The Places We Return To
Lessons from the spiral of becoming. Tracing the echoes of my younger self.
There’s something undeniably magical about spirals, isn’t there? The way they weave themselves into the fabric of our existence - our solar system, our fingerprints, the rings of a tree, the irises of our eyes. Nature seems to favor this shape, mirroring the way we grow, cycle, and inevitably return to ourselves.
In my last Love Note, I spoke of spirals, of growth, of life’s relentless cycles, but I was elusive. Careful with my words. Let me bring you closer this time. Let me place you inside the spiral with me.
I am living in the state I once ran away to at nineteen. Honestly, I wan’t really sure why or what I was fleeing. I left, returned, left again, and somehow, I am here once more. As if the ground itself has something left to say. As if I missed a lesson the first time around. I mean, I know that I have more work to do, but..sheesh.
Lately, parts work, Internal Family Systems by Richard Schwartz, has been circling my awareness. After doing some research and peeling back some layers, I’ve realized something: my teenager & young adult is surfacing. And she’s pissed.
She’s been clawing her way to the surface, demanding to be heard. The one who lost herself in pleasing others, the one who mistook self-abandonment for love. I remember it all. I remember too much.
Being back here has unsettled and triggered me. I am walking through echoes of my own neglect, retracing steps I thought I’d never take again. There is a place that holds my young adult captive. There is a memory there, frayed at the edges, of trust dissolving between me and someone I once thought unbreakable.
Maya Angelou said: “Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learned it.”
But what if I can’t? What if I’m just not there yet?
What if, in this scenario, forgiveness is a door I do not yet know how to open?
There are days when I want to alchemize this pain into something softer, something worthy of grace. And then there are days when the anger sits heavy in my chest, solid as bone.
And so I keep asking myself: who am I if I can’t forgive?
Maybe I am simply someone still inside the spiral, waiting to arrive at the place where forgiveness and fury can exist side by side. Maybe the question itself is the lesson.
Because in some strange way, things always seem to work themselves out, don’t they? The spiral keeps turning, whether I resist it or not. So maybe all I need to do is keep trusting the process. Trusting the unfolding.
That is, after all, what Grandmother Ayahuasca told me to do.
And maybe you, too, are standing in a place that feels eerily familiar. Maybe you’re meeting an old version of yourself in the present. If so, I hope you give them space to listen. I hope you trust that even this, whatever this is, belongs to the unfolding.
After all, the spiral never moves backward. Only Deeper and wider.
As always, thank you for being here. Take care of yourselves, friends.
Love, Light, & Darkness,
Nadia 🦋
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