When the Path Changes: Redefining What It Means to Follow Your Heart

Almost six years ago, I made a pretty big change in my life. After spending most of my adult life working in accounting and finance, eventually making my way to the CFO level, I stepped away from corporate life and into entrepreneurship.

There was something incredibly exciting and terrifying about choosing myself in that way. I started The Numbers Gal, and not long after, The Way Home To You began to take shape. What started as my own exploration into Reiki, sound healing, meditation, and spirituality grew into something I never could have completely imagined at the time.

Over the last several years, I have had the privilege of sitting with people during some incredibly vulnerable moments. I’ve watched people walk into my space carrying stress, grief, fear, pain, and overwhelm and leave feeling a little lighter. I’ve led sound baths, taught Reiki, worked with beautiful groups and organizations, collaborated with other practitioners, and met so many amazing people along the way.

I love this work.

Which is why admitting that I am looking at returning to corporate life has brought up a lot more emotion than I expected. There have been moments when I’ve wondered, Does going back mean I failed? Was leaving corporate life six years ago a mistake? Am I giving up on something I worked so hard to build? Am I somehow betraying myself by considering going back to a world I intentionally chose to leave?

Those aren’t particularly comfortable questions to sit with. But lately, I’ve been trying to look at them differently. 

Maybe Changing Direction Isn’t Failure

I think sometimes we become so attached to what we believe our path is supposed to look like that when life asks us to change direction, we immediately assume something has gone wrong.

We set a goal. We follow a dream. We take a leap of faith. And somewhere along the way, we begin to believe that honoring that decision means we have to keep choosing it forever. But what if that’s not true?

What if honoring ourselves also means being willing to reevaluate?

The reality is that I have responsibilities. I’m a single mom. I have a household to support and bills to pay. And as much as I believe in following our hearts, listening to our intuition, and trusting that we are supported, I also believe there is something deeply grounding about acknowledging the reality of where we are. Right now, that may mean returning to corporate work.

And I’m learning that accepting that possibility doesn’t erase everything I’ve built.

Two Things Can Be True at the Same Time

This may be one of the biggest lessons for me in this season. I can deeply love The Way Home To You and recognize that I need more financial stability.

I can be incredibly proud of what I’ve created and feel disappointed that it hasn’t grown into everything I hoped it would be by now.

I can feel excited about the possibilities that could come with returning to the corporate world and grieve the freedom I’ve had as an entrepreneur.

I can trust my intuition and make practical decisions.

One truth doesn’t have to cancel out the other. Maybe part of growing is learning to make room for all of it.

The Trees Don’t Question the Season

There is something about going through this transition in the fall that feels especially appropriate. Everywhere around us, nature is beginning to let go.

The trees don’t cling to their leaves because they spent all spring and summer growing them. They don’t look at a falling leaf as evidence that all that work was wasted. The season simply changed.

Maybe there is something for us in that.

When I look back at the last six years, I don’t see wasted time. I see a completely different version of myself than the woman who first stepped away from corporate life.

I have learned how to build businesses. I’ve learned how to trust myself in ways I couldn’t before. I’ve learned to sit in uncertainty. I’ve learned about energy, healing, spirituality, community, and connection. I’ve learned that there are parts of me that have absolutely nothing to do with a job title or a paycheck.

And maybe that’s the point.

If I return to corporate life, I’m not going back as the same person who left. I’m bringing all of her with me.

Maybe the Dream Is Allowed to Change Shape

I think this is the piece I’m still learning.

For a while, returning to corporate work felt very black and white. If I went back, somehow that meant this chapter was over. It meant The Way Home To You hadn’t “worked.” It meant “I failed.”

But why does it have to mean that?

Maybe The Way Home To You doesn’t disappear. Maybe it gets to evolve.

Maybe having another source of income takes some of the pressure off this business and allows me to return to why I created it in the first place.

Maybe I continue seeing clients, offering sound baths, teaching Reiki, collaborating with people I love, and doing this work because it fills a part of me that accounting and finance never will.

I don’t know exactly what it will look like yet.

And that’s probably the hardest part.

Trusting the Path Without Knowing Where It Leads

I’ve talked a lot lately about letting go. About how little we actually control beyond our own choices, actions, and reactions. I’ve talked about trusting the seasons of our lives and recognizing when it might be time to loosen our grip on how we think something should unfold.

Apparently, life has decided I should get the opportunity to practice what I preach.

And I’m trying.

Some days I’m better at it than others. I’m trying to remind myself that changing course doesn’t mean the original path was wrong. Sometimes a path takes us exactly where we needed to go, teaches us what we needed to learn, introduces us to the people we needed to meet, and then changes.

Maybe success isn’t always staying on the same path.

Maybe sometimes success is having the courage to recognize when the path is changing and allowing ourselves to change with it. As we move deeper into fall and watch the natural world release what it no longer needs to carry into the next season, I’m asking myself what I might be ready to release too.

Maybe it’s the belief that my life has to look a certain way for me to consider myself successful.

Maybe it’s the idea that changing my mind means I failed.

Maybe it’s the expectation that trusting myself means always knowing exactly what comes next.

I don’t know where this next season will take me. I don’t know exactly what my businesses will look like a year from now, or what role corporate life may or may not play in my future.

But perhaps trust isn’t believing that everything will work out exactly the way we imagined.

Perhaps trust is knowing that when the path changes, we can meet ourselves there too.