“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.”
-Carl Jung

After two years of contacting my ex post-divorce to “catch up” or to acknowledge my role in our downfall, I had a clear sense of what I really wanted. I laid it on the line in an email: I still loved him and wanted to give us another shot – despite my desire to split in the first place.

I didn’t get the response I’d hoped for. In fact, I received no response at all. Still, a couple of months later, I finally felt a sense of closure. I decided to write about how neglecting to speak the truth of how we really feel not only impacts our relationships while we’re in them, but also our ability to move forward when they end. My goal was to publish a reflection on how the truth reconnects us with ourselves and how this connection is the key to moving on.

Then, on the third day of my writing, I received one of those auto-generated iphoto slideshows of me and my ex – the first of its kind for me – titled: “Together, Through the Years.”

As I watched the photos play to the song “Life is Wonderful,” by Jason Mraz, it didn’t take long for me to find myself right back in all those feel-good emotions (and the desire for a relationship redo) that I’d spent the last two years trying so hard to ignore or let go of.

As I listened to the song and heard the line: “life goes full circle” on repeat, I couldn’t help but wonder about the timing of the album and what it meant: Did the universe not want me to move on? Was this a sign that we were finally going to come “full circle” and get back together?

Within minutes of opening the photo album, it was clear that despite my seemingly newfound closure, I still loved my ex, I still wanted to reconnect, and now I wanted to message him, yet again.

Just as quickly as I visited with those good feelings and desires, however, my mind stepped in to rationalize them away by reminding me of my blog post and that this turn of events wasn’t exactly in line with the whole this-is-how-I-finally-moved-on thing I had planned to discuss.

For the sake of my pride and my nearly complete blog post, I considered dipping back into my old pattern of ignoring what had just happened – and my truth – so that I could stay on track with my theme, finish the damn piece, and publish something “inspirational.”

Who would even know? I thought.

While my mind’s argument to override my feelings was compelling, the excitement of the experience was ultimately too intoxicating to settle for doing the “sensible” thing. Besides, after a divorce, the death of my dog, and leaving my 10-year career – all within the first six months of a pandemic – I’d acquired quite a fuck-it attitude and an affinity for saying all the “foolish” things you’re not supposed to say to an ex (read: I started caring less about my image and more about my integrity and alignment).

An hour-and-a-half later, I sent the text.

Immediately after I pushed send, however, I was flooded with intense negative feelings. In response to these feelings, I watched my mind drag up all of its old, familiar, and not-so-nice stories about myself to try and distract me from the emotional intensity.

I can’t believe you texted him again. That was really stupid. No strong, independent, respectable woman would ever do something like this.

As my mind continued playing its stories on repeat, I entered an all-too-familiar shame cycle and heard from one of my loudest inner critics: You’re so pathetic – no one is ever going to love you.

In minutes I’d gone from elated to crushed. And to make matters worse, my ex wasn’t responding.

In a desperate attempt to pull myself out of my own self-created spiral, I texted an EPI friend for some support.

“Breathe,” she reminded me. “Get to the shore.”

After reading my friend’s text, I put my phone down, breathed, and redirected my attention from my thoughts to my physical sensations. With this shift, I began to find some space from the harsh self criticism.

As I continued to face into and welcome all of my experience – including the fear, the anger, and the profound sadness that had bubbled up in my body – the big waves of emotional energy eventually peaked, pointed me to what they were really about (which, it turns out, had less to do with my ex and more to do with my own unexpressed emotion from childhood) and then moved on through.

Within minutes, as my body calmed and my inner critic quieted, I began to shift back into more of the positive emotions like self-love and acceptance, as well as compassion – especially for my inner critic and how hard it had worked to try and help me to not feel those big feelings. As I continued to settle into this more expansive state, I also found myself wondering about the big picture and what I might be learning from this whole ordeal.

Later that day, when I chatted with my mom about my experience and reviewed the lyrics of the Mraz song, we marveled at the workings of the universe and mused over what it all might have meant in the grand scheme of my life.

“‘Life goes full circle,’” my mom said, noting the refrain. “That line, ‘life goes full circle’ – it just keeps standing out to me as a message for you.”

My body lit up with goosebumps as a new sense of curiosity entered my being – one that expanded beyond my egoic attachment to the meaning of the photo album and my relationship between me and my ex, into one that inquired about how this experience might simply be between me and me.

Over the next few days, as I pondered over the new message I wanted to share, it dawned on me that writing this blog was a lot like life and relationships: sometimes no matter how confident we may feel about the direction we’re headed, we often end up on a much different path than we’d planned. I realized, however, that when I choose to embrace this unplanned path, honor all of the emotions that come along with it, and simply speak my truth, life always seems to find a way to support me with coming full circle. Back home to myself.