Spiraling
I’m spiraling.
What does this phrase mean to you? I invite you to pause and check in with yourself. When was the last time you said those words? What were you really feeling underneath them?
I’ve been thinking about what the phrase “I’m spiraling” generally means in the English language versus what the spiral means in nature or spiritually.
When we say “I’m spiraling” to each other, it’s generally not a good thing. It means my mind is spinning. It connotes anxious thoughts, looping, loss of control.
In nature and sacred geometry however, a spiral is associated with growth, expansion, and the interconnectedness of all things. Nature is not afraid to lose control. Nature is messy. Nature is not afraid of death, rebirth, or cycles. Nature knows that progress is not linear. It turns out that we can learn a lot from nature. We are nature too. Like the seasons, we contract and expand. Like the moon, we wax and wane. We are allowed to fall apart and come back together again. The spiral reminds us there’s no shame in returning to the same place again and again with deeper wisdom and embodiment.
These aren't just abstract ideas to me. The spiral lives in my real life, in my memories, and in the way my daughter still speaks to me across the veil. Maisa loved talking about the Fibonacci sequence and would often entertain herself (and us) in the car by reciting a long string of it. She had a beautiful blue spiral glass necklace that we purchased at our local Art in the Park right after my second cancer surgery in 2022. She wore it most days until it broke towards the end of her life. She left it on her dresser, and when I held it again I could feel its energetic significance. It felt like both an ending and a beginning. I recently found the artist who made it and purchased a replica for myself.
I wore it on a recent multi-day hike where I was able to connect with nature, with Maisa, with parts of myself and something greater. Spiraling. Descending in order to ascend. Grief is a spiral too. Just when you think you’ve healed something, you loop back. But you’re not in the same place. You’re deeper, softer, wiser. We live in a world that tends to teach us that progress is linear. Go to school. Go to college. Get a job. Get 2.5 kids and a house in the suburbs. Live happily ever after. Retire. It doesn’t work that way. We have been sold a linear lie. One that has asked us to disconnect from our inner wisdom in order to become something else for someone else.
Maisa sends me messages in various ways. Through signs, music, people, and nature. She’s very creative. Several months ago, I received a detailed message about a snail. A spiral. The snail is fine on its own. It carries its home on its back. Like a backpack. It has everything it needs. It moves slowly, deliberately. It teaches us that we don’t have to rush to arrive. We just have to be. In this moment. The snail shows us that our pace is just right. That we are already whole, just as we are.
I see a lot of slugs around our house (and Maisa loved to pick those up!), but I don’t see a lot of snails in their shells. On the last day of my hike, in the last couple of miles, there it was. The snail. The one I had received the message about several months earlier. Parked there on a tree. If I had been rushing, if I had not been honoring my own pace, I might have missed it. It was just sitting there in the sun. Enjoying the tree and the beauty of the forest. Spiraling. Reminding me. I am here. You are here. Right where you are supposed to be. We have everything we need. Here. Within us. Around us. You are enough. Right now. Always. Spiraling.
So yes, I’m spiraling. But I am not falling apart. I am not constricting. I am circling back to myself. I am expanding. I am healing in waves, not lines. I am remembering that what looks like chaos is actually a pattern.
I’m spiraling.
Wow this so good and described so perfectly. Thank you Samia. Thank you Maisa.