Dancing with Life’s Sacred Rhythms: Navigating Change, Loss, and Creation
There is an archetype that lives in me so deeply that I cannot help but light up any time I get to speak about it: the Sacred Life Cycle.
Why wouldn’t I be excited? The Sacred Life Cycle is one of the most fundamental patterns at the heart of both our human and cosmic existence. It holds within it the wisdom of birth, death, and rebirth — of beginnings, endings, and everything in between. It is a rhythm that dances through our bodies, our relationships, our creative expressions, and the very structure of the world around us.
This archetype first emerged through me during my training as a Spiritual Director, when I was tasked with designing and delivering a “sermon” of sorts to an audience — a masterclass where we had full creative freedom, yet a hefty checklist of outcomes to meet. I remember sitting blank, unsure of what to offer. Each morning I returned to my devotional mat, asking again and again, “What is mine to bring forward?”
And then, in one moment of clarity — barely 30 minutes into my morning practice — this image of the Life Cycle revealed itself, and I knew this was the work I was called to translate.
Understanding the Life Cycle
As an archetype, the Life Cycle gives us a lens through which we can discern what phase of life we might currently be inhabiting — and how to move with it, instead of against it.
I write this now, 27 weeks pregnant with my fifth baby, and quite naturally, I find myself sitting within the phase of conception. The place where all is still potential — everything is possible, yet everything is also unknown, unformed, and vulnerable. In this phase, our minds can swirl between excitement and anxiety: What if there are complications? What if I can’t do this? What if they don’t love me? What if I fail ?
In conception, both our hopes and our fears rise to the surface, demanding our presence.
And yet, even as I dwell here in conception, in the bliss and discomfort of pregnancy — navigating hyperemesis gravidarum and a high-risk pregnancy while living in the raw elements of rural Queensland — I am also deeply in the phase of death. My life as it was is dying. Once again, I am being called to release old identities, old ways of being. There is grief here. There is uncertainty. There is a reckoning with what cannot, and should not, follow me into this next chapter.
I also feel the pull of birth approaching — a phase I know well after bringing four children earthside and birthing countless creative projects from the depths of my being. I recognise that birth is a place where I feel at home — and perhaps, one I lean into compulsively at times, because it is a phase where I excel. It is far easier for me to bring something new into the world than it is to sit in the quieter, more humbling phase of life.
Life — the part of the cycle where we are called to fully inhabit the present, to “suck the marrow” from each moment — this, I often resist. It is too easy to stay in the motion of becoming, striving, birthing. To pause and truly dwell in life requires a deep surrender I am still learning.
A Guide for the Human Experience
When I first shared this teaching, it was through a series of guided experiences designed to help others see where they might be hiding or shining within their own cycle. Seven years on, this framework remains a powerful guide in my work — a map for navigating the inevitable trials, changes, and transitions life contracts us to face.
For those of us who struggle with control, who find surrender uncomfortable, the Sacred Life Cycle offers a pathway to move with greater wisdom. It reminds us that when we lean into the natural rhythm of life — instead of resisting it — we reclaim a deeper sense of agency. We can make more conscious choices about how we show up in our lives, with more compassion for where we are.
It soothes the ache of simply being human.
It offers a way to understand not just our personal journey, but the state of the world itself. We are, quite clearly, in a dying phase globally — old systems are collapsing, wars rage, conflict and chaos are rising. And yet, this is not the end — it is the necessary dismantling that must occur for new, more sustainable pathways to emerge. The more we resist this collective death, the more suffering we create.
When we attune to this archetype — when we honestly ask: Where am I in this cycle? Where are we as a collective? What is life asking of me right now? — we can move with more peace, more power, and more purpose.
This is one of the ways Spirit ministers through me, and I remain in awe of how this teaching continues to evolve through my life, years after it first took root.
Questions for You
I invite you to pause and consider:
Where are you in your own Sacred Life Cycle?
What in you is ready to be born?
What is asking to die, so you can move forward lighter and more free?
Where might you be resisting life, instead of allowing it to move through you?
How might your life change if you were to truly surrender to the phase you are in — and to trust it?
If these questions resonate — if you feel the stir to explore these themes more deeply — my 1:1 online Spiritual Direction sessions are open.
This is the space where we meet the raw, holy, unpolished edges of your life and begin to move with them in fierce truth. If you are ready to journey with me in this work, I invite you to reach out.
Let’s see where the cycle is calling you next.
