What the Rings Don’t Show: On Roots, Relationships, and Growing Through the Hard Seasons

(Before you read on, a gentle note: This blog is about the hard seasons in relationships — and what can grow through them. But not every relationship that feels hard is one that needs more reaching. Some distances exist for good reason. Some silences are the soul’s quiet way of protecting itself. If a relationship has left you feeling consistently unsafe, unseen, or diminished — it is worth pausing to ask not just what you are carrying, but what the relationship itself is asking of you. Reaching toward connection is good and brave work. And sometimes, the most honest reaching we can do is toward ourselves — toward safety, toward healing, toward the support of someone we trust. If that is where you are, this blog is still for you. Perhaps especially for you. Read with care for your own heart.)

If you were to cut a tree crosswise and look at what’s inside, you would find a record of its entire life — a quiet autobiography written in rings. Wide rings mark the years of abundance: plenty of rain, long sun, rich soil. Narrow rings tell a different story. They are the years the tree struggled, the seasons of drought and cold when growth slowed to almost nothing.

But here is what the rings don’t show: what was happening underground.

During a drought, a tree struggles. It works just to stay green, to hold its leaves, to simply remain. But beneath the surface, the roots begin to push deeper — reaching further into the soil, searching for what the tree needs to survive. 

Drought doesn’t stop growth. It just moves somewhere we cannot see. And that hidden, unhurried work below the ground? It becomes the very thing that holds the tree when the season finally shifts.

I think about this often when someone sits across from me and wonders why a relationship feels quieter than it used to. Or harder. Or distant. When they begin to measure the health of a connection only by what they can see.

What if some of our most important relational growth happens underground?

There are parts of us — quietly shaped by old hurts, early losses, or relationships that did not feel safe — that learned to read the world in a particular way. 

To brace. 

To withdraw. 

To interpret silence as rejection.

Distance as abandonment.

Stillness as something being wrong.

These unhealed places don’t announce themselves. They simply respond. And sometimes, what feels like a problem in a relationship is actually an echo of something older — a wound that hasn’t yet had the chance to be tended to.

This is what it means to be human and shaped by a life that was not always gentle with us.

The invitation here is simply to pause and ask, with honesty and without judgment: is what I am feeling about what is happening now — or is it about something I am still carrying? That question alone, held with curiosity rather than criticism, can change everything.

The Science of Drought Seasons and The Deepening of Friendship

Researchers in dendrochronology — the study of tree rings — have long understood that stress drives root expansion. A 2014 study published in Nature Climate Change found that trees under drought conditions significantly increase fine root biomass, prioritizing underground development over visible, above-ground growth. 

The tree redirects its resources. It chooses depth over appearance.

Relationships have their own version of this biology.

Psychologists John and Julie Gottman, whose decades of relationship research have reshaped how we understand long-term connection, describe something they call “the deepening of friendship” — an emotional intimacy that often forms not in the high moments of a relationship, but in the quiet, difficult ones. The conversations that are hard to start. The silences that are held rather than filled. The choosing to stay when leaving feels easier.

Attachment theory, pioneered by John Bowlby and expanded by researchers like Sue Johnson, tells us that our deepest bonds are forged precisely when we reach for one another during times of vulnerability and are met. Not when life is easy — but when it isn’t.

In other words, the drought season is not the enemy of connection. It may be its most important teacher.

The Stories We Tell About Hard Seasons

Narrative therapy, a framework I return to again and again in my own work, invites us to examine the stories we are telling about our lives — and about our relationships. Because we are, all of us, meaning-making creatures. 

We don’t just experience our relationships. 

We interpret them. We narrate them.

And in hard seasons, it is easy to tell the wrong story and these stories feel true, especially when we are tired or afraid. 

The story that distance means disconnection. 

That conflict means incompatibility. 

That silence means love is gone. 

What might change if we told a different story? One that says: we are in a drought season, and our roots are reaching.

What It Means to Reach

Positive psychology researcher Barbara Fredrickson describes a concept called “positivity resonance” — the micro-moments of connection that, accumulated over time, become the architecture of a relationship. These moments are rarely dramatic.

In relationships, it often looks like the small, unheroic act of trying again. 

Saying the thing you’ve been holding. 

Asking how someone is and actually waiting for the answer. 

Showing up to a hard conversation without armor.

A glance held a beat longer than necessary. 

A hand on the shoulder. 

The text that says only, “I was thinking about you.” 

These are the roots, quietly spreading.

It may also looks like paying attention to the people and connections you might be overlooking.

Researchers at Harvard, in their landmark 85-year longitudinal study on adult development — one of the longest studies of happiness ever conducted — found that the quality of our relationships was the single greatest predictor of wellbeing in later life. 

Yep. Not wealth. Not achievement. Relationships.

And not just the easy ones.

Sometimes reaching means turning, slowly, toward yourself — the most overlooked relationship of all.

Because you, too, have rings. Years of abundance and years of drought. And your roots — your capacity for love, for endurance, for beginning again — run deeper than you likely know.

If Faith Is Important to You

If faith is part of your story, you already know that God is no stranger to hard seasons. Scripture is full of them — and full of what He does inside them.

Jeremiah 17:7-8 paints a picture that feels close to this conversation: "Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord... They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought.”

The roots reach because there is something to reach toward.

If you are in a hard season in a relationship right now, God is not absent from it. He is not waiting for things to get easier before He shows up. He is already there — in the tension, in the silence, in the slow and unseen work of two people trying to find their way back to each other. 

God may not change everything at once. But He is faithful, willing, and able to soften, heal, and perform the miracle of the gradual return of what felt lost. 

He meets us in the reaching. And that is not a small hope.

You Don't Have to Figure This Out Alone

Hard seasons in relationships can be difficult to navigate — and even harder to make sense of on your own. If you find yourself feeling stuck, confused, or unsure of what you are carrying and what the relationship is asking of you, I want to gently encourage you to reach out. Talk to a trusted friend who can hold your story with care. Or consider working with a professional counselor who can help you untangle what's underneath with compassion and clarity.

You don't have to have it all figured out before you ask for help. That's exactly what the reaching is for.

A Closing Thought

March is a threshold month — the kind where winter is still present but something in the air has shifted. It is a good time to look at the relationships in your life. Not to evaluate them by their visible rings alone, but to ask: where are the roots reaching? What is growing underground that I haven’t been able to see?

Is there someone you have been meaning to reach toward? A conversation waiting to be had? A connection that needs tending, not because it is broken, but because it is worth it?

The drought seasons are not the end of the story. They are often where the deepest part of it begins.

For Reflection

What relationship in your life is in a “drought season” right now? What would it look like to let your roots stretch toward that person rather than pulling back?

Think of a relationship that endured a hard season and came out stronger. What made the difference? What grew underground?

If you looked honestly at the story you’ve been telling about a relationship — is it the whole story? What might the roots know that the rings don’t show? 

Until next time, keep showing up with care and courage.

 GO brave. GO strong.

About the Author

Written by Gaby Ortiz, MA, LPC, NCC.

Gaby is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Colorado who helps children, teens, women, and families grow with resilience, warmth, and hope. She believes that healing begins in safe connection and that every story holds the possibility of renewal.

References & Resources:

Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. Basic Books.

Fredrickson, B. L. (2013). Love 2.0: Finding happiness and health in moments of connection. Hudson Street Press.

Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (1999). The seven principles for making marriage work. Crown Publishers.

Johnson, S. (2008). Hold me tight: Seven conversations for a lifetime of love. Little, Brown and Company.

Waldinger, R., & Schulz, M. (2023). The good life: Lessons from the world's longest scientific study on happiness. Simon & Schuster.

Anderegg, W. R. L., et al. (2015). Pervasive drought legacies in forest ecosystems and their implications for carbon cycle models. Science, 349(6247), 528–532.

Note: The Harvard happiness study is most recently represented by Robert Waldinger's 2023 book and the dendrochronology research I referenced in the blog is drawn from that body of tree stress literature.