In this audio, I return to Letters from the Garden after taking a pause while moving through the Attractor Sphere of the Venus Sequence. Rather than recording the month as it unfolded, something in me wanted to live it first—to let the images arrive before sharing here.
I speak about personal mythology and the strange life of symbols: how an image can follow us for years, carrying different meanings as we turn it towards the light. Like a diamond, the symbol itself may remain unchanged while something new begins to shine through it.
I share a dream of entering an enormous tree, passing a bouncer at an inner threshold, and travelling deeper until I reach a small room where a masculine presence is waiting. When I wake, I realise that an old pain around my heart has gone. The memory remains, but the wound itself is quiet.
I reflect on the long road through solitude, longing and relationship that brought me towards inner union—and why I have come to see longing itself as a sacred vehicle rather than something we must always rush to escape.
00:00 — Returning to the garden
01:10 — Turning a symbol like a diamond
02:42 — The red shoes return
04:53 — The tree on the hill
06:07 — The bouncer at the threshold
07:16 — The beloved inside the tree
08:21 — The memory of a healed heart
09:38 — Why the guardian protects the gate
10:33 — Solitude and the journey inward
12:28 — Attraction, charge and relationship
13:53 — When sorrow becomes sweet
15:43 — The shadow of the red shoes
17:19 — The field and the hawthorn trees
18:12 — Imagination into illumination
18:53 — Dancing with spirit
19:41 — The tango shoes appear
20:17 — From being danced to being led
22:30 — What the Venus Sequence gave me
23:29 — The other side of longing
My dear friend,
Choose a way.
Then another.
Turn left. Turn right. Retrace your steps if you need to. There are many ways through a life, and very few of them travel in a straight line.
Sometimes we arrive at a junction where the turnings seem endless. We circle slowly, reading every sign, trying to feel which road belongs to us.
Perhaps we choose quickly, taking the first opening that appears.
Perhaps we travel around once more.
And once more after that.
Some roads are marked so clearly that the whole world seems to be pointing towards them. Still, we pass the turning by.
We know what waits along the familiar road. We know its bends, its weather, its disappointments. Even an unhappy road can become comforting when we have travelled it long enough.
Then there is the road we want.
The one we glimpse each time we come around.
The one we cannot quite bring ourselves to take.
So we keep circling, asking why.
Why can I see the turning but cannot enter it?
Why does the road I desire frighten me more than the road I have outgrown?
There comes a moment when the question becomes beautifully simple.
What are you afraid will happen if it works?
What are you afraid will happen if the door opens, the people arrive, the invitation is accepted, and the thing you have been quietly imagining begins to take form?
Perhaps you are less afraid of creating it than you are of being met there.
There is always someone who knows the way. Sometimes they appear as a teacher, a friend, a stranger, or a hand reaching across a table. Sometimes the one who knows has been travelling inside you all along, waiting for you to stop circling long enough to listen.
Create the place.
Set the table.
Light the lamp.
They will come.
And when they do, be ready to receive them.
This winter may not arrive in the shape you expect.
It may bring a road where you thought there would be an ending.
It may bring footsteps.
It may bring company.
It may bring the life that has been waiting patiently at the turning, watching you circle closer each time.
With love,
Jenny 🌹
Jenny Dickinson is a writer whose work explores the long journey of becoming through story, symbol, myth, and the changing seasons of the soul. She lives in North West England with her daughter Nancy and an ever-growing collection of notebooks.
Link for the The Venus Sequence >
