It Was Never Regression. It Was Revolution.

On Endless Returns, Reality as a Disrupting Force & the Necessity of Failed Plans and Unplanned Detours

Notes on falling pregnant abroad, and why it taught me the best lessons of all: there is no linearity, success has no timeline.

Six weeks pregnant, six years ago.

I remember a psychic once telling me that I'd always be a circular learner; that I'd double around each time I moved through something only to take what I thought at the time were retrograde steps, into bad habits or old ways of being that weren't healthy, or simply not make what I considered to be progress.

But now, in my final month of being 31, I realise that what the psychic meant was that whenever I healed a part of myself or learned something new or moved into a new phase of my life, what I thought was moving backwards was actually just walking the next leg of the labyrinth, journeying closely alongside the past, and taking whatever lesson I'd learned or insight I'd found or dream that had come true, back to the part of myself or the place in my life or the inner child or teenager or young adult I was who needed to know that sometime in the future, I would move through what troubled me then, and like countless therapists told me, this too [would] pass.

I share this because 6 years ago around this time my life was turned upside down in ways I couldn't have foretold (although strangely enough my fiction would argue otherwise), and I would think for many years that I was not worthy of being my son's Mom, that I had thrown away so much by having him at the wrong time - which was, again, that linear motion of "success" talking when it should have kept quiet and let me be my woowoo self with my development like tree rings rather than a neat A-B-Z.

I realise that what the psychic meant was that whenever I healed a part of myself or learned something new or moved into a new phase of my life, what I thought was moving backwards was actually just walking the next leg of the labyrinth, journeying closely alongside the past

But throughout each moment of doubt this very clear, strong voice would speak to me or through me and remind myself that this was my path: wild, diving headfirst into the unknown; having a baby at 26 a couple months after backpacking through Thailand. I believe we return to ourselves just as spirits return to us when are in need, that each time I thought I was being guided I was I was feeling the pull of my future self and my promise: that this too shall pass. I centre myself in my pregnancy story because a child must know that his mother was a person before, even though he transformed her into the person she became as his mother.

It was never regression. It was revolution.