Back To My Roots
From hair colour to values, my 40’s are all about returning to my roots.
It’s funny how your teens and twenties and sometimes into your thirties are constantly about finding ways to improve yourself with a new hair colour, tinted contacts, tanning, even surgical enhancements to your face and other body parts.
I’m not necessarily saying this is a bad thing. I’m just observing it. Lord knows I probably hold the record for the amount of times I’ve coloured my hair or had it streaked, highlighted, or frosted. And I’ve spent more than my fair share of time in the sun and in sun beds. I guess the question to ask ourselves is… Why?
Over the past few years I’ve noticed a subtle progression back to my roots almost subconsciously. Physically speaking, it has shown up in returning to my natural hair colour, finding a personal clothing style that suits me and my body and leaves me feeling good in my own skin, and making the focus of ‘my look’ be a fit, healthy, naturally created body. Is it perfect? Heck, no. But I’m proud of it.
Returning to my roots has also meant a surge of importance around community and values. I grew up in a small Christian community in the Okanagan. Weekends revolved around church, family gatherings and social or recreational activities with ‘church friends’. I had so many non-related ‘Aunties’ and ‘Uncles’, it was crazy, but good-crazy. I always felt loved, connected, and well taken care of. Someone was always watching out for me.
Memories of my teenage years are filled with Saturday night volleyball or floor-hockey action in our school gym, skating or ice hockey during the winter months on an outside ice rink that my brothers, cousins, and close friends would painstakingly flood each year with a huge fire hose when it got cold enough. We’d have International (multi-cultural) Suppers, talent shows, band or choir concerts, amateur theatre and movie nights. It was a tight-knit community that I’m proud to say I was a part of. And it gave me a super-solid sense of self, and the foundation to become the multi-dimensional, fully functional, grounded adult that I am today (okay, most of the time!).
Values… now there’s a word for you, values. I grew up with super strict parents, and by some people’s standards, with a set of ‘rules’ that bordered on ridiculous. I wasn’t allowed to wear jewelry or make-up, eat pork, smoke or drink alcohol, work on days when church and family were top-priority. As I got older and was able to think for myself, I had the opportunity to decide which of these values worked for me and which didn’t. What I am deeply grateful for is that I was taught what a value was and the importance of having them in our lives. They are the foundation of a strong conscience. As I reflect on all of the values instilled in me since my childhood, I appreciate that they have made me who I am today and I’m thankful for all of them ~ even the ones that I didn’t necessarily agree with.
I remember this day!
Speaking of roots, let’s dig a little deeper. I’m adopted. I was born in the Vernon Jubilee Hospital on September 5th, 1969. It’s taken me a long time, but I’m now ready to research my birth heritage, an important part of ‘returning to my roots.’ I believe that I come from First Nations decent – how much I’m not sure. My birth name was DUTEAU. I know that. And I’m ready to commence the journey to find out whatever else I can. Is it a burning desire that I can’t live without solving? No, not really. But if it helps me to put more pieces together about who I am, why I am who I am, what my greatest purpose is for being here, and where I originated from – than all the more power to me!
Back to my roots – physically, with a strong sense of community and values, and remembering my heritage – it’s an exciting place to be, and an exciting place to return to.
