As many of you know, the past five years were heavy ones for me. Full of challenges, losses, and reckonings that took more than I understood at the time. Not only my mental and emotional energy, but even some of my creativity. There were long stretches where I wasn’t sure when, or if, that part of me would fully return.

But last January, something in me woke up. I made a quiet but determined decision to start living as fully as I could again. That commitment found expression in small and not-so-small creative detours: this Substack, an urban garden project, and signing a new book contract with Simon & Schuster in December.

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Because I’d been fairly quiet online for these past few years, when I returned to writing it felt like a dam had broken. I had a backlog of ideas, reflections, questions, and half-formed insights that had been fermenting for a long time on napkins, the back of envelopes, and in my notes app. Even while trying to pace myself, I published over 100 reflections in this first year.

Some of my most vulnerable, provocative, and personally meaningful writing to date, including pieces on:

Looking ahead to 2026, there is still so much I want to explore and I’d love your eyes and hearts on that journey.

As I’ve been discerning the next season of this work, I’ve realized that The Enneagram of Belonging no longer fully captures the breadth of what’s been unfolding here or where my heart and writing are headed. While the Enneagram will remain a central focus of my work, my writing has increasingly spanned human development, transformation, Jungian philosophy, shadow work, pilgrimage, Greek myth, and spirituality. These themes are deeply interconnected, and they deserve a home spacious enough to hold them all.

So I’m renaming this publication to Sacred Detours

For more than three decades, my vocation has taken shape at the intersection of service, spiritual formation, and self-understanding. Twenty years in international humanitarian work grounded me in the urgency of justice and the healing power of community. A decade of guiding contemplative practice taught me that transformation often begins in silence and solitude, where we learn to listen beneath the noise. Nearly twenty years of Enneagram teaching has given me language for the shadows that distort our love and the compassion that can set us free.

Looking back, none of these paths were straight. Each season felt, at the time, like a detour. And yet each one built upon the last, forming a coherent life I couldn’t have planned but deeply trust.

That’s the heart of Sacred Detours: the conviction that our most meaningful growth rarely follows a clean or predictable route, and that some of our greatest joys and deepest learnings are found precisely where we didn’t intend to go.

Under this new banner, I hope to keep writing honestly and generously about the inner life, the long work of becoming whole, and the sacred wisdom hidden in the twists and turns of being human. I’d love for you to continue walking with me here: reading, subscribing, sharing these reflections with those who might find companionship or courage in them.

What to expect, practically speaking: I’ll be publishing new reflections each Tuesday morning, usually three to four times a month. One or two of those pieces will remain open to all readers, while the rest will be reserved for subscribers who choose to support the work more deeply. The subscriber-only essays will often be more personal and unguarded as well as reflections I’m actively developing for my next book. Think of it as an open studio or a working pilgrimage: a place where ideas are still taking shape. Your engagement genuinely shapes what this manuscript and this journey becomes.

If you’re able to subscribe, you’re not just gaining access to additional content; you’re helping sustain this work and offering your presence, feedback, and dialogue as these pieces are refined along the way. Also, subscribing helps sustain the work I’m called to do (writing, teaching, retreats, and one-on-one accompaniment) and allows me to keep offering this work with care and integrity. If this writing supports your own inner work, your subscription helps make mine possible.

Here’s to finding our way forward, sometimes stumbling forward, together.

With gratitude for your fidelity and support,

Chris

Sacred Detours by Chris Heuertz is a reader-supported publication. Please consider subscribing. Your support keeps this work going, and ensures you receive new posts directly in your inbox.