Roots and wings, revisited

The poster made it sound easy

May 26, 2026

There’s a fine line between writing about your own experiences with other people and the impact it has on you, and telling other people’s stories. There’s also a direct correlation between writing honestly about challenging personal dynamics in a public space and making those dynamics worse. I’ve learned over the years that even when a story is mine to tell and I “can” tell it, that doesn’t mean that I “should.”

It may surprise you to learn there is no epic content calendar for this little Substack (especially those who worked with me in past roles where I was MILITANT about calendaring), but rather there are ideas that have been percolating and I write what I think is appropriate for the moment, relevant to others, and what I can bring some energy to type.

All of which is to say: I can’t write about my family right now, but I can share the tension I feel in this moment, and maybe that’s actually more universal?

In my childhood home, there was a framed print of some birds, plants, and the words: “Wings to fly and roots to come home to.” This absolutely set the tone in our family and, minus my mother not being a huge fan of sleep away camp or boarding school, I think my brothers and I all felt we were encouraged to go on adventures and knew we were always welcome back home.

That dynamic is so different in a stepfamily, especially since I didn’t get to plant from seed and instead arrived in time for some departures from the nest. Our family’s roots formed under different conditions, in a transplanted pot, if you will. (I will note that I am not a plant person and this metaphor is already pushing me past my comfort zone, but I’m committed to it now.)

I’ve done my best to tend roots in different soil, at different growth stages — which is not criticism, it’s just reality. It’s a structural gap that can’t be recreated. And because of when I arrived, I’ve been more visible in encouraging flying, which may have given my kids the impression that I lack range. I’m the pusher: schools, programs, advice, follow-ups on job applications that turn out to have never been submitted. Just like Tina Fey’s character in “Mean Girls” — and obviously, like that character, not as a drug dealer.

With all three kids in different parts of their 20s, and different parts of the country, we’re now navigating very different dynamics too. Youngest graduated from college last week and is seeking something to do with a little less energy and urgency than I’d like to see. Right now, she absolutely thinks all I care about is her flying away. But the truth is I just want her to have a place to go, a little orientation, a migration destination, if you will. Once she knows where she’s going, I’d like to make sure she feels her roots more strongly.

Oldest is in the middle of a big life transition with changes on many fronts ahead and getting updates over text and from hundreds of miles away is heartbreaking. She was pushed to fly a little farther than she might have been ready when she was younger and now all we really want is to have her home, feeling restored in those roots.

One of the quiet sadnesses I carry is that my kids have no frame of reference for what strong roots feel like. Their original family — their natural baseline — was damaged before I arrived, or perhaps was never quite seeded properly in the first place. They can’t measure what we have against a healthy version of what came before; neither the looseness they feel nor the one I feel is imagined. We’re all just doing our best with a transplanted pot and hoping the roots take.

Last month at a memorial in my hometown, I found myself standing in a room full of people who had known and loved me and my family for decades. I realized I was looking at my own roots — the visible, deep kind — and felt simultaneously lucky and bereft on behalf of my kids, who have never had a room like that to stand in. That’s not something I can change at this point. It’s something I tend around.

Fixer that I am, accepting how little I can control at this point is a tough pill to swallow. The bonds: can they still deepen once everyone’s left the nest, or is that a lost cause? How do you tell one kid to come home while telling another it’s time to go? And the one that keeps me up at night: how do you keep things moving when you’re the only one pushing, when getting your husband to push the tiniest bit requires hours1 of conversation you don’t always have energy for?

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The poster made everything sound easy: wings and roots, birds and plants, very clean. What “home” means in a stepfamily — especially with adult children, especially when you’re the one who arrived late and has been playing catch-up ever since — is not clean. It’s complicated and ongoing and occasionally exhausting and hopefully worth it, even when I’m not sure the people I’m doing it for know that’s what’s happening.

I can’t control when they come home or when they leave. I was never going to control where their wings took them. But the roots we’ve planted together are real, and they’re the only ones my kids have. That has to be enough; not because it’s a satisfying conclusion but because there is no alternative for any of us.

Next month all three of them are coming home for Father’s Day. For the first time in a couple of years, it’ll just be the five of us. We offered the invitation with no guilting, no feet dragging, no pushback and everyone genuinely wants to be there.

The roots held.