Do you need a sister right now?
A confidante, someone to relate to, someone to help see you through?
It may seem like connection with those outside of your home is impossible at this time, but Root 2 Branches owner Adi Puckett believes that there’s always an opportunity to connect.
On Friday, May 1 from 6 to 8 p.m., Puckett will host her Let’s Get Basic Sister Circle, a time for women to get together and process where they are. The event will be hosted online. Participants can go to the Root 2 Branches Facebook page to message Puckett.
“I’m a wife and a mother, and working really, really hard at being a businesswoman,” Puckett said. “And there are a lot of things that I don’t discuss with my family. There are a lot of things that I feel that I need to have a circle of sisters around to kind of help me wave my banner, listen to me, who can relate to what it is to be a wife, a mom and a businesswoman all under the same hat. So I thought that this would be very good toward the mental health of us women in the circumstances that we’re in.
“It’s hard on us. It is hard out there. I wanted to give them that soft, safe place to land.”
Puckett, a life coach, thrives on bringing people together, facilitating conversation and getting to the “root” of the matter.
In fact, Root 2 Branches was derived from a conversation that encouraged Puckett to build from the ground up.
“The suggestion to become a coach or to put my voice out there, actually came from my spouse,” she said. “I was really struggling, trying to find a new path for my personal life. He wanted to know why I wasn’t capitalizing on what I do already; championing people on and encouraging them and walking alongside them.
“I do it all the time in all of my different circles.”
Puckett had never heard of professional coaching prior to embarking on the journey. As she weighed her options with a friend, the vision really came to life.
“After the conversation she says to me, ‘You know, the whole time we were having that conversation, all I could see was this giant tree.
“But little did I know that that was going to stick with me and the more I thought about this giant tree, the more I thought about what produces the branches and the leaves and the fruit on a tree. It all starts at the root.”
Whether the client lives in Missouri or Champaign-Urbana, Puckett works to help people dig deep into their personal lives to find the root of their angst while also walking beside them as they walk through the process of healing.
She works, in part, to help them, “produce sweeter fruit.”
Through working with clients, Puckett has learned that many times, that “sweeter fruit” comes from getting back to the basics of life.
“I realized that we spend so much time trying not to be basic that we have just begun to overcomplicate ourselves,” she said. “I think in this Root 2 Branches process, it benefits us to back up a little bit and start focusing more on the basics of just being human beings to one another.”
The only way to do that, Puckett said, is to extend love to one another.
“It is being accepting and welcoming of people, right where they are,” she said. “Without asking them to change something to make them fit in my world.
“But it also means that if there is a behavior that I am expecting out of someone, I have to be the example of that. So if it’s goodness, if it’s kindness, if it’s mercy, or whatever, I have to be the example of that, otherwise I should have no expectations of anyone else.
“Loving people really means accepting them and forgiving them just as they are, no exceptions.”
It also means including people, with no exceptions.
Puckett’s vision for Friday night is to include everyone who needs and wants to be included.
She hopes that women of all ages, stages in life, professions, races, backgrounds and faiths will come together to share stories, experiences and feelings to discuss under the umbrella of compassion, curiosity and confidentiality.
“But I want to make sure that I leave room in case there is a lady that comes into that circle, who was having something that needs to be addressed,” Puckett said. “We can put those guidelines aside for a moment and really just gather around her and just love her and support her.”
It’s what she offers the world on a day-to-day basis outside of the pandemic. Puckett works with individuals and groups, through avenues such as Restoration Urban Ministries and Merci’s Refuge while also providing churches, communities and families with the opportunity to engage in communication that will help them work towards a common goal.
“The purpose for roots and branches, is to help people,” she said.
“Repair broken or damaged relationships, while also helping (the individual) foster stronger and more enduring new relationships, because pretty much everything that has to do with who we are and how we function and even the decisions that we make, have a lot to do with the relationships that we have with other people, even the relationships with ourselves.”
Many people may not even know there is a problem brewing inside.
“We’re not talking about the deep things in us that are, you know, driving our depression or our anxieties,” she said.
“I want to be a person that someone can eventually learn to trust, so they can actually start pouring that stuff out and dealing with it.”
Puckett’s gift and passion for bringing people together has even helped those who don’t realize that they need each other to form strong bonds.
She teamed up with Tamara Llano, a fellow member of the Community Evangelical Free Church of Mahomet, to produce the Martha and Mary Project.
“We started talking about Mary and Martha, the sisters in the Bible, and how I’m very much a Mary,” she said. “ I’m the one who, nothing really has to be going on, I just want to be in your presence. But she is very much a Martha; she is doing all the things she’s the hostess with the mostest.”
The women saw that there was a gap between the “seasoned” women of the congregation and the teenagers who attended church with their parents.
“There is no relationship between or there was no relationship between them and the teenage girls,” she remembered.
But first, the women had to find a way to bring the teens, who barely acknowledged each other, together.
“When you work together, you learn a lot about one another,” Puckett said.
“After we started getting them together, working, cooking together, building things together, creating, you know different activities together; now, there is a complete row of girls (at church). And if they don’t all fit on one row there’s another row started.
“They sit, and they talk, and they chatter, and they laugh and go on. They all have each other’s phone numbers and they all know things about each other that we don’t know.
“It was so beautiful just to see that happen.”
Once the girls came together, the older women began to come in as mentors.
“It has been amazing the bridge has been built between these younger ladies,” she said. “And these older ladies, who teach so much, are recapturing and re-tapping their own use of their hearts.”
Even though the project has been ongoing for two years, the sisterhood that was established does not appear to be dying down.
“It has exceeded my wildest expectations,” she said.
Puckett grew up understanding the importance of female relationships and the bond that is gained from doing life together, living with her grandmother and aunt.
“Whether it was cooking or making a new dress or gardening or whatever, it was paramount that we did it together,” she said.
Even when visitors came to her home, there was not much separation between adults and children, but rather group activities.
“All of us would sing together, just like random potlucks for no occasion whatsoever,” she said.
“We were a community that really really believed in staying close.”
Although people are ordered to socially distance themselves and appear separated, Puckett believes that the COVID-19 pandemic is also teaching about connection and the need to have a variety of people.
“I believe that we are actually going to be more intentional about seeking out different opportunities to connect with people,” she said.
“It’s kind of my mission, now, to just really foster this together.
“This pandemic is going to start bringing people closer together. We miss each other. I miss people I don’t even know. There’s going to be a lot of weird hugging going on when this is over.”
