Return to the Dream (in its grown-up form)
By late January, the world is already moving on.
The “new year energy” starts to thin out.
People stop talking about goals.
Life speeds up again.
And sometimes that’s when something inside you speaks more clearly.
Not the loud voice of ambition, the softer voice that asks:
What do I still want?
Not what I should want.
Not what would look good on paper.
What I actually want, underneath the noise.
I’ve been thinking about dreams lately.
The ones we lived.
The ones we buried.
The ones that return when the house is quiet and remind us we’re not finished.
Some dreams return with grief.
Some return with hunger.
Some return as a whisper you can’t un-hear.
But here’s what I’ve learned:
Dreams don’t always come back in their original shape.
They come back revised.
More honest.
More aligned with who you are now.
So this week, I’m inviting you to return to one dream gently.
Not to pressure yourself.
To remember yourself.
Try this Dream Seed practice:
Write down one dream you’ve been carrying (even secretly).
Ask: What is the smallest version of this I could begin?
Choose one step that fits inside your real life—15 minutes, one email, one conversation, one page, one walk.
The point is not to prove anything.
The point is to give the dream a place to breathe again.
Return doesn’t mean starting over.
It means turning toward what’s still true inside of us at our core.
Reflections for the week:
What dream have I been calling “unrealistic” when it’s actually just unplanned?
What would it look like to pursue it without urgency?
What support would make this feel possible—not perfect, but possible?
The January member letter in The Threshold is called “The Opening: Return.”
If you haven’t read it yet, it’s there, along with three prompts to help you work with the theme slowly through the month.
The Threshold is open as a free member space right now.
Until next Tuesday,
Wendy
P.S. Your dream doesn’t need your intensity. It needs your honesty and one small step you can keep.
