Shedding Skins
- Suzi Jayne
- Sep 3
- 4 min read
Last week at The Village, I told the story of The Lindworm Prince.
I didn’t know why this was the story I felt compelled to share - only that it had returned to me a few times in recent weeks and it felt important. So I told it, naming the truth in that moment: that I didn’t know who it was for, or what wisdom might be taken from it. I still don’t know how this story may be working on those who heard it.
But I do know now - it was also very much for me.
The tale speaks of a lindworm, a serpent-like creature, who by the loving compassion of a young maiden is asked to shed his skins until nothing remains but the raw essence of his being. It carries a deep current of transformation, speaking to the painful but necessary work of disarmouring - of peeling away the masks and defenses we build to survive. The lindworm cannot do this alone; it is only through the unwavering love and compassion of the maiden that he surrenders each layer. The story reminds us that true renewal asks for both courage and tenderness: the willingness to release what no longer serves, and the grace to be met in that rawness with love. Only then can what is most authentic and alive come forth.
This year - 2025, the year of the snake - has followed a similar theme, collectively and personally. A year of shedding, letting go, releasing everything that no longer serves. And it has been working on me in ways I never could have imagined. The momentum of change has only intensified, each skin loosening more quickly than the last, as if everything false must fall away so that what has always been at the core can finally emerge.
This weekend, I shed another skin and made another hard decision. For those who have been with me for a while, this won’t feel unfamiliar, though the familiarity doesn’t make it any easier. Life is once again asking me to reassess, realign, and prioritise my deepest values.
To walk my talk.
To pay attention.
To look more deeply within and discard what no longer feels true.
To loosen my grip on the identities and pieces of my life I’ve held so tightly.
It demands I ask: Who am I without that? What if everything I thought I knew is not true? What IS my truth - here, in THIS moment?
I’ve learned that personal truth (perhaps all truth in fact) is ephemeral - transient, always changing shape as perceptions and understandings shift. This is the dance of life itself, and clarity only ever arises from what is here, now.
From this place, after bringing it all to the land and reflecting deeply, I realised the most aligned choice is to create space for leaning in - to myself, my family, and connection.
This means I have cancelled the Mentoring with Nature weekend - for now - and am moving slowly with The Village - gathering with a small, core tribe who carry the vision and planting seeds for a version that aligns even more fully with its original intention.
It seems counterintuitive. In a time of financial uncertainty and strain that I would release the very things that provide in this way. And yet I trust something far greater than logic is at play here.
Over the coming months it’s likely I'll continue to immerse myself - even more deeply - in the embodied learning required for the path ahead: releasing past expectations, patterns, and addictions; grieving what is falling away; and carrying this lived experience into the practice of Holistic Psychotherapy as I complete my studies and begin offering professional sessions.
This is not a season for forceful action or charging ahead, but for the quiet, unseen labour of transformation - for compassionate surrender and deep trust. Embodied wisdom only emerges from such a journey.
In the meantime, I will continue to offer Healthy Chats and Holistic Psychotherapy sessions as a student therapist - both in person and online - until the end of the year. This is the work calling me most clearly right now. (If this sounds like it might be helpful to you, I encourage you to BOOK A SESSION HERE.)
What remains, at the centre of it all, are the threads of compassionate self-awareness and deep connection:
To my family: my partner, my six children, and soon-to-be five grandchildren;
To my inner circle: close friends and community where reciprocity and authenticity currently feel most alive for me;
And to you, the wider concentric rings of this work.
The poet David Whyte says “How do you know if you’re on your path? Because it disappears, that’s how you know.”
I know I am on my path simply because I don’t know where this path leads. It's what makes it both exhilarating and terrifying - simultaneously. What I do know for sure - not logically in the cognitive sense of knowing, but intuitively from deep in my bones - is that this is the path I must walk… for now.
I’ll continue to share this journey, its teachings, and my learnings here - may you take from it what you need. I'd love to hear from you if any of it resonates.
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