If you look at my logo, you’ll see a symbol called the Unalome in the design.
I didn’t choose it because it was beautiful, although I do think it is. I chose it because when I first understood what it represented, I recognized something of my own life in that winding line.
The Unalome comes from Buddhist spiritual tradition and is commonly associated with the journey toward enlightenment. The line begins at the bottom and quickly becomes tangled and circular. It twists, doubles back, and moves in directions that don’t appear to make much sense. Gradually, the line (path) becomes clearer and straighter and ultimately ends with three small dots at the very top.
For me, this symbol represents something I have had to learn over and over again.
The path is rarely straight.
I Spent a Long Time Trying to Make Mine Straight
For much of my life, I thought I knew what I was supposed to be doing.
In my twenties and thirties, I worked in corporate America, traveled constantly, pushed myself hard, and lived with an enormous amount of stress. I was productive and moved up the proverbial corporate ladder just as I thought I was supposed to do. I was capable. And from the outside, many of the pieces looked right.
But inside, something felt different.
Later, I left that world and became a full-time mother. I thought perhaps changing my circumstances would quiet whatever I had been feeling. Then my second daughter was born with Cystic Fibrosis, and the illusion that I could organize my life well enough to feel safe fell apart.
I was terrified.
I was exhausted.
I worried constantly about the future, and I lived in a state of trying to anticipate, manage, prevent, and control whatever might happen prevent, and control whatever might happen next.
Looking back now, I can see myself in the beginning of the Unalome. Circling. Searching. Trying incredibly hard to find the thing that would make everything feel okay.
My Search Became Spiritual
Eventually, the life I had been living forced me to begin asking different questions.
If achievement wasn’t going to make me feel safe, what would? If control couldn’t protect the people I loved, what could? If changing my circumstances didn’t create peace, where was I supposed to look?
Those questions led me into meditation, mindfulness, contemplative psychotherapy, spiritual study, and years of personal work.
That journey changed me deeply.
It also eventually asked me to confront something that was much harder to admit.
Sometimes even spirituality can become another place to hide.
place to hide.
I had spent years learning how to observe my thoughts, find stillness, understand spiritual concepts, and reach for a different state of consciousness. Some of that work was profoundly healing. Some of it also allowed me to move around things I wasn’t yet quite ready to face.
There were wounds underneath the searching; some I was painfully aware of and others which lurked unbeknownst to me, under the surface of my awareness.
There were patterns in my relationships.
There were fears, beliefs, protective strategies, and old ways of surviving that meditation alone was never going to erase.
At some point, the question stopped being, How do I get beyond this?
It became the question that now sits at the heart of my work:
What am I pretending not to know?
What struck me as I pondered the answer to that What struck me as I pondered the answer to that deep question was that no matter where my life had taken me, no matter what circumstances I encountered,
The Twists Were Never a Mistake
This is one of the reasons the Unalome means so much to me.
Its winding path does not disappear when the line begins to straighten.
It remains and integral part of the entire symbol itself.
I spent a lot of years believing growth meant becoming someone who no longer struggled, reacted, became afraid, repeated patterns, or got lost.
I don’t believe that anymore.
The difficult parts of my life are never separate from my path. They are part of what revealed it.
Motherhood was part of it. Fear was part of it. Relationships were part of it. The moments when I abandoned myself were part of it. The years I spent looking outside myself for answers years I spent looking outside myself for answers were part of it.
Even the things I once wished I could remove from my story became places where something important could finally be seen.
That understanding became the foundation of what I now call Facing the Trees.
The Trees Are the Path
Facing the Trees grew from a realization that changed the way I understand transformation.
Most of us spend enormous amounts of energy trying to get past the things that hurt.
We want the relationship to change. We want the fear to go away. We want the circumstances to improve. We want to get through the hard part so we can finally arrive at the life we were supposed to be living.
I spent years doing versions of that myself.
What I came to understand was that the things I wanted to avoid facing or get around were frequently the very things asking me to pay attention. They are the very things that ask me attention. They are the very things that ask me to look more deeply, to challenge my old ways of being, to face myself:
The relationship that activates me can reveal an old wound.
The reaction I cannot seem to control can reveal a survival strategy.
The pattern I keep repeating can show me something I have not yet been willing or able to see.
The tree standing in front of me may not be blocking the path.
The tree may be the path.
The Unalome expresses that same truth for me in a single continuous line.
I Don’t Think the Straight Line Means Life Becomes Perfect
I want to be careful about another part of the symbol because it would be easy to look at the Unalome and assume that eventually we become enlightened enough that life straightens itself out.
out.
That has not been my experience.
I think that’s why there are three dots at the top, as if to say “more to be revealed.”
I still have patterns. I still get activated. I still encounter fear, uncertainty, grief, and parts of myself I would rather not see.
What has changed is my relationship to them.
I can see more of what is happening inside me while it is happening. I have a greater capacity to stay present instead of immediately escaping, controlling, explaining, fixing, or reacting.
Sometimes I can interrupt an old pattern and make a different choice.
Sometimes I cannot.
And sometimes awareness arrives five minutes, five days, or five months later.
That, too, is part of the path.
For me, the line becoming straighter represents consciousness. It represents the space that begins to appear between what happens to us begins to appear between what happens to us and how we respond. It represents the possibility of choice where there was once only reaction.
I don’t see the destination as perfection.
I see it as presence.
Why It Belongs in My Logo
A logo is supposed to represent a brand.
I wanted mine to represent something deeper.
The Unalome reminds me where I have been, but it also reminds me how I want to live and that my journey is never complete.
I want to stay curious about the places where I still circle. I want to notice the patterns I would prefer to explain away. I want to remain willing to ask myself uncomfortable questions. I want to have the courage to stay present long enough to hear the answers.
Most of all, I want to remember that transformation does not require me to reject the woman I used to be. I would never want to.
Every turn belongs.
Every turn belongs.
Every loop belongs.
Every tree belongs.
The path back to myself was never going to be a straight one.
And I’m grateful that so far, it has not been.
