Rising on the Spiral: Finding Grace in the Hard Seasons
A wise friend recently shared an idea that I’ll paraphrase here:
Life is like a spiral.
As we move around it again and again, we encounter familiar things — repeated challenges, lessons, habits, and relationships. And yet, we’re not truly repeating them. Each time we circle higher, our vantage point changes. We see farther, understand more, respond quicker, and adapt easier.
This past week, I’ve been processing a recent battle. I don’t share it as justification or explanation, but as grateful awareness — awareness of how quickly I recognized the familiar signs of a quiet war my mind and body have been waging these past weeks.
This time, though, I see it from higher ground — one built on the foundation of past inner work.
In September, I had the joy of helping coordinate my son’s wedding, then three days later I boarded a plane to Paris to walk the Camino for two weeks, followed immediately by another two in Morocco.
Yes, my life is deeply blessed with adventure and the extraordinary women I share it with!
But how do we respond when we don’t show up as we’d hoped, and things don’t go as planned?
A week after arriving in Europe, I began to feel unwell — and for almost a month, I lived in a mental and physical fog from which I’m only now emerging. It felt as though my body whispered, “I just don’t have anything left to heal.”
The well was dry. The tank empty.
As I watched others connect and thrive — which truly made me happy — I felt distant, unfocused, confused.
The “Shoulds” began their familiar chorus: I should be this. I should do that. I should be more.
Frustrated and disappointed, I instinctively withdrew.
I tried to rally, but my energy told the truth. When I’m being me, it’s effortless, natural, authentic. When I’m not, it’s exhausting.
Last month became a metaphor for the past year — one where Persistence fought bare-knuckled while Passion hibernated.
Last February, on the night my husband and I arrived in Nairobi for our first true vacation in twenty years, he told me he’d lost his job that afternoon. A cowardly text from his company’s owner gave him two weeks’ notice — just enough to coincide with our return.
Since then, uncertainty has hung heavy on me.
And yet, I know I’m not alone. Many people carry far heavier burdens. I have so much I’m grateful for, and I don’t want distraction or fear to pull me away from the greater work — the work of hope, courage, and care for others.
Still, the spiral analogy is a lifeline.
I recognize the patterns — withdrawal, self-criticism, worry about letting others down. Letting myself down. I can see the symptoms and question the old narratives. I can sense when it’s time to retrain the subconscious mind’s quiet saboteurs.
The question now is:
Do I have the discipline and stamina to make these mental shifts?
Or perhaps even more importantly — the wisdom and humility to stop fighting and yield to the Divine?
This week, I’ve had several conversations about what it’s like to be three years into building a business. The same could be said of a relationship, parenthood, or pursuing a degree.
At three years in, the honeymoon is over. The early excitement fades. We’re in the trenches now — stretched, weary, and often feeling alone. The creative spark and clarity that once fueled us beg to be rekindled.
If we’re not deeply rooted in our Why, we run out of authentic inspiration.
I’ve been here before. It’s time to align my center again — my why. To sit with Infinite Source, and the me that is one with it. Inseparable. Its very reflection.
I think anyone who maintains a spiritual practice still needs moments of deep reset. Experiences that wake us up to new clarity.
Five years ago when I stepped beyond the familiar community that had been home my whole life, I began an honest journey to think and do beyond cultural expectations and find genuine impulsion within.
I implemented new consistent habits and expanded my repertoire of spiritual teachings. I was fully awake, alive, mining within, and bringing to the surface entrenched limiting beliefs.
I find myself on this side of the spiral again. But I see things from a higher vantage point.
I know that part of this time is coming to a new view of my relationship with God.
I know that Divine Being is walking with me on this camino — this circle of life’s ever-widening spiral. The clarity and strength to rise, to become all that I long to be but don’t feel right now, do not come from me. They flow through me, from Source itself.
I can be like a horse that won’t give up, one that will drive itself into the ground if an intuitive jockey doesn’t rein me in, set a pace, and inspire me as needed.
Let Love be the jockey!
The source for this next leg is infinite, always present and available, and it knows me completely.
It’s time to pause.
To take my own medicine. As I say so often, to give myself permission to care for myself — so that what I give others comes from genuine overflow, not depletion.
I want time to gently remove limiting stories lodged within and discover fresh daily practices that align with Source.
Time to claim, once more, the abundant, unlimited nature of life — and my worthiness to believe it.
I can’t undo how things unfolded while I wasn’t well. But I can process the good that came from it — what I’ve learned to do differently next time, how to recognize early signs, how to honor those who cared for me, and follow up with those I missed connecting with.
And I can give myself grace — for the confusion, the fog, and the humanity of it all.
Grace to rest.
Grace to rise again.
Grace to keep spiraling upward.
”Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing the monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” — C.S. Lewis
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