Rooting & Rising: A Living-Systems Workbook for Moving Through Change
For the Chapters That Reshape Us
There are seasons in life when the ground quietly shifts beneath us—sometimes suddenly, sometimes so slowly we only notice in hindsight. A diagnosis. A loss. A burnout. A crossroad. A beginning we didn’t choose. A beginning we did choose but don’t yet know how to embody.
I’m in one of those seasons now. Surgery ahead. Uncertainty humming underneath everything. My body asking—loudly, insistently this time—to be met differently.
These last months have felt like standing in the understory of my own life, listening for the next right rhythm. Not the rhythm I used to keep. Not the rhythm culture rewards. But the rhythm my biology is asking for.
In that listening, Rooting & Rising began to take shape. Not as a product, a plan, or a polished idea… but as a tool I desperately needed—a companion for the in-between. I wanted something slower than a protocol and shaped not by productivity, but by ecology. I sought a place to land when I felt unmoored, a place to track what was real, and a place to move at a pace my body could actually sustain.
The Backstory: A Threshold Season
For years, my body has been carrying a constellation of complex symptoms—hormonal shifts, neurological echoes, cyclical pain, and the kind of exhaustion you can’t out-think or outrun. If you’ve read The Resilient Living Systems Playbook, you know pieces of this story. My nervous system has weathered its own wildfires and floods, reorganizing again and again in response to stress and injury. But this year, my system finally said: Enough. A deeper intervention is needed.
I’m heading into major pelvic surgery—one of those true threshold moments you can’t think your way past, only walk through. And as I begun preparation, I noticed how quickly my old strategies resurfaced: the over-planning, the quiet bracing, the “I’ll be fine,” the pressure to perform resilience rather than cultivate it. I didn’t want to manage this season. I wanted to meet it.
So I returned to the tools I’ve built for clients over the years—pacing plans, boundary scripts, nourishment rhythms, symptom maps, nervous-system supports—and reworked them for this exact moment in my own life. I wasn’t trying to make a workbook. I was trying to make a place to rest inside the unknown. My intention was to design a place where healing didn’t depend on force, a place where my rhythms mattered, and a place where nothing had to be perfect. Everything could be honest.
Slowly, these pages grew into something larger than my own season—something I realized might support anyone moving through a threshold of their own.
What Rooting & Rising Is
Rooting & Rising is a living-systems workbook for moving through major life changes—medical, emotional, relational, existential. It’s designed to help you strengthen your roots, cross whatever threshold lies ahead, rebuild your capacity, and return to life with steadiness and clarity.
It’s a companion for the chapters when your biology, identity, and environment are reorganizing all at once. Inside the workbook, you’ll find a full arc of healing shaped by ecological cycles:
1. Preparation (8 weeks)
Strengthen your foundations. Map your internal landscape. Create conditions for what’s ahead.
2. Threshold (1 week)
Move through uncertainty with tenderness. Name what’s real. Anchor to what matters.
3. Recovery (12 weeks)
Rebuild capacity through nourishment, pacing, rhythm, and rest. Track symptoms gently. Reconnect with your ecosystem of support. Heal at the speed of biology—not expectation.
4. Integration + Renewal
Make meaning of what shifted. Carry forward what you want to keep. Re-enter life with new patterns, clarity, and self-trust.
You’ll also find:
pacing maps
energy + symptom tracking
nourishment + sleep rhythms
grief and fear support
movement adaptations
belonging cues
communication tools
seasonal invitations
integration rituals
space to write, grieve, imagine, and reconnect
This is not a productivity planner. It’s a living structure—adaptive, compassionate, spacious. A workbook designed to be a steadying companion for a nonlinear path.
Why Living Systems?
Because biology—and ecology—offer wiser models for healing than hustle culture ever could.
Forests don’t regenerate by pushing harder. Roots don’t strengthen through force; they strengthen through nourishment and intelligent boundaries. All living systems adapt, reorganize, rest, and rise again—in season. So do we.
Rooting & Rising can help you build your healing rhythm the way nature does:
through cycles, not linearity
through pacing, not pressure
through nourishment, not depletion
through belonging, not isolation
through adaptive capacity, not rigid plans
It’s healing modeled on ecosystems—relational, slow, and honest.
This workbook is for anyone:
preparing for or recovering from surgery
healing from chronic illness, pain, or burnout
navigating grief, loss, or emotional upheaval
moving through identity shifts
beginning or ending relationships
changing careers or environments
sensing a major life transition approaching
rebuilding after stress collapse
wanting a kinder, more biologically truthful way to heal
If you are in a threshold season—entering, crossing, or emerging—this workbook was made for you.
Why I’m Sharing This Now
I didn’t set out to make something for the world. I set out to make something that could hold me through this season. But living systems remind us that resilience is relational. What supports one node often supports the whole network. What steadies one person often ripples outward.
If these pages can offer anyone else a softer landing, a gentler rhythm, or a more compassionate way to meet their transition, then sharing them feels right.
This is a quiet release. No big launch. No campaign. Just a small offering from the middle of my own becoming.
Print Edition Is Available
Rooting & Rising was designed as a physical object—a tactile, grounding companion you can hold, write in, return to again and again.
For the Season You’re In
Wherever you are—rooting, rising, pausing, shedding, listening, beginning again—may this workbook meet you with steadiness, spaciousness, and care.
