The Spiral Path

on disorientation, self-trust + ending where you began

Hello, I’m Stacey.

I write about self-trust, midlife reinvention, and coming home to yourself in seasons of change.

If you’re trying to figure out what comes next, you’re in the right place.

What happens when you find yourself at the end of what you thought was a new beginning, having run a marathon - only to arrive, once again, where you started?

What am I supposed to do with that?

With the crying and the gnashing of teeth for what was gone, only to find it here, still, waiting - the same, but also something else entirely?

The past two years have been a master class in navigating disorientation.

More than two years ago we found ourselves quite suddenly in a new circumstance - one that offered new freedoms but also the crushing burden of goodbyes. It wasn’t something I would have chosen, didn’t choose it, but I also understood on a visceral level that old mantra -

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

- Max Ehrmann

And so, since then, we have done the things one does when one is pulling-up stakes.

We scrubbed and cleaned and painted and pruned and tucked all the humanity of our home into tidy boxes, wiping the walls fresh of our faces so others could better imagine their own. For nearly 9 months the stupid sign sat at the end of the driveway and carload after carload of strangers streamed in and out.

Like my paints packed in storage - we lived in limbo - all the creative acts of life suspended. Seeds unplanted. Paintings waiting in the wings of the imagination. Mason jars wrapped in newsprint while apples rotted in the fields.

We tried our best to look forward - to imagine a new future as yet unformed, not knowing where we would go or what that life would be able to hold. What would need to be picked up or set down.

We wondered -

Will be able to carry it? Will we even want to? What if we don’t? Will our bonds hold? Will it be better, or worse? Will it be worth it?

But all of it - the worry, the wear, the three days spent carefully packing vintage mason jars into plastic totes - was all for naught. Today we signed the papers and soon the sign will come down. We are two years further down the road and also right back where we started.

And so the question remains - What now?

When we move through seasons of change - whether intended or thrust upon us - and instead of moving forward we find ourselves having run in circles . . . What do we do?

We aren’t the same people we were when we began. The world around us has also changed, in its own way. Some of the things we set down in order to take the leap can’t be picked up again. We mourned this life we were leaving, mentally moved into this new, uncertain future, this house without walls . . . now we know it’s not to be.

How do we name the grief we feel for a future we weren’t even sure we wanted?

Of course, there is also relief. The devil you know, after all.

And there is some comfort there, I guess. Comfort in knowing that the community we’ve nurtured these past 13+ years will get to continue. Our kids will go to high school with friends from kindergarten. The threads that tie us to this place - in people and memories and the very soil - they will remain.

Honestly, I don’t have any real answers to the question - Now what?

I have, in my ham-handed effort to navigate this season of unknowing with a smidge of grace, inadvertently stumbled on a job I absolutely adore. Even still, my days are too full and there is far too little time for swim and sauna and the grounding presence of my old-lady pool crew. I’m not sure how I will juggle the business and the day job and the demands of the garden and family. I don’t know how I will make space for the things that matter. I miss mom nights with my girlfriends.

So there is all that. Doing an about-face won’t change that. But maybe it will give me a chance, however small, to catch my breath. To stop living perpetually in the both/and. Which - don’t get me wrong, can be a beautiful place to live. It can also be incredibly draining.

But certainty as a goal? That doesn’t feel right, either.

Maybe the appropriate goal in times of disorientation isn’t certainty. Maybe it is self-trust.

Trust that I can sit with the not-knowing without breaking.

Heck, I’ve had two years of practice, living in the liminal spaces in-between. Wading through uncertainty. Keeping the plates of daily life spinning while also stretching my imagination into a future that pulled me in two opposite directions, my arms taught and quivering, drawn tight between two things, only one of which could be true in the end.

Trusting that even when things get heavy, even when the future is unclear - I will figure it out. I will move forward, even if it means not by leaps, but instead step-by-tentative-step, testing the thickness of the ice as I go.

To trust that the universe is, indeed, unfolding as it should. To be willing to believe that I am the universe unfolding, experiencing itself.

So maybe the truth is closer to something like this:

We are not going in circles, we are going upwards.

The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.

Herman Hesse

That feels difficult, but true.

This sense of changing direction mid-course makes me think about a story from one of my elders growing up.

I’m from an island on Canada’s west coast. The east, leeward side is largely protected from the worst of what the Pacific Ocean has to offer, tucked up against the mainland. But the west, the windward side, is rugged and wild; stand on those iconic beaches and there will be nothing but sea between you and Japan.

There is a group of tinier islands there, where most travel happens by small fishing boat and zodiac. The weather can change - ferociously - in a heartbeat.

He had headed to the main island for supplies across one of the largest channels. Halfway across in his small zodiac, a storm came up. He was equal distance between where he was going and where he had been. There was no way to judge whether it was safer to push forward or turn back. The waves and the wind were building. There was a real possibility that the ocean would claim him.

Suddenly, immediately before him, an orca broke the surface of the waves - its giant dorsal fin, tall as a man, blocking the zodiac’s path. The elder pushed hard on the motor, veering to avoid crashing into the whale.

When it was all over and the whale dove back into the dark depths, he found he was once again pointed back towards home. He arrived home, safely.

When he shared the story with the local elders, they determined that that orca was sent to protect him - his spirit animal. Sacred.

Our intuition can be like that orca when we find ourselves in disorienting times of fear and disruption.

It can be just as powerful and just as sacred.

Sometimes, we find ourselves in the middle of stormy seas, with no clear path in sight. There are times when we might be equal distance from two choices - the answer unclear.

Maybe these moments of disorientation call not for white-knuckled clarity, but openness - to ourselves, to the universe, to faith that it is, indeed, unfolding as it should.

To remember that we are not going in circles. We have already climbed many steps.

I have no idea what the future holds. But for now I know where my future will unfold - in the fields outside this 134 year old window, where I have watched the sun rise and set for nearly 14 years.

As always.

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Stacey Langford is a writer, farmer, and grief worker living in Canada’s Fraser Valley. Her work explores the intersection of loss, belonging, and the quiet courage it takes to build a life that feels like your own. She writes about slowness, self-trust, and finding your way home to yourself in a world obsessed with speed.