major transition in my business and personal life, a younger woman named Jamie came into my world.

She helped me through a season of change.

And one day, I came across another unusual tree.

At first glance, it appeared to be two trees growing together.

But as I walked around it, I realized that one was much smaller.

The younger tree seemed to be supporting the larger one.

Holding it.

Helping it stand.

I immediately thought of Jamie.

My Jamie Tree.

There was something so tender about the image.

The smaller tree wasn’t necessarily the weaker one.

In fact, it appeared to be offering exactly the support the larger tree needed.

As I looked up at the branches, I noticed something else.

They resembled lungs.

The tree seemed almost human.

Its branches, our lungs.

Its trunk, our spine.

Its roots, the unseen systems that keep us alive.

I began to recognize how much of ourselves is reflected in nature.

And how support can come from the most unexpected places.

Sometimes the person who helps us breathe again isn’t the one we expected.

Sometimes wisdom comes from someone younger.

Sometimes strength looks like allowing ourselves to be held.

The lesson: Support does not always come from where we expect it. We are never too old, too strong, or too independent to receive help.

Tree Seven — The Tree That is set Free

The lesson of separation and liberation.

As the years passed, I continued walking the same trails.

I had seen trees representing relationships, friendships, change, and support.

But one day, I returned to the very first pair of intertwined trees.

The ones that had reminded me of a codependent relationship.

And something had changed.

Something extraordinary.

The tree that had once appeared weak and sickly had fallen away.

Only a tiny branch remained attached.

The strong tree was standing on its own.

I stared in disbelief.

All those years ago, I had looked at those trees and recognized the feeling of being drained in a relationship.

I had assumed I was the weak tree.

But now, standing before them again, I saw a different story.

The strong tree was still standing.

And perhaps that tree had been me all along.

The separation had finally happened.

I thought about the years of internal work it had taken to untangle myself from identities, attachments, relationships, and patterns that had felt rooted in me for lifetimes.

How difficult it had been to distinguish my life from someone else’s.

How much courage it had taken to separate.

And how freeing it felt to finally stand on my own.

The roots had done their work.

The tree had survived.

And it was free.

The lesson: Sometimes healing isn’t about becoming stronger. It’s about recognizing the strength that was there all along and releasing what was never yours to carry.

Epilogue — The Trees That Are in Me

I used to think trees were simply part of the landscape.

Something beautiful to walk past.

Something that provided shade.

Something that grew quietly in the background of our lives.

But now I see them differently.

I see relationships in their trunks.

Friendships in their branches.

Experiences in the water that feeds their roots.

Heartbreak in their broken limbs.

Resilience in the directions they choose to grow.

I see myself in them.

And perhaps that is what nature has been trying to show me all along.

We are not separate from this magnificent world.

We are expressions of it.

We grow.

We bend.

We break.

We rest.

We reach for the light.

And sometimes, we must release what is intertwined with us so we can discover the freedom of standing on our own.

My education through the trees is not finished.

I still walk.

I still notice.

And every so often, another tree catches my attention.

I stop.

I listen.

And another lesson arrives.

Because there are still so many trees I have yet to meet.

And so many parts of myself I have yet to discover.

The trees are in me. And I am still growing.

welcome to savage and rose