Episode 82
Have you ever had a sense of how something was going to unfold…
You had a feeling about it. Perhaps you had an idea, plans, things you wanted to create or explore. You could feel the energy around it. You could almost see where you were heading.
And then… Life didn't quite go that way.
Or perhaps *you* didn't go that way.
The energy wasn't there in the way you expected it to be. Things you thought you’d be moving forward with seemed to slow down. Perhaps you tried to get something going, and it just didn't seem to take hold.
And you might have found yourself wondering…
What's happening here?
Am I stuck?
Have I lost my momentum?
Am I doing something wrong?
If you'd like to join me in exploring this today, pull up a comfy chair, invite in your soul, and be open to receiving what you need to live, be, and thrive as the embodied soul you are.
Because I've been noticing something in my own experience over these past ten months or so.
And it's been a really interesting journey.
At the beginning of 2026, I had a sense of a year that would be about momentum. About fire. About moving forward, creating things, bringing things into the world. New beginnings. New offerings. All of those things that can come with that feeling of a new year, a new chapter, a new direction.
And yet, that's not really how the year has unfolded.
It's been much more of an inward journey.
Much more exploration of my inner landscape. Looking at things. Uncovering things. Noticing patterns, thoughts, beliefs, and ways of seeing myself and the world that I perhaps hadn't fully recognized before.
I've been exploring in ways that don't always fit neatly into words, either. Working in those liminal spaces, those places of inner knowing and exploration, where I can find myself looking at something from a perspective that isn't necessarily the perspective of Joanne in this lifetime.
And there's been a lot of allowing.
Allowing something to come into awareness. Witnessing it. Observing it. Asking questions. Reflecting on it. Sometimes sharing it with someone else and discovering that, in the process of talking about it, another layer becomes visible.
And somewhere along the way, I caught myself.
Because although I was allowing this inward journey to unfold, there was still a part of me that was measuring the year against what I thought it should look like.
I thought I should be doing more outwardly. I thought there should be more momentum.
And yet, when I actually stopped and listened to what was happening within me, I wasn't necessarily feeling that outward momentum.
So there was this little disconnect.
What I thought I should be doing, based on the picture I had of how this year would unfold, wasn't necessarily what I was being drawn towards.
And I think it's worth noticing how easily we can do this.
We can have an expectation of our life, our growth, our next chapter, and what our becoming is supposed to look like.
And even when we're consciously allowing life to unfold, even when we're trying to listen and follow what feels right, we can still be holding that picture in the background.
That idea of where we thought we'd be by now.
What we thought we'd have created.
Who we thought we'd be.
And if what's happening doesn't match that picture, we can interpret it as a problem.
We can think we're behind. That we've lost something. That we need to get ourselves moving again.
But what if we pause for a moment and consider that perhaps the movement hasn't stopped at all?
What if it's taking a form we didn't expect?
Because that's what I've been discovering.
I didn't have one big *ta-da!* moment where suddenly everything shifted and I knew I was moving again.
It hasn't been like that.
It's been much more gradual. Much more spiral-shaped, if you like.
There have been moments when something has opened up. A new insight. A fresh perspective. Something I've suddenly understood in a different way.
Sometimes I wake up with something clear that wasn't clear before.
And then I might explore that for a while. Follow it. See where it takes me.
Perhaps something new begins to form around it.
And then things ebb again.
And I might think, well, okay, perhaps that's all that's happening with that for now.
And then something else comes along. Another insight. A conversation. A different way of looking at something. An idea that sparks something in me that wasn't there before.
And off I go again, exploring that.
Sometimes it's something I had previously thought about doing, but it wasn't quite the right time. Or I couldn't find the energy for it. Or I kept turning it over in my mind and never really got anywhere with it.
And then, suddenly, something shifts.
The energy is different.
I find myself moving towards it without all that thinking and rethinking that I might previously have done.
And sometimes I surprise myself.
I realize I've started doing something, or I've said something, or I've taken a step, before I've even fully understood that something had changed in me.
It's as though something has been moving beneath the surface, and now there's a kind of readiness.
Not necessarily a big, dramatic readiness.
Just a sense of, *Oh. Okay. This is what I'm doing now.*
And I think that's important.
Because when we look only at what's visible, we can miss so much of what's actually taking place.
We can look at the outside of our lives and see that something hasn't happened yet.
The project hasn't moved forward. The idea hasn't become a reality. The conversation hasn't taken place. The new direction isn't clear.
But we don't necessarily see the changes that are happening within us.
We don't see the old beliefs we're beginning to question.
The patterns we're recognizing.
The fears that are losing some of their hold.
And the things we're beginning to understand about why we respond the way we do, why we make certain choices, why we keep returning to the same thoughts or find ourselves holding back in particular situations.
And those things matter. They matter because our inner world is part of how we meet and experience our outer world.
It's part of what shapes the choices we make, the things we're willing to explore, the conversations we have, the opportunities we recognize, and the ways we respond when something doesn't go the way we expected.
And when something shifts within us, we can begin to meet the same circumstances differently.
I can think of things that I've gone over and over in my mind in the past.
Things I've considered from every possible angle. Reworked. Put aside. Picked up again. Wondered whether I should or shouldn't do something.
And now, in some of those same kinds of situations, there's much less of that rumination. Much less second-guessing.
Sometimes there's simply a knowing that it's time to do something. Or a knowing that it's not. And that can be quite a different experience.
I've also noticed it in conversations.
There have been things I've wanted to talk about, perhaps things I've felt needed to be addressed, but I've pushed them down or put them aside.
And then something changes, and suddenly I feel ready to have the conversation.
At times it’s very much felt like a pull forward… or a very clear, “It’s time now. Go.”
And what surprises me is how I meet it.
I can have the conversation calmly. Without the defensiveness or reactivity that might previously have been there.
That doesn't mean I don't care about the subject. It doesn't mean I have no feelings about it. It's simply that I'm not being pulled into the same reactions.
There's more space. More neutrality.
And that changes the experience of the conversation, doesn't it?
The circumstances might not have changed very much at all. But the way I'm meeting them has changed.
And I think this is one of the things we can overlook when we think about inner work.
We can imagine that the evidence of our inner work will be something happening out there.
A new job. A new relationship. A project taking off. Something tangible that we can point to and say, “There. That's the result.”
And sometimes, of course, there are tangible changes. Things do begin to take form.
But sometimes the change is in how we experience our lives. In what we can see now that we couldn't see before. In what no longer has the same hold over us. In what we're no longer willing to keep doing. Or in what we finally feel ready to explore.
And that is movement, too.
Even when nobody else can see it. Even when we can't yet explain exactly where it's leading.
So if you've been in a season where things seem to have slowed down, or you've been doing a lot of inner work and wondering when it's going to translate into something more tangible, perhaps this is an invitation to look at it a little differently.
Not to decide that everything is happening for a reason, or that you must be exactly where you're supposed to be, or that you should simply sit back and wait.
That's not what I'm suggesting.
I'm suggesting that we can become curious about what's actually happening.
Because there's a difference between forcing ourselves to move because we think we should be moving, and noticing where movement is genuinely beginning to arise.
And sometimes we need to get a little closer to what is here, rather than continually comparing it with what we thought would be here.
What has changed in you over the past few months?
What do you see differently now?
Are there things that once felt important that no longer have quite the same pull?
Are there things you thought you wanted that you… that you’re beginning to question?
Perhaps something you were trying to make happen has changed shape.
Perhaps it's still forming.
Perhaps you've discovered that something is actually complete, or that it's time to let it go, even if you don’t yet know what comes next.
And perhaps there are things that are still very much alive in you, but they need a different kind of attention than you expected.
We don't always know which one of these it is right away.
And I think that's okay.
We don't have to rush to label every pause, every change of direction, or every loss of interest.
We can allow ourselves to look a little more closely.
To explore.
To try something and see how it feels.
To discover that something isn't quite right for us and change direction.
To learn from an experience that didn't turn out the way we thought it would.
Because whose idea was it, anyway, that we shouldn't fail?
That we should get everything right the first time?
That if we start something and it doesn't work out, it means we've made a mistake?
It's not an idea I choose to believe anymore.
Sometimes we learn by doing.
Sometimes we learn by trying something and discovering that it's not for us.
Sometimes we have to follow an idea long enough to understand what it is, or what it isn't.
And sometimes the very act of exploring something gives us the information we need to take the next step in a completely different direction.
We couldn't have known that beforehand.
We had to engage with it.
We had to participate in the process.
And that, to me, is part of becoming.
Not having a perfectly mapped-out destination and then following the steps to get there.
But being in relationship with what's emerging.
Listening. Responding. Exploring. Learning.
Allowing what we discover to inform what we do next.
And this brings me to something else I've been thinking about.
Because so much of this inner exploration doesn't happen in isolation, even when the initial insight or experience is deeply personal.
Sometimes I have an insight, and I think I understand what it means.
And then I hear something else in a video, or have a conversation with a friend, or encounter a perspective that opens up another layer.
Something I hadn't considered.
Something that doesn't necessarily contradict what I saw or understood, but allows me to see it from a different angle.
And suddenly, there's more to explore.
I've had this happen so many times.
I might have been carrying an understanding of something for a while, and then somebody says something that helps me recognize a part of it I hadn't quite seen before.
Or perhaps I hear someone else describe an experience that resonates with something I've been exploring in myself.
And that resonance creates an opening. It gives me somewhere else to look.
It helps me find language for something, or recognize a connection, or simply feel less alone in the exploration.
And I think there's something really valuable about finding people and spaces where we can do that.
Places where we can share what we're discovering without needing to have it all figured out.
Where we can be curious together.
Where we can bring our experiences and perspectives and allow them to inform one another.
And that doesn't mean we all have to agree. It doesn't mean we're all on the same page. We're not.
We have different experiences, different histories, different ways of understanding things.
But sometimes we have common chapters.
Common threads.
And another person's perspective can help us see something in our own experience that we might not have recognized otherwise.
Of course, discernment matters. Not every space is right for us, and not every perspective needs to be taken on board.
But we don't have to dismiss a perspective simply because it's different from our own, either.
We can be curious.
We can listen and see what resonates, what opens up something, what invites us to look again.
And we can allow ourselves to learn without having to surrender our own knowing in the process.
For me, this connects with something I've been exploring through this Embodied Soul podcast and through my channel for a long time.
We're not just here to receive beautiful energies, to have insight, to experience something profound in a meditation or a transmission, and then leave it there.
There's something about bringing that into our actual lives. Into the body.
Into our relationships. Into the choices we make and the ways we respond to the world around us.
What does it look like to live from what we're discovering?
How does it change the way we meet a difficult conversation?
How does it change what we're willing to explore?
What we allow ourselves to express?
How we relate to other people?
And sometimes, how we relate to ourselves?
Because this is where the inner and outer worlds meet.
Not necessarily through a grand gesture or some dramatic transformation.
Sometimes through something quite small.
A conversation we finally feel ready to have.
A boundary that becomes clearer.
An old pattern we recognize and don't automatically follow.
An idea we allow ourselves to explore, even though we don't yet know where it's going.
Or a decision to stop pursuing something that no longer feels like ours.
There are ways that what’s shifting within us begins to find expression in our lives.
And it may not look the way we expected.
It may not look impressive from the outside.
It may not even be something that can be explained to another person.
But we know something is different.
We can feel the difference in how we move through the world.
And perhaps this is where I want to bring us back to the idea of expectations.
Because when I look at my own year, I can see things that have taken shape.
I can see ideas that have changed.
I can see things that are still forming.
And I can see things that I thought I wanted that are beginning to fall away, or that I know will come to an end, even if I don't yet know exactly when or how.
It's not a neat progression from one thing to the next.
It's much more fluid than that. There's ebb and flow. There's movement, and then a pause. There's something growing, something changing shape, something being released.
And sometimes, when we're in the middle of that process, we simply can't see the whole picture.
I keep coming back to the image of seeds.
If we plant seeds in a garden, we don't expect every single one of them to produce something visible straight away.
Some take longer than others.
Some are doing things beneath the surface before we see anything above the ground.
The roots are developing. Something is anchoring. There's a whole process taking place that we can't necessarily see.
And if we judged the garden only by what’s visible at a particular moment, we might conclude that nothing much was happening.
But we also know that planting a seed doesn't guarantee it will grow into exactly what we imagined.
We still have to tend the garden. Pay attention. Notice what's emerging.
Respond to what the plants actually need, rather than insisting they grow according to our preferred timetable.
And I think there's something in this for us, too.
Perhaps there are seeds you've planted in your own life that haven't yet become visible.
Perhaps some of them are taking root in ways you don't recognize yet.
Perhaps others are changing shape.
And perhaps some of the things you thought you were growing are no longer what you want to cultivate.
You don't have to force them all into the same picture.
You can tend what’s here.
You can notice what’s beginning to emerge.
And you can allow what you've learned about yourself, and what has shifted within you, to inform how you move forward.
As we move towards a new year, it's easy to start thinking about what we want to achieve, what we want to create, what we want to do differently.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
I love creating things. I love exploring new ideas and following the energy when something begins to take form.
But I also want to remember that becoming doesn't only happen when we're moving quickly.
It doesn't only happen when we point to something we've accomplished.
Sometimes there's a great deal happening in the quieter spaces.
And sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to be in those spaces without deciding that we're somehow falling behind.
So perhaps, if this resonates with you, you might take a little time to reflect.
Not to make another list of things you should be doing. Not to work out how to get yourself back on track.
Just to become curious.
What has actually been moving in you?
What have you come to understand about yourself that you didn't understand before?
What feels different?
Where are you finding more ease, more clarity, or perhaps simply a little more space to respond differently?
And where is there a spark of interest or energy beginning to appear?
It might be something you've been wanting to explore. It might be a conversation. It might be a new idea that you don't yet know what to do with.
Or perhaps, when you look honestly at what's here, you recognize that something needs to remain inward for a little longer.
That's information, too.
You don't have to turn every spark into a project.
You don't have to turn every insight into an action plan.
And you don't have to keep pursuing something just because a previous version of you decided it was what you wanted.
You can listen again.
You can allow what you know now to meet what’s emerging.
And you can take the next step from there.
Not necessarily the next ten steps. Just the next one.
Because I think we can sometimes make becoming much more complicated than it needs to be when we believe we have to know where everything is leading before we allow ourselves to begin.
We don't.
We can participate in what’s becoming from where we are now.
We can explore without knowing the outcome.
We can learn as we go along.
And we can allow ourselves to be changed by what we discover.
For me, that’s part of what it means to bring our soul into our lived experience.
It's not about reaching a point where we have everything figured out, or where we finally become the person we thought we were supposed to be.
It's about being present to the person we're becoming.
Noticing what’s changing.
Being willing to meet ourselves in a new way.
And allowing those changes to find expression in how we live, how we relate, and what we choose to bring into the world.
And perhaps, as we do that, we also begin to discover that we're not doing this entirely on our own.
Other people enter our lives. Conversations open things up. Different perspectives help us see more. Something we're exploring in ourselves connects with something another person’s exploring in themselves.
And new possibilities can emerge in that space between us.
We don't always know what those possibilities will be.
Sometimes we just recognize a thread. Something that resonates. Something that invites us to look a little more closely, or to explore something we might not have explored on our own.
And we follow it.
That's enough for now.
We don't need to know what the whole tapestry will look like before we're willing to work with the thread that's in our hands.
So wherever you find yourself right now, I invite you to be a little gentle with yourself.
Especially if the year hasn't unfolded the way you expected.
Especially if you've been wondering why things haven't moved more quickly, or why something you thought you wanted no longer seems to fit.
You haven't necessarily lost your momentum.
You may be moving in a way you haven't yet learned to recognize.
And perhaps the invitation isn't to force yourself back into the picture you had before. Perhaps it's to look at what's here now. To notice what has shifted, what’s still unfolding, what’s ready to be explored, and what might be asking to be released.
And then to allow that understanding to inform what comes next.
There isn't one right place for you to be.
There isn't one right way for becoming to look.
And the movement that matters most to you may not be the movement that other people can see.
Sometimes the most important changes are the ones that happen within us first.
And sometimes, when we're ready, we begin to see those changes find their way into our lived lives in ways we couldn't have planned.
I'd love to hear what this brings up for you, if you feel like sharing.
Perhaps you've had a year that unfolded very differently from the one you imagined.
Perhaps you've noticed changes in yourself that haven't yet translated into anything particularly visible.
Or perhaps you're beginning to feel a new spark of energy after a period of quiet, and you're curious about where it might lead.
Whatever it is, I'd love to hear about your experience.
Because I think we can learn so much from one another when we're willing to share not just what we've achieved, or what we've figured out, but what we're actually experiencing along the way.
The questions. The changes. The unexpected turns.
The things that are still forming.
We're all navigating our own lives, our own becoming, and yet there are often threads that connect us in ways we might not have recognized until someone else shares their experience.
And sometimes, that’s exactly what helps us see something new in our own.
So, until next time…
Be curious about what's moving.
Be open to what might be changing.
And give yourself permission to discover where it leads, one step at a time.
I look froward to seeing you again next week on Embodied Soul.
