To be Radical is to be rooted. We ignore the cycle that is our roots.
Originally post on my Linkedin Newsletter, Growing Connections, April 18, 2025
If you’ve been following along with Growing Connections, you maybe, by now, noticed a few things:
The title of the newsletter itself is about growing… connections. 🌳
The newsletter's image is “Yggdrasil,The Mundane Tree” a Germanic/Nordic “tree of life”. An image suggesting that even ancient whites believed time is not linear, but circular 😮.
We are well prepared for what is happening before us. This era—this CRISIS—is not a surprise. It’s part of a cycle. It was predicted, and is playing out right on time.
🔄 A Recap of The Fourth Turning: Where We Are Now
Strauss and Howe laid this out in "The Fourth Turning," published in 1997. They described a repeating cycle in history:
1. High – Collective strength, strong institutions
2. Awakening – Personal liberation, spiritual rebellion
3. Unraveling – Institutions weaken, individualism rises
4. Crisis (aka now) – Collapse + Rebirth
We entered the Fourth Turning in 2008. The 2020s (aka 'MEOW'), they said, would bring economic collapse, cultural division, and global instability. And if we survive it? The cycle restarts with a brand new “High.”
(check out my previous newsletter that goes deeper into The Fourth Turning)
Every past Fourth Turning brought massive transformation:
The American Revolution. The Civil War. The Great Depression + WWII.
This yet-to-be-named 💩 storm?
A friend asked me, “how do you think this one ends? I mean, when the Roman Empire collapsed, the Romans themselves didn’t feel it at the time. It's not like it happened in a day.” (the pun was def. intended..)
My response, “I don’t know, but I’m optimistic. I’ve known for a while that the United States’ days as the global savior, hero, and decision-maker have been dwindling. All while we stay living as humans be doin. I do know that the last time we were in a crisis (the Great Depression), we got JFK 30 years later, from a most definitely not... ummm. doing legal stuff, kinda daddy who made his riches during said crisis. Who knows, maybe X Æ A-Xii (bless his heart) will change his name to Qi X and use all that money to right his family's wrongs when he gets grown, and say things like "who leavin' who behind on stages now.. bbbiiii----".
To be Radical, we must RETURN to the Root
This time around, as we live through the part of this 💩cycle where everything breaks—where institutions collapse and illusions burn—then we need to get real about what it means to rebuild.
The word ‘radical’—long before it became synonymous with extremism or protest (the journey from a to z on this one truly deserves a whole ‘nother Oprah🧐)—meant something much simpler:
“of, or relating to THE ROOT”
To be radical isn’t to go rogue. It’s to return.
To the foundation. To the source.
To the place where it all began, so we can understand how it came to be.
Radicalization (not the propaganda kind) is the only way transformation can truly happen. Because without returning to the root—without acknowledging the soil in which our systems were planted—we end up repeating patterns while thinking we’re doing something new.
Like when a white guy told me at a college party (attended a PWI, so brought this upon myself LBH), that “Gwen Stefani is like, the first person, to like, ever spell words out in music..”, to which I replied with a confused headshake not knowing where to begin (aside from questioning all of my life choices), and the fact that “Hollaback girl” was written and produced by PHARRELL WILLIAMS?! Sigh… Given how many college parties I don’t remember, this was a traumatizing display of rampant caucasity resulting from NOT BEING CONNECTED TO OUR ROOTS.
If we want real change—radical change—it requires the whites. Brad. Jan. Kim(y)(ie). Dave. David. Jim(my). Bob(ert). All y’all. Even y'all named Tyrone, Dwayne, and y'all sneaky Irish, but hella Black sounding Siobhans.. to confront the roots of white supremacy, not just its branches.
It requires naming the ways capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy have shaped what YOU believe to be normal, valuable, and "accurate".
Because skipping the root is a refusal of responsibility.
And that refusal? It shows up as fragility. As control. As rigidity. 😬
And that rigidity?
Whew buddy. I see it every. damn. Day. In these here hot yoga rooms.
Specifically in the hips.
The root chakra lives there—in the base of the spine, the pelvis, the legs. It governs our sense of safety, belonging, and trust in the Earth.
And let me tell you something, white men be out here with hips locked tighter than their great-granddaddy’s colonial grip on land they never owned.
Tight hips = tight root = unprocessed survival fear + ancestral shame = energetic constipation.
I used to get asked (no…. TOLD) before my class starts (not anymore because my students are BADASS/know better..), “So…Mandy, I have lower back pain.. so there's a lot I can't do ..” Or “I don’t do backward bends. I sit at a desk all day, but that’s why I’m here. Just.. so you know.”
I would nod, smile, and say “hmm. Well, If you want to talk more about it, I’m here. Lower back pain is related to tight hips. Tons of ways to open them up.”
BUT, think to myself, with the full weight of all 400 years of receipts:
It’s because y’all have been living at the top of the body.
In your heads 🧠 . In your logic📊. In your entitlement 👑.
Rootless ☹️
It's the in-real-time representation of the spiritual bypassing. #Bless.
BUT/AND
Then…
I remind myself that these bless-ed melanin-deficient souls have taken the BIG scary step to GET HERE, to TRY the yoga, and that my Unicorn Queen of the Dragons cool-breeze-aquarian-water-baring-angel magic is most certainly capable of taking it from here...
Because here I go again with Robin Williams/Good Will Hunting (who had very loose hips btw, RIP).
It’s not your fault. [entirely]
Because you have, WE HAVE been taught that embodiment (of anything, really) is weakness.
That softness is shameful.
That vulnerability is a threat.
So when I say “return to the root,” I’m not just talking about history (but mean that too)
I mean literally, get in your body. Feel the ground. Shake loose the lies we have ALL been taught.
Breathe into the parts of you that have been silenced, disconnected, and inherited without consent.
The revolution isn’t just intellectual. It’s physical. It’s energetic. It’s root work. Get up and move your hips around type-work!
…Now.. pretend.. You just started feeling your rootin’ toot, asked Alexa to play “Say it Loud” by James Brown.. You’re having a TIME.. Then all a sudden you hear..
🚨‼️ALERT‼️🚨 (Repetition is key 🔑 here)
⚠️ For White Folks: No Root, No (actual) Revolution ⚠️
To even attempt to imagine a world beyond capitalism and white supremacy (which, you may have no interest in! That’s cool too….), we need white folks to stop skipping the root.
Remember:
You can’t bypass the soil you came from and expect to grow something new.
You can’t spell “radical change” without radical accountability.
White supremacy is the root of so much dis-ease. (It effects and shows up in the behavior of ALL OF US as a means of survival)
EVERY TIME we refuse to name, claim, and metabolize white supremacy as a root— activism, progressivism, allyship—is just another performance.
So here we are.
The bottom of the cycle. The ground.
We are in THE Crisis. THE Fourth Turning.
The moment where everything old must collapse so something new—and rooted—can emerge.
This isn’t the end.
It’s the rupture before the rebirth.
The cracking of the shell, not the death of the seed.
And remember: WHEN we make it through—
The next part of the cycle is a High.
A collective renaissance. A chance to build with intention.
A chance to root differently, this time.
But only if we’re honest about what the soil has held.
Only if we’re willing to compost the lies.
Only if we do the root work, together.
Here’s your made-is-this-far-down-in-the-newsletter invitation:
Move your hips (don’t hurt yourself 😉).
Read something that makes you squirm.
Say the quiet part out loud, even if your voice shakes.
Find a cycle, a lineage, a rhythm that doesn’t start with you, and honor it.
Because to be radical is to be a root. The root is part of a cycle.
The cycle. The roots. They’re desperately trying to bring us home.
And, one of the wise whites, Mel Robbins, says, Let them!
xo,
Mandy 🦄🫶🏽