In this reflection we make peace with the spiral.
You thought growth looked like a line. Steady upward progress. Every day a little better than the last. Every year more healed, more skilled, more together than the one before.
But that is not how growth works. Not for anyone. Not ever.
Growth spirals. It doubles back. It revisits old lessons in new contexts. It plateaus for months and then lurches forward without warning. It feels like regression sometimes, like you are losing ground, like all the work you did was for nothing.
And then you realize: you are not back where you started. You are in a similar place but at a different level. The same issue, but you see it differently now. The same pattern, but you catch it sooner. The same struggle, but you have tools you did not have before.
The spiral is still progress. It just does not look like progress when you are in it.
Plateaus are not failure. They are consolidation. Your system integrating what it has learned before it is ready to learn more. Rushing through plateaus does not make you grow faster. It makes you grow shallower.
Bad days are not erasure. They are part of the terrain. You can have a terrible day, a terrible week, a terrible month, and still be further along than you were last year. One low point does not undo all the high points that came before.
Trust the general direction, not the moment-to-moment trajectory. Zoom out. The spiral is still rising. You are still growing. Even when it does not feel that way.