What if your path is just a long and winding road?
Monday Musings
Here’s your mantra for the week! This week’s card is from my Cards for Creative Courage oracle deck. You can get it here or here.
This card – You’re on the right path – was the first card I drew for myself this year. And it couldn’t have come at a better time for me. Over the last months of 2023, I’d made so many changes…
I’d started this Substack, I’d overhauled my 1:1 coaching programme to incorporate Akashic Records readings, I’d set the intention to finally record all those guided meditations that have been swirling around in my head for the past couple of years, and that’s without the changes I’ve been making on a more personal level.
At that point in time, at the very start of the year I was going to implement all these changes, hearing that I was on the right path – which, to me, translates to ‘Shush, doubts, you don’t know what you’re talking about!’ – was exactly the affirmation I needed.
Drawing the card again today made me reflect on these changes and where I’ve allowed myself to be guided over the past ten weeks, but it also transported me back to an Akashic Records reading I did almost exactly a year ago.
The person who I was reading for that session was feeling incredibly confused about the path they were on career wise. They had just accepted a new job, but they weren’t sure whether it had been the right choice. For a while now, they’d felt drawn in so many different directions that they’d been feeling like they were stuck on a roundabout with at least five exits, all of which they wanted to take.
As soon as I started asking about this when in their Akashic Records, what I saw in my mind’s eye wasn’t a roundabout. What I saw was a long and winding road, and the message I received was that these five different career paths my readee felt forced to choose from were actually one and the same path.
Initially, this confused me, because I knew that some of these career paths were full-time ones and couldn’t possibly be combined. But as we talked through this – this was one of the few readings I’ve ever done in person – my readee told me that some of the paths they’d been feeling pulled towards weren’t going to happen anytime soon. Their fear was simply that, if they took the career path that made the most sense in the short-term, it would lead them away from the other careers they would like to pursue someday.
Instantly – and this is what I love about working with the Akashic Records – I received the message that it wasn’t about choosing between any of these paths. The reason I was offered that image of a long and winding road was because choosing that first career, the one that made most sense in the moment, would end up leading them to that second career, and so on.
How, neither of us could imagine, but their Akashic Records reminded us that the how wasn’t something my readee needed to worry about. Whether that first career would bring them the skills to pursue that second career, or whether that second career would then bring them in touch with the right people for that third career, none of that was information their Akashic Records felt like we needed to know. At least, not at the time of the reading.
The only thing we needed to know, that my readee needed to know, was that fully committing to the job they had just accepted didn’t mean they were opting out of the other careers. Quite the contrary.
It was around this time that my own Akashic guides piped up and nudged me to get out The Magic of Nature Oracle by Sheena Cundy and Tania Copsey and locate the Summer card. This happens every so often, my Akashic guides telling me to pick a card from one of the decks I own to offer a visual to the person I am reading for.
I couldn’t quite remember what the Summer card looked like as I was going through the stack, but once I found it amongst the other cards, I had to laugh. Here was the exact visual that had entered my mind earlier, that of the long and winding road.
The path depicted on this card isn’t a straightforward one, but neither is the path my readee is on. And like the path in the picture, which disappears out of the frame, there was only so much of their path that their Akashic Records allowed us to see.
It reminded me of my own path. Looking back, I see the bends and curves in the road, but I see very few signs that where I am right now is where I was going to ‘end up’. Of course, I haven’t ended up anywhere yet, I’m still walking, and anything beyond my near future is as clear to me as my readee’s future now is to them, which is not at all.
The only thing we can both see clearly is the next step, and maybe the one after that, but that’s it. The rest comes down to trusting that, whatever me may come across on our individual paths will help us get where we need to be, even if, to us, it feels like we’re going about it in a roundabout way (see what I did there?).
That doesn’t mean that it’s never a choice between one path and the other, because sometimes it is. Sometimes, it really is either/or. But there will be times when it might seem there’s a choice to be made when all we really need to do is take that next step, the one most obvious to us in the moment.
When I drew this card and was reminded of doing this reading, I contacted said readee and asked how they were feeling now, a year after our session together. This is what they had to say:
I feel like my direction in what I’m doing is clearer and I have less concerns/worries about what the future holds. I kind of feel more in control of what/when and how, if that makes sense? I feel much more positive and looking forward to the future rather than being afraid of it.
Obviously, I loved hearing that, and it brought home to me once more how much a change in perspective can affect the way we feel about and live our lives.
Next time you’re struggling with your own path, maybe remind yourself that what looks like an either/or choice could just be a bend, a necessary curve, you have to learn how to navigate before you can travel on.
Happy creating, and happy winding, this week <3
Mariëlle
Your heart knows what it wants, but do you?
This special Kickstarter edition of Listen to Your Heart: A 31-Day Tarot Challenge to Embrace and Follow your Wildest Dreams and Desires is designed to help you figure out just that.
In my sixth tarot challenge, I invite you to sit with your heart for thirty-one days to unravel:
where you’ve been listening to your heart and where you haven’t,
how your heart relates to your body, mind, and soul,
how these relationships can be improved on, and
what your heart truly wants of and for you, now and in the future.
If you’re ready to start listening to your heart and embrace the path it so wants to lead you towards, Listen to Your Heart is the perfect tool for you.
The campaign for Listen to Your Heart runs until the 21st of March.