Feeling like you somehow managed to land right back where you started as you come face-to-face with the wound you thought you’d healed once more?

You’re not alone. It happens to all of us along the healing path. My favorite teaching analogy for these moments is to think of the journey of living as a spiral path.

Imagine the journey you’re on travels in a loose, kinda wobbly, spiral path. Across this path, extending out from different parts of the track, are our own particular ley lines. These lines represent the challenges and truths life calls us to face about our experiences and ourselves. We cross them multiple times on our journey; each time we encounter a ley line offers us a chance to learn something new and make another choice about the topic of that line.

So, if I’m in a space that feels familiar, I don’t backslide or falter. I have the opportunity to look at that old story with new eyes. Those fresh eyes allow me to choose how I interact with the challenge or truth this time. Sometimes I try something different, hoping for a different outcome. Other times, I keep doing what I’ve been doing because I see the benefit to keeping the course I chose during my last stop along the ley line.