what you want wants you

What you want wants you.

I keep hearing this phrase. I first heard it in one of my favourite oracle decks: The Sacred Rebel Oracle by Alana Fairchild. This idea that your dreams and desires want you just as much as you want them. No matter how seemingly far-fetched. Those innate yearnings that belong to you are road maps to your most authentic expression of self. Even if you are a person who has met a ton of personal goals, it would be rare to live in this world and not have some seemingly oddball desires that you have likely put off or denied yourself. But those hints and nudges that keep coming back around? That you dismiss or think are too indulgent or strange? Perhaps where you find yourself judging others? I believe that there is where the juiciest most satisfying, life-transforming, world-shifting potential lives.

This fall I started a Graduate program to become a psychotherapist. It’s been a long windy road here. And it will be a long windy road to completion too. I’m sure because I don’t do straight lines. Becoming a therapist is something I’ve considered over the years in different seasons in my life and so many limiting beliefs held me back in the past. Stories that I needed to be “healed” first or already a skilled therapist (somehow?!). That I couldn’t trust myself to be consistent… And prior to understanding how my brain works as a neurodivergent person, there was a lot to back up that belief and not a lot of support tools or compassion for that very real issue.

Still, time and again, this idea of supporting people one to one kept circling back to me. And as my kids have begun to take steps towards differing levels of independence, my capacity to hold more has expanded. I began to see how so many of my roles and fascinations over the years have built a foundation that makes this the clear next right step for me now. Those fears still lived there trying to protect me from “failing,” but I could hold them and still step forward knowing I could handle whatever came next. The process of researching programs, compiling my resume, and writing out applications became these exercises in really grounding into all that brought me to that moment in time. Why the timing was right. Sure, I suppose in one reality I might’ve done a graduate program ages ago and maybe even have been a practising psychotherapist for years at this point, but I know that I would have chosen a different program, not had the deep passion that has developed from supporting my kids all these years and becoming intimately aware of the invisible undervalued labour inherent in raising humans. I would still have been approaching that learning from a story of punishing inadequacy and reductive ideas of success. And likely, given my kiddos needs, I would have needed to pull way back to support them as I have these years. Now I realize that’s all conjecture. That sliding doors isn’t entirely relevant since I have no power over what I did or didn’t do in the past, but I do wonder about “right” timing. I see how so many seemingly unconnected pieces have come together, without any conscious intention on my part, just by following what has called to me.

As I’ve shared starting this program with people around me, so many have mentioned their own dreams of returning to school or pursuing something different. I sought out so many examples of other people who were starting fresh later in life in order to see to believe I could too. Now having jumped off this next life cliff, I can be that for you if you need it. What you want wants you too. And yes, this may not be the exact right timing, but follow the clues in any small way you can. Explore, experiment, play, research. Sit and get quiet and ask for hints if it feels too hard to capture. Maybe that thing you are curious about is actually the route to something you can’t even imagine yet.

In fact, I suspect it is.

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If you’re looking to try something new with a small group, I have a weaving workshop coming up November 15th with a few spots left. Find out more here.