The Rear-View Mirror — Looking Back Without Living There

What if the rear-view mirror isn't there to keep you stuck in the past?

What if it's there to show you how far you've come?

A conversation about selling my yoga studio led me to an unexpected realization: healing isn't linear, growth isn't a straight line, and reflection may be one of the soul's greatest teachers.

In this episode of The Whispering Soul, I explore the sacred relationship between looking back, moving forward, and learning to trust the spiral path of becoming.


For personal guidance around how these energies are impacting your life and your wellbeing, book a private consultation with Nancy to help you find your True North. Visit https://www.thewhisperingsoul.net and follow along on https://thewhisperingsoulastrology.substack.com.

Transcript

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The rear view mirror, looking back without living there. In this episode of The Whispering Soul, I explore the sacred relationship between looking back, moving forward, and learning to trust the spiral path of becoming. Hi, my name is Nancy Vellante, and I'm an astrologer and certified wellness coach. And I'd like to explore the metaphor of the rearview mirror. And how it came up for me, it was through a conversation with a friend on the heels of the full moon in Sagittarius. You know, that moon was really very expansive, very much about teaching us about what do we want? How clear can we get? And how much can we bring with us that we've learned, but not staying where we're coming from, but taking it with you if you need it and moving it with you. Kind of like what we do when we drive, right? We look in the mirror to see what's going on. Sometimes we look in that in the side mirror, but it's the rear view mirror to see what's coming behind us. What have we missed? Right? So my friend asked me the question. So when you look back at your decision to sell your yoga studio, what did you think? Oh boy, my immediate response was simple. And I really do believe that it came from ego. Not bad, but ego. I don't look back. There is no rear view mirror here. I just keep moving forward. Okay, well, part of that is true. But as soon as the words left my mouth, something inside me stirred in my belly, in my solar plexus, and it didn't leave. Because perhaps there is always, always a rear view mirror in life. Not one that keeps us trapped in the past, but one that offers medicine for healing, for understanding, for accepting, maybe a way of seeing, a way of understanding, a way of witnessing how far we have traveled. Whether it's traveling by foot, air, whatever, or if it's traveling in our mind, that's Sagittarius. The rear view mirror is not about regret. It's about reflection. It is where the soul gently asks the ego. What have you learned? What moved you? What held you back? What set you free? Every major life decision creates a conversation between the soul and the ego, between who we were, and I say this a lot, and who we are becoming. An authentic alignment is often found in that conversation, between the soul and the ego, whether it is by yourself, with a friend, a caregiver, a support, a supportive person, maybe somebody that you're doing a healing session with. But with this unfolding, I had such a major reflection. And as I reflected on this, I felt my solar plexus come alive. Because the journey is never linear, it zigzags, it circles, it spirals, it revisits old landscapes and new awareness, illuminating what has passed while revealing what continues to move us forward. And if we never glance into the rearview mirror, we may miss the blessings hidden within the trajectory of our own becoming. We may miss the evidence of our courage, the proof of our growth, the wisdom gathered from every ending and every beginning. Because what the rear view mirror held for me was such a great lesson in self-worth, in understanding that when you take a risk, you grow. Even though it's so uncomfortable. And I'll tell you, when I opened the studio, this was eight years of owning. Man, I was so uncomfortable. I was just not comfortable in my skin. I know I was placed really out in the public, which I've always been in the public, but not like that. You know, that was major responsibility. So what gave me this whole idea of the rearview mirror is see it was Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Um I was in a cafe having a meeting with a friend, and I happen so funny. You know, the universe just really does support us. I'm in there and I must have met, and I'm I kid you not, I must have met four students, community members that were at the yoga studio when I owned it. Each of them, four of them I met, and they're still there. Boy, does that warm my heart. And I remember I went up to one uh um community member, Nick, and uh he's such a great yogi. And I said, Oh my God, I really miss you guys so much, and you know, almost like I was apologizing for selling the studio. Like, oh, you know, I'm so glad you guys are still there, and I really enjoyed it, and you know, I hadn't seen him since I sold it. And he said, You know, Nancy, I gotta I I have a quote for you. And he's like that, very philosophical. And he said, You can't step in the same river twice. And I thought, wow, okay. I took that with me over the weekend, and that's when it just kind of hit me about the rear view mirror and what I said to my friend Steve about, oh yeah, there is no rear view mirror mirror, there is just moving forward. Well, that's a lot. I don't know how truthful that statement is. Without looking and illuminating what may be revealed from our past decisions, we get to glance back when we do that. And and meeting these people allowed me to glance back, like, oh, what a blessing! How beautiful these people are still there. I'm so happy that I created that community and they can still be there. But if we don't look back, we may miss the blessings hidden within the trajectory of our own becoming. And I said that earlier. I wanted to say that again. The proof of our growth, the evidence of our courage, the wisdom gathered from every ending and every beginning. Because endings feed beginnings and beginnings reshape endings. I feel that. One is always informing the other because it is a circle. Just like Lion King said, right? That Disney movie, you know, the circle of life. And it's true. So the circle, this informing of beginning and endings, reshaping endings, offers information, perspective, wonder, surprise, meaning, and maybe some sadness. Maybe there's some grief. You know, we can't, we can't displace all the emotions. Because it what's it what it it sorry, it is what makes our landscape rugged, smooth, beautiful, ugly. It's okay, but we do want to rise, right, to those, those emotions that that are more healing and feeling wonderful in a sense. That's not sugarcoating, that's going through what we need to go through, right? When this happens, healing becomes a shift of energy from grief to acceptance, from sadness to I feel good about it, my decisions. The emotional body is always releasing what has been carried for too long. And sometimes it is releasing what we need, not even, not even knowing what we're holding on to. Because healing, again, is not a straight line. I do believe, in my perspective, healing is a spiral. And we go through it over and over and over again. We go through some of these things that we thought, oh my God, I thought I thought I went through that a while ago. Well, you did. But it gets more conscious, more meaningful, more understanding, more filled with light. So returning to familiar places within this spiral to me becomes a deeper awareness. Asking us to understand ourselves from a higher vantage point each time. Every experience that deeply touches us calls us into the greater maturity of who we are, the greater honesty, the greater connection. You know, being a body person all my life and working with the body, the body never lies. It speaks through sensation, through tension, through expansion, through contraction. It guides us towards what is blocked. And that takes time. You know, we're here. We're always going to be blocked, we're always going to be expansive. It's we're going to go through, it's how we go through it and what we've come up against, and how we keep on coming up against it in different ways and different perspectives and different consciousness. So the body guides us towards what is ready for release. Its wisdom is always inviting us back home, home to ourselves, home to our authenticity, home to the truth beneath the noise. This is the ongoing process of potential, the continual unfolding of consciousness. Because without reflection, without the rear view mirror, possibilities become limited. And when possibilities become limited, so does our ability to imagine a different future. But when the heart enters into dialogue with higher consciousness, something extraordinary happens. Ha, guess what it might be? Insight emerges, epiphanies arrive, like what happened to me in my kitchen. I was cooking and all of a sudden it was like a rear view mirror. Okay, I'm gonna cook. I got to get upstairs and write. I got to get upstairs and think and feel. Wasn't the best dinner that night because I rushed through it, but that's okay. New perspectives will be born. And suddenly what once felt like disappointment becomes wisdom. What once felt like loss becomes transformation. What once felt stuck begins to move. I think that to me is the law of nature. This is the dance. The dance between the human experience and the soul's evolution. The dance between memory and possibility. The dance between what was and what is becoming. And perhaps the rear view mirror was never meant to keep us looking backward, right? Perhaps it was always meant to remind us how beautifully life has been guiding us forward. So as you move through the days ahead after this full moon and Mercury moving into cancer, which is so sweet, it becomes, you know, Mercury becomes softer, the edges become softer. Mercury slows down a little bit. We become more intuitive. Yes, we are still using the mind, our logic, our capacity to learn and process, but in a softer way, cancer, from the heart, from a place of wanting to feel safe, just like the crab in the shell. The crab doesn't stay in the shell, right? Because if it did, it would dry up. It's got to get out there and get nourishment. That's why I love this mercury in cancer. Go gentle with it. Really listen to the energies of what's playing out right now. And there's a lot of them, but I'm just pointing out a couple here. So when we do revisit the rear view mirror, it's not to revisit the whole the old wounds, not to second guess your choices, but to witness your journey. To honor the courage it took to become the person you are today. Because every experience has left a breadcrumb. Every ending has carried a beginning. And every chapter has contributed to the story of your soul, and it's still right and is still writing it, whether that's through your voice, through your actions, through your body, through your actual writing, through your creating. So here's something to think about. When you look into the rear view mirror of your life, what experience once felt difficult, but now reveals itself as a blessing, a lesson, or a turning point. Stay with that question for a little bit or for a few days. That's what I've been doing, and it's been it's been quite a healing. Thank you for spending time with me today. Until next time, trust the whisper, honor the journey, and remember that every step forward carries the wisdom of where you've been. And I really believe in my heart and soul that was the biggest takeaway of this full moon in Sagittarius. Now we take that into the energy of Mercury and Cancer, and we soften. And Cancer, water sign, Cancer is a powerful archetype. She blends the earth with the ocean and the primordial energies of the water, the memories of the water, the womb where we come from. Find the beauty. And I'll talk to you next time. Have a great day wherever you are in the world.