Our roots are where your home is at. Whether that be 5 miles of 5,000 miles away, sometimes your roots that are planted so deeply into the ground, they will always stay apart of you wherever you may go.

For myself, the small-town, close-knit, and whole "everyone knows everyone" feeling will never grow away from me, no matter where I travel next. Moving 1300 miles away for college was like growing in a different garden. Flowers of all different types started to bloom around me. I encountered people like sunflowers, so bright that they would light up my day like the Florida sun. I found myself watching different flowers bloom, that I had never discovered before as if I was apart of an unfamiliar and undiscovered land. Shy, unknowing, and perhaps a bit cautious, I eventually started to grow petals in ways and with experiences that growing in a new place offered me.

Eventually, these roots may leave from where they were previously grown. Perhaps it'll be time for this growth to take place in a new city, state or country. At times, it may feel like starting over. Planting yourself all over again, like a perennial in the seasonal rotation, can ultimately cultivate a new perceptive.

A new outlook on life isn't a negative thing. I used to think of "starting all over" as an endless, tiring cycle. Familiarity, establishment and "having it somewhat together" is a hope in most 20-year-olds' lives. Making new friends, discovering new habits, and navigating my world all over again, is a change that can seem exhausting at times.

However, instead of this thinking. I try to think of blooming where I am planted as my mindset instead. Keep the old growth, in the back of your mind. Think about how much you've bloomed, how far you come, and keep in your perceptive where your roots have come from. Don't distance yourself, from the beautiful sunflowers in life that you have encountered. Always have the mindset that you have to experience some thorns, and let the dead leaves drop along the way to get to what is next in life.

Bloom where you're planted and water yourself along the way. Growth is continual and a reflection of what has got you to where you need to be and a continuation of what is next.