From our new vantage point, we see things we couldn’t before. I wrote this song early in June 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. So, a lot of what’s here in the lyrics feels like a call specifically to responsibility for white Americans—a call to look in the mirror and reckon with what we can too easily choose to ignore. 

That said, bitter roots are thriving underneath so many structures, large and small. Our family systems are too often built upon foundations that unequivocally prevent true connection and trust. Maybe our partner relationships have roots that cannot sustain healthy growth. Or maybe we harbor ugly lies about our own identities that prevent us from allowing ourselves to love and be loved.

I think it’s easy to tell ourselves that because these roots are buried, we can ignore them, move past them, move on. Or sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking that some decoration and ornamentation (rationalization and apologetics) can overcome a rotten core. Of course, this kind of strategy will never work. The festering will ooze out somewhere. So before we can mend or build a single thing, we have to cut out every last bit of what is rotten in ourselves, and in our systems. We have to learn to see it, and we have to take action to remove every last tendril.