Surviving Is Not the Same as Thriving

Please indulge me in this metaphor, as it is so on-point, that I had to share. There is an Eden Climber rose in my garden that has been, for most of its life, simply getting by.

I planted it years ago in a spot that seemed reasonable at the time — partial shade, protected from the intensity of Southern California summers. It took root. It leafed out. Every year it put on green, and every year I walked past it and thought, that's doing fine.

Except it wasn't blooming.

For nearly fifteen years, that rose survived in the shade. It was alive, technically. It held its ground. But it never opened. Never offered a single flower. The conditions it had been given were sufficient for survival, and survival was all it managed. It needed full sun.

This year, I finally decided to move it.

What I didn't anticipate was the excavation that decision required. When I started digging, I found its roots had spread wide and deep in every direction, anchoring themselves to that shady patch of earth as if survival depended on it. Because, in a way, it had. The main root was massive — thick, tangled, stubborn. I had to get a saw. I had to cut through it's primary root to move it.

That was not a small thing. Every time I moved the saw through the root, I wondered: Is this going to kill it? Is it better to leave something alive in the wrong place than to risk transplanting it somewhere new?

I moved it anyway.

There are marriages like that rose.

Not dramatic ones. Not marriages defined by obvious harm or explosive conflict. The harder ones to name — the ones where everything looks fine from the outside. Where you are fed, sheltered, functional. Where you go through the motions of a life that, examined at a surface level, would appear acceptable.

But you are not thriving.

You haven't thrived in years, possibly longer than you can honestly account for. You've been putting out leaves — managing the household, raising the children, maintaining the schedule — but the part of you that was supposed to grow, to contribute something fully alive to the world and to yourself? That part has gone quiet.

Surviving is not the same as thriving. And remaining in a situation because it is survivable is not the same as remaining because it is good.

The decision to end a marriage feels exactly like putting a saw through a root system. Because it is. The longer the marriage, the more deeply it is woven into the structure of your life: your children's world, your finances, your routines, your identity. You don't simply leave. You excavate. And the question that follows you through the whole process is the same one that followed me in my garden.

What if this makes things worse?

What if I'm less stable on the other side? What if I've dismantled something that was, at minimum, functional — and find myself with nothing to show for it? What if the children don't recover? What if I have been in this so long that I no longer know what it looks like to do more than get by?

These are honest fears. They deserve to be examined seriously, not dismissed.

When the conditions around you can no longer offer the nourishment that growth requires, you do not stop needing it. You simply stop reaching for it. Eventually, you stop remembering that you were supposed to.

My Eden climber is in full sun now. The transition was not seamless — transplant shock is real. But, this season, that rose is filling out, its canes are reaching. The growth is substantial and healthy.

And for the first time in fifteen years, it's blooming as it was always meant to.

I am not in the business of telling anyone to leave their marriage. That decision belongs entirely to the people inside it, and it deserves to be made carefully, deliberately, and with clear eyes.

But I am in the business of helping people be honest with themselves about what surviving actually looks like — and whether they have been quietly confusing it, for a very long time, with living.

Sometimes the most important question you can sit with is simply this: are the conditions you are in actually capable of supporting the life you are supposed to be growing?

My rose had no way of knowing the sun it was missing. You do.