At the Crossroads: A Year That Asked Too Much

This year didn’t unravel in one dramatic moment. It frayed slowly.

Friendships shifted and disappointed. Not big explosive endings, just the quiet ache of realising that some connections weren’t as solid, reciprocal, or safe as I once believed. That kind of loss is harder to name, and somehow heavier to carry.

 

The shop struggled. I poured so much of myself into it, my creativity, my energy, my hope, and watching it not flourish in the way I’d imagined was painful. Not just financially, but emotionally. It felt like a reflection of me, even though I knew, logically, that it wasn’t.

 

Then my body stepped in. Illness forced me to slow down when I didn’t feel I had the space to. It was frightening, frustrating, and humbling all at the same time. I had to face the truth that I can’t keep pushing without consequence, no matter how strong or capable I believe myself to be.

 

And just as I was trying to catch my breath, more noise arrived. Unnecessary drama. Difficult people. Situations that demanded energy I simply didn’t have left. It made everything feel heavier, like I was constantly bracing myself instead of resting.

 

What’s hardest to admit is that none of this makes me angry anymore. It just makes me tired.

Tired of explaining.

Tired of managing other people’s emotions.

Tired of holding things together when they are clearly asking to be reimagined or released.

 

And yet, underneath the exhaustion, there is something else quietly forming.

 

This year has stripped away illusions. It’s shown me where I’ve over given, over extended, and stayed loyal to things that were no longer nourishing me. It’s revealed what doesn’t work in relationships/friendships, in business, and in how I treat my own limits.

 

Maybe this wasn’t a year of building.

Maybe it was a year of clearing.

 

I don’t feel triumphant. I don’t feel “grateful for the lessons.” I just feel honest. And I think that counts for something.

 

If I read this back one day, I hope I remember this:

I survived a year that asked too much – and I’m still here, softer in some places, stronger in others, and finally learning that rest is not something I have to earn.

 

 

Looking back now, I can see that the fraying didn’t actually begin this year at all.

 

It began quietly last summer, when we moved into the new shop, the bigger space, the heavier responsibility, the moment that felt like a step forward but carried the weight of several steps at once.

 

It wasn’t just expanding a shop.

It was opening two worlds side by side: the Apothecary and the Moon Spa. Two businesses, two energetic containers, two sets of expectations, all unfolding at the same time. I told myself I was ready. I believed it was the natural next chapter.

 

At the time, I trusted the people who were meant to help hold it. I believed in the vision of the spa, in the idea that it would grow beyond me, that others would step into roles with care and commitment. I believed in people who, as it turned out, were not who I thought they were.

 

One person stepping away just a week before the spa was due to open should have been a warning. A red flag.

Instead, I pushed on.

 

Another stepped in, and for a while I let myself hope again that things would stabilise, that I wouldn’t have to carry everything alone. But by February, that support was gone too. No real closure. Just absence. Just everything falling back onto my shoulders once more. Another sign.

 

And I carried it. Because that’s what I do.

 

 

That summer, before opening the new shop, I had a reading with a medium I trust, one of the most grounded, gifted people I’ve experienced. She’s deeply spiritual, profoundly connected to her guides, and yet never performative. That mattered to me, because I’ve always been cautious around mediumship.

 

I’ve trusted tarot and oracle as tools, mirrors for reflection, guidance for the subconscious, but spirit communication has always sat in a grey area for me. I’ve questioned it, and stayed sceptical. 

 

During an angelic reiki reading, something unexpected happened.

 

A presence came through, not once, but repeatedly.

 

She described a feminine energy appearing during the session, focusing her attention on my sacral space, my abdomen and womb. Healing was being sent there again and again. She described her clearly: a woman in a long dark cloak, hooded, with long white hair, white eyes and pale skin, carrying a wizard wand with a black crystal inside, and holding a lantern, then she placed a star on my solar plexus, and then more lanterns on the floor in the points of a star symbol around me.

 

At the time, I didn’t understand it. I noted it down, curious but detached. But something had been planted.

 

That was the beginning of my interest in Hekate, quiet, tentative, uncertain. I read a couple of books, tried to understand intellectually what might be calling me, without yet knowing how to listen in practice.

 

 

Looking back now, I see it differently.

 

That presence wasn’t there to impress or frighten. She was there to warn, to heal, to draw attention to something already unfolding in my body, my ovaries, my womb, my creative centre. I was being asked to slow down long before I was willing to.

 

The winter felt heavy. There was a pull inward I ignored. A sense of standing at a crossroads and refusing to choose. I expanded when I should have contracted. I pushed when I should have rested. I trusted outward structures over inner knowing.

 

So the warnings became lessons.

And the lessons became tests.

 

By the beginning of this year, my body joined the conversation, heavy bleeding, pain, exhaustion that couldn’t be explained away. And in May, everything came to a head: hospital, blood transfusion, diagnoses that reshaped my understanding of my future.

 

Endometriosis. Ovarian cysts. Surgery.

 

Nothing feels random anymore.

 

 

And woven through all of this were people.

Disappointments layered upon disappointments. Things said by people I trusted, expectations I could never meet. The slow realisation that not everyone wished me well.

 

As I tried to reshape the Moon Club into something healthier and more honest, people fell away. At the time it hurt. Now, I see it for what it was: shedding.

 

Eden & Moon Path became quieter. Smaller. Truer.

 

This year has been relentless in its initiation, especially around people, boundaries, and the cost of over giving.

 

Hekate didn’t arrive when everything fell apart.

She arrived before.

 

I just didn’t know how to listen yet.

 

 

Letting go of that shop was painful. It held so much effort, identity, and hope. But it was also heavy. Releasing it created space to breathe again.

 

I chose to continue with Eden & Moon Path online something that could live alongside my life rather than consume it. A space for learning, ritual, and reflection without constant pressure.

 

Alongside that, I created a Moon Coven for women, a small, in person, and rooted in choice rather than control. The word coven had always unsettled me. Too often I’d seen it tied to hierarchy, rules, power, and patriarchy, things I already navigate daily in my corporate working life.

 

That was never what I wanted.

 

The women who remained wanted the same thing I did: somewhere to learn, meet, and grow together, without ranks, obedience, or performance.

 

I’m not a High Priestess. I don’t want to be one. And I know there are people who would say I need titles, training, or permission.

 

That’s fine.

 

I’ll do what feels right.

 

 

This coven exists as a shared space, relational, embodied, human. A place to walk together rather than follow.

 

I also chose to honour my muggle job for what it is: the steady ground that pays the bills and provides security. That choice mattered.

 

And then, in autumn, the apothecary came home.

 

Moving everything back into my own space changed everything. No rush. No keys. No pressure to perform. Just shelves of herbs, quiet evenings, and intuitive creation.

 

I sit now and ask: What does my body need? What tea would soothe me? What wants to be made?

Rest and creation no longer feel like opposites.

 

 

I’m still living with endometriosis. Pain still comes. And when it does, I stop. Fully. The guilt still whispers push through, carry on but I can’t live that way anymore.

 

There is also the hormonal layer, the part that’s harder to articulate, but impossible to ignore. The combination of endometriosis, cysts, and hormonal treatment has taken my emotions on a ride I didn’t consent to. Some days I feel low for no clear reason. Some days my patience evaporates. There have been tears that arrive without warning, anxiety that grips suddenly, moments of panic, and a sense of feeling slightly unrecognisable to myself. It’s unsettling, and at times it’s made me sharp, snappy, or withdrawn especially with the person closest to me. What I’m learning is the importance of naming this out loud. Of being honest rather than trying to mask it. Of letting myself be seen in it, so it isn’t mistaken for anger or distance. This phase is real, it’s embodied, and it’s not a personal failing, it’s something being navigated together, with compassion and communication, rather than silence.

 

Listening isn’t optional now.

Rest isn’t indulgent.

Slowing down isn’t laziness, it’s survival.

 

 

As autumn deepened into winter, I returned more consciously this time to the path I had only skirted before.

 

I began walking with Hekate deliberately. Not as an identity. Not as a performance. But as a practice of attention.

 

I undertook a seven-day honouring of Hekate, simple, intentional and steady. It asked me to sit with liminal spaces rather than bypass them. It brought clarity rather than chaos.

 

I spoke about this work within the Moon Coven, and it opened some meaningful conversations around dark goddesses, shadow work, and the parts of ourselves that don’t exist to be fixed or softened. There was permission in that space to be honest.

 

Around this time, the dreaming intensified.

 

Two dreams arrived that felt different, vivid, symbolic, lingering. Not demanding interpretation, just asking to be noticed. They felt less like messages and more like confirmations.

 

Not prophecy – alignment.

 

What I see now is that Hekate has never demanded devotion from me. She has stood at thresholds, torch raised, illuminating what was already there. Asking only that I look.

 

And I did.

 

 

Not all of this year’s weight came from choices I made. Some of it arrived through situations that were never really mine to hold, yet still landed heavily in my body.

 

One of those has been a deeply personal family situation involving a child I care about.

 

Loving a child while standing at the edge of circumstances you can’t control creates a particular kind of tension, one that lives in the nervous system. As things intensified emotionally, my body faltered again. Fatigue returned. Pain flared. Illness followed.

 

I don’t know if that connection is coincidental or not. I just know my body speaks clearly when emotional strain has nowhere to go.

 

I’m at a crossroads here, wanting to protect, wanting to step back, wanting to do the right thing without sacrificing myself. There are no neat answers. Only boundaries still forming.

 

 

At the same time, my working life shifted.

 

Returning to my muggle job after hospital and recovery, I expected support. What I encountered instead was distance, rumour, and a lack of softness from where I expected it most. The support that did come arrived quietly, practically, from masculine energies instead.

 

That was hard to reconcile.

 

It taught me something important: where care is performative, and where it is real.

 

This year has sharpened my discernment. I’m less shocked now. More selective. More aware of where my energy belongs.

 

 

As the year closes, I don’t feel disillusioned.

I feel discerning.

 

Disillusionment hardens.

Discernment clarifies.

 

I see now where I stayed too long, gave too much, and mistook endurance for devotion. I see where support was real and where it was conditional. None of this has made me smaller, it’s made me clearer.

 

Boundaries are no longer walls. They are thresholds.

 

Slowing down is not a failure of ambition. It’s a realignment of values. Rest is devotional. Walking away can be an act of integrity.

 

I don’t know exactly what the next year will hold. I’m no longer trying to map it out in advance. What I do know is this:

 

I will listen more closely.

I will choose more carefully.

I will honour my body, my time, and my energy as limited and sacred.

 

I will keep what nourishes.

I will release what drains.

And I will trust myself at the crossroads.

 

That feels like enough.