There are No Wrong Turns

Dear Sovereigns:Several years ago, I walked the ancient labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral, one hour south of Paris, carrying something I no longer wanted to carry.I will not name it here. I suspect you already know the weight I mean, because most women are carrying their own version of it. The grief that lives inside a family relationship and the one you have also wounded. The part you played that you would rather not look at directly.The stones of the labyrinth were old and worn from the many people who walked it before me. The light coming in through the ancient stained glass was soft and gold. I followed the path without knowing what I would find, and when I reached the center, I set all of it down. In my surrender, Love received every bit of it without a single condition attached.I have been writing my way around that experience ever since. This article is the map I should have given you first.A Labyrinth Is Not a MazeThis distinction matters more than anything else I will say here.A maze is built to defeat you. It has dead ends and false turns and a designer who wants you to fail for a while. The goal of a maze is to solve it. Think of an escape room. There are clues and signs, and when you solve each of them, you eventually find the exit.A labyrinth is different, because it has only one path. There are no wrong turns, no choices to get right, nothing hidden that you are supposed to outsmart. You cannot become lost in a labyrinth because the only moves into the center or away from it. There is nothing to solve and everything to gain.The only way to stop walking a labyrinth is to step out of it.When you look at the design of labyrinths, notice the path winds inward then outward. It carries you close to the center and then curves back out toward the edge, sometimes when you were certain you had nearly arrived. The first time that happens you assume you have made a mistake or somehow missed a turn.Even when you feel disoriented or confused, you haven’t missed anything. That disorientation and confusion aren’t flaws in the design. It is the design.I think this is the single most useful thing I know, and I did not learn it from a book. I learned it from my own feet on old stone, walking away from the center while believing I was walking toward it.The Three Movements of a LabyrinthThere is a walk inward, an arrival, and a walk back out. I have come to understand my whole body of work as living somewhere in those three.The walk in is where you carry everything. The questions, the doubt, the identity you built to stay safe, the quiet conviction that something in you is incomplete. Nothing gets taken from you on the way in. Things simply get quieter, because something underneath them is becoming more present.The center is where you set down what you carried in and open to receive Love’s message. It isn’t a reward for having walked well. You do not arrive because you finally healed enough or resolved enough or became enough. You arrive because you walked. And Love meets you there without reviewing your record first.The walk out is where you embody Love’s message. You return on the same path, through the same curves, and you are not the same woman who entered. What you find at the center comes back with you into your kitchen and your work and your body. That returning, that carrying of Love back into an ordinary life, is the most revolutionary thing a woman can do.Why I Am Giving You This NowI write about sovereignty from different angles, and the angles can look unrelated.I have written about presence, and how my role as mother changed because my daughter is now an adult. There are more articles coming in the next few weeks that explore other aspects of sovereignty (which I define as the lived experience of Divine Love).Those pieces are not a curriculum. They are places on a path to remind you who you are. There are sacred powers you can access when you set down who-you-are-trying to be and you step into who-you-already-are.These articles can be read in any order. You will not miss a prerequisite, because there isn’t one. A woman who finds me on the article about presence is not behind, and a woman who starts at the beginning is not ahead.I want to say clearly what I am not doing, because so much writing for women does the opposite. I am not going to tell you which stage you are in. The moment you start assessing your position on the path, you have handed the assessment to someone outside you, and that is precisely the habit this entire body of work exists to end.You do not need to locate yourself inside of a process or stage. The only way to return to your authentic self is to turn inward.This is a soft revolution, a quiet reclaiming, a return to the you beneath the noise. There’s no rush here, no pressure to heal or fix, only a quiet invitation to come home to yourself and let Divine Love lead the way.What the Labyrinth AsksVery little, which is why I keep returning to it.It does not ask you to arrive ready. It does not ask you to understand it first, or to believe anything in particular, or to have resolved the thing you are carrying before you are permitted to enter. The stone labyrinth on the floor of the Chartres Cathedral has been receiving people for a thousand years and has never once required a woman to be finished.Instead, the labyrinth asks you to be still enough to listen, and then to take the next step.You can walk a labyrinth if you find one near you, and I hope you do. You can order small labyrinths online and finger walk the path. You can also walk one with your eyes closed in a chair, because you carry the shape of it inside you and always have.The center is there. Love is already waiting. And the path that seems to be taking you away from it is the same path that brings you home.There are No Wrong TurnsI used to think that was a fact about labyrinths. What I now believe is there are no wrong turns about Love.When I reached the center of the labyrinth that evening and surrendered the grief and the guilt and my own part in the story, none of it was counted against me. Not even the years I carried the grief and guilt like extra weight on my soul or the regrets I tattooed on my thoughts when it was too late to reconcile. None of that was a wrong turn because all of it was accepted by Love.The moment you hand it to Love, every step that brought you to Love is part of the path.You cannot earn the center and you cannot miss it. You can only walk, arrive carrying something, set it down, and find that Love was never keeping score of the route you took.Many blessings on your journey,KathrynEmpowered Way | Where women remember their sovereignty.If you have walked a labyrinth, I would love to hear about your experience. And if you have never walked a labyrinth, I created a guided meditation for you: The Labyrinth of Love. It’s free on Insight Timer. I always appreciate a new follower 😊Thanks for reading Empowered Way: Where Women Remember Their Sovereignty. Please share this post if it spoke to you or may help someone you know. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit empoweredway.substack.com