Earlier this year, an image came to me with unusual clarity: I am both an Osprey circling in the heavens and a Tortoise finding its way through the undergrowth on the ground. The osprey sees the wide terrain of my life with vision and strategy; the tortoise moves through its density—deliberate, grounded, and slow. Both are me, both are essential. At the time, I didn’t know what to make of this image beyond its poetic resonance. But listening to episode 140 of Speaking of Jung, featuring Jungian analyst Christina Becker, helped something click.
In this profound and intimate conversation with Laura London, Becker shares her personal descent and recovery—how a period of intense grief, trauma, and personal breakdown forced her beyond the structures of analytical psychology and into the territory of soul. Her reflections on the power of writing from experience and the necessity of symbolic thinking offered me a kind of permission.
It reminded me that writing is not just output; it’s process—and more than that, it’s soul-making. It’s a way of allowing psyche to speak in its own language. I’ve often held a quiet skepticism about whether my own journaling or symbolic impressions “count” as development. Christina Becker’s story helped me release that doubt. They count. They’re the path. Like her, I don’t need to force structure onto the journey; psyche knows the way. The tortoise doesn’t need to fly; the osprey doesn’t need to crawl.
Laura London’s podcast has long been one of my anchors. Over the years, Speaking of Jung has offered more than just interviews—it’s given me a living archive of depth psychological inquiry, a place to meet the psyche on its own terms. Becker’s return to the show for this 10th anniversary felt especially symbolic: a full circle, a spiral, a reaffirmation of the slow and sacred work of becoming.
If you’re navigating your own developmental process, uncertain of your pace or your path, I recommend listening to this episode. And more than that, I recommend trusting what comes. Whether it’s a sentence, a dream, or an image of a bird and a reptile moving toward the same light—it matters.
You are already in the process.
You can trust it.
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