The Spiral, The Sacred Pause, and the In Between

This week has stretched me thinner than I’ve ever been, mind, body, spirit, and faith.

It’s the strangest kind of ache: being this close to your dream, the closest you’ve ever been, and still knowing there’s a chance it could all slip away.

What then? A new job? Thrivewell pushed to the back burner?

I don’t have those answers, and the not knowing has become its own kind of submersion therapy.

The truth is, I’ve been trying to hold steady while my body waves the white flag. The headaches, the exhaustion, the way my thoughts turn dark and restless, like a relentless game of whack-a-mole I can’t win. I wake up and still show up, even when there’s nothing left in the tank. It’s a strange thing, to keep creating light while wading through your own shadows.

And when I look at what I’m putting myself through, the mental, physical, and spiritual toll, and hear the concern in my loved ones’ voices about something they call a “choice,” it stings. Because I wonder too. Did I choose this? Would I, if I’d known what it would take from me?

But just like falling in love, finding your purpose isn’t a choice. It’s a call. And though I didn’t choose the calling, I do choose, every day, to keep walking the path.

I’ve always been a control freak who loves instant gratification. I want results, movement, confirmation. Instead, I’ve been asked to sit in the stillness and trust something I can’t yet see. Every day feels like a week. Every hour, its own initiation. But when I start to collapse into the fear, my partner and my support system remind me of my strength, and lend me theirs when the step ahead feels too heavy.

And underneath all of it, there’s faith. Faith that I’m exactly where I’m meant to be. Faith over fear, even when fear is louder.

That faith met me again today at the Enchanted Market.

Before I even walked in, I noticed something simple and miraculous: the parking lot was full. Two miracles revealed themselves in that moment. First, I realized this kind of work, the spiritual, the mystical, the healing, is no longer happening in secret or silence. The world is ready to lean in. And second, I noticed that I noticed. That I was living an intentional life, aware enough to pause and recognize the fullness before me. A few years ago, I would have rushed past that sign without seeing it. Today, it stopped me.

From the moment Melissa greeted me, I felt a wave of warmth, smiles, hugs, familiar faces that somehow all carried the same message: keep going. The energy in that room was a mirror of everything I’ve been building. The community, the connection, the light. It was as if the Universe itself wanted to show me what Thrivewell already is, that it’s alive in people long before it’s built in walls.

And then came the spirals.

Everywhere I turned, jewelry, paintings, candles, shells, each one a quiet reminder of the path that’s been following me.

The nautilus first found me a couple of months ago during an intuitive workshop. When I stepped back from the piece of art, I realized the piece that had always pulled at me carried the words “Nautilus Revealed.” It stopped me cold. Like it had been waiting for me to finally see what was there all along.

And today, it found me again, through a woman selling paintings born from her meditative visions. I flipped through her prints, angels, butterflies, light…until bam. There it was. The nautilus, releasing energy into the cosmos. I laughed, because of course it was.

Without knowing me or my story, she began to speak about its sacred meaning, the inner chambers, the transformation that happens in the dark, the way each new spiral forms from what came before. She said it symbolizes the moment when inward becomes outward, when it’s time to share your energy back with the world. That’s what stayed with me: that shift from inner work to cosmic offering. The micro becoming macro.

She didn’t know that phrase has lived inside me for years. That macro and micro has become the way I see everything, how healing ripples outward, how what’s built within us builds the world.

I bought the print, of course. But more than that, I bought into the message again.

Sometimes awareness feels like both magic and curse. I’m too connected, to signs, to energy, to every flicker of meaning. When it all gets too loud, I hear my mother’s voice: shield up. It’s how I stay calm when everything outside moves fast and unpredictable.

And when I question if I can keep doing this, if I can keep holding the vision and the weight, I think of my cousin. He fought the same disease I did. Years after he passed, I wrote a poem called Angel on My Shoulder while I was in rehab, exactly two weeks sober. Writing it was the only way I knew how to get the feelings out. I didn’t even know I could write until I got sober. But that poem became my first act of healing, the moment I realized words could save me.

“You’ve been quiet for so long I forgot you were there.

Like a Sunday morning breeze without any air.

I never really realized how mad at you I was,

Leaving me alone to deal with all the fuss.

…That thin little thread gets stronger every day,

To the angel on my shoulder, I can finally hear what you say.”

His presence has been strong lately. And maybe that’s no coincidence. Maybe he’s one of the voices whispering keep going.

And maybe that’s why both of my favorite pages from the Big Book of AA have surfaced again now, as if they, too, are whispering keep going. Tonight, under the full moon, I can feel them meeting inside me like an intersection of faith and surrender, the micro and the macro converging.

The first is Page 417, the passage on acceptance. It says, “Acceptance is the answer to all of my problems today.” I’ve carried those words through every season of my recovery. That page taught me that serenity doesn’t come from fixing what’s broken but from surrendering to what is. It’s softened my resistance and reminded me that I don’t have to like my circumstances to make peace with them. Acceptance doesn’t mean passive, it means powerful. It’s the quiet courage to stay present even when nothing makes sense.

The second is the Third Step Prayer on Page 63: “God, I offer myself to Thee, to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will…”

That prayer was the moment I learned to hand my life over, not as defeat, but as devotion. It’s the act of saying: I can’t carry this alone, and I’m not meant to. It’s trust made tangible. Every time I say those words, something in me unclenches.

Tonight, I can feel those two pages, acceptance and surrender, meeting in me like a crossroads. One asks me to stop fighting what is. The other asks me to hand over what will be. Together, they form the spiral itself, the turning point between fear and faith.

Acceptance is still the hardest part. Because this, right now, feels like the make-or-break moment. The final review. The waiting room of destiny. If it’s a no, I’ll have to sit in that pain, maybe longer than I’d like. But I’ve promised myself: I can feel it, but I won’t unpack there.

And still… the spiral shows up again. Every time it does, it’s right before a breakthrough. It tells me: Wait just a little longer. You’re almost around the bend.

Next Friday is 10/10, a date that came to me months ago, unprompted, but clear as a bell. I’ve never been pulled to it before, but it feels like a threshold day.

So I’ll hold steady until then, stretched thin, but still intact. Because even in the almost, the spiral is still guiding me. And no matter what happens, I’ll keep turning toward the light.

With love from the spiral,

Kelley