The Mirror of Expansion: Learning to Surrender to the Spiral

I didn't know that's what it was, but I started studying spirals when I left Deloitte in 2023.

For the first time in years, I was home every week instead of traveling for work or joy, and I found myself entering Dallas like it was a new city—despite having lived here for eight years already.

\Post-pandemic, everything had shifted. My friends had drifted into different stages of their lives, and here I was, 36 years old, making new friends for the first time since I'd moved here.

The researcher in me took a systematic approach.

I tracked down virtual and IRL groups that centered around my identities, entrepreneurial pursuits, passions, and skill gaps.

I talked to a lot of people a lot of the time, tossed and confused between who to serve and who to befriend—or when it was actually both.

I also entered this community with a curiosity outside of my PhD, initially as a Joy Coach, so I could see who else I was besides this title that had cast its shadow over my entire adulthood.

The PhD had given me the sense that I couldn't be a beginner again, that I couldn't start over, that I couldn't somehow figure out how to merge all the things I loved and studied and experienced into a cohesive pot of... ME.

But as I toggled between communities while simultaneously building and testing Queen Mindset Leadership® in real time, I began to understand something profound about expansion: growth doesn't happen in linear progression—it moves like a spiral across time and space.

What I've come to learn is that expansion requires us to practice a decolonized approach to building relationships while practicing nonattachment and surrender.

This is the mirror of expansion: the more we become ourselves, the less we may recognize the person others first knew us to be.

The Phases of Spiraling in Community

As I've deepened into what embodying my cosmic self actually means, I've witnessed myself and others move through phases that mirror the spiral nature of growth itself.

These aren't hierarchical stages but cyclical experiences we revisit at different altitudes of our becoming.

Phase 1: The Seeking

This is where I found myself post-Deloitte—systematically exploring communities, hungry to understand who I was outside of corporate identity. At this phase, we cast a wide net, gathering information about where we might belong. The mirror here shows us our hunger for connection and our fear of not fitting anywhere.

Phase 2: The Testing

Here, we begin experimenting with different versions of ourselves across different spaces. I was simultaneously Joy Coach, PhD researcher, entrepreneur, and friend-seeker. This phase teaches us that we can be multidimensional without being inauthentic. The mirror reveals which environments allow our full selves to breathe.

Phase 3: The Integration

This is where my liberation work shifted from intellectual to embodied. I realized people needed to make peace with all the diversity within themselves before they could truly embody DEI versus perform it. The mirror shows us that our internal work becomes external service when we stop fragmenting ourselves.

Phase 4: The Expansion

As we pour into our creative passions and grow the multidimensions of our existence, we inevitably outgrow some of the containers that once held us. This is where the quantum leap happens—from who people first meet to who we're becoming. The mirror reflects our courage to spiral beyond others' expectations.

Phase 5: The Surrender

Finally, we learn that when we belong to ourselves, we may stop belonging to those with whom we no longer spiral in the same direction. This phase teaches us the art of loving release—honoring what was while embracing what is becoming.

Why the Mirrors Matter

Each phase offers us mirrors, reflections that show us not just who we are, but who we're becoming and what we're ready to release.

These mirrors are essential because they reveal the shadows available to us as we look at and separate from those we used to orbit with.

The mirror of seeking shows us our hunger and our fear.

The mirror of testing reveals our capacity for multiplicity.

The mirror of integration reflects our readiness to serve from wholeness.

The mirror of expansion displays our courage to quantum leap.

The mirror of surrender teaches us the art of loving release.

What I discovered through my systematic community-building while testing Queen Mindset Leadership® is that these mirrors aren't just personal; they're collective.

When we do our internal liberation work, when we give equity to all parts of ourselves, we create permission for others to do the same.

The Decolonized Art of Relationship

This is my decolonized approach to building relationships: practicing nonattachment and surrender while remaining committed to our most loving truths about ourselves and our worlds.

It means:

• We may have to speak up even when it's uncomfortable.
• We may have to end relationships that have been pillars in our lives if it means staying committed to our own truths.
• And we may have to create the courage to build safe intimacy with both ourselves and others, so that we become capable of giving great love with reciprocity.

Shifting and drifting is a natural part of being. The spiral doesn't ask for permission to expand—it simply invites us to surrender to its wisdom and trust the direction of our own becoming.

The 36-year-old making friends in Dallas wasn't abandoning the PhD or the corporate consultant or the immigrant daughter. She was integrating all of these selves into something larger, something that could hold contradiction and multiplicity without fragmenting.

This is what I mean by expansion: not becoming more, but becoming whole.

Not adding identities, but allowing all parts of ourselves to exist in their full complexity while honoring that our evolution is not betrayal of who we were, but fulfillment of who we've always been becoming.

Reflection for You

Take a moment with these questions:

• Which phase of spiraling in community do you find yourself in right now?
• What mirrors has your expansion offered you recently? What have they revealed about your readiness to grow?
• Where in your life are you experiencing the tension between who people first knew you to be and who you're becoming?
• How might practicing nonattachment and surrender transform your approach to relationships and community-building?
• Are you willing to honor that your evolution serves not just you, but creates permission for others to spiral into their own wholeness?

In closing, expansion is not about becoming someone new. It's about becoming someone whole. The spiral doesn't abandon its center—it simply grows wider, deeper, more complex in its revolutions.

That is the altitude from which I now choose to spiral.