I had a dream last night that was very scary. I dreamed that doctors told me that my daughter was a vegetable and didn't have long to live. I woke up terrified and feeling like I had been punched in the stomach. When I went into her bedroom, she looked at me and smiled; physical confirmation that I was now in my real world and no longer in the nightmare. But here's the thing: I still felt afraid. My daughter has multiple neurological issues, and we are forever going to doctors' offices and hospitals. This, of course, has it's own stressful aspects and so I have an underlying sense of worry at all times (but doesn't every parent?). But I REALLY felt the doom from this dream. It made me realize the power that my mind has to change my own reality. I mean, it was just a dream and yet I was practically in tears and wanting to cling to my child to make sure she was all right. So I ask, if my mind has the ability to manifest a powerful fear out of thin air, can I also manifest a powerful sense of hope? The answer is, "Yes." I know because I have done it. So this makes me wonder, "what is real?" I guess reality is what you create.
Now I don't want to go around with my fingers in my ears singing, "la-la-la-la-la, I can't hear you!" to anything that I find unpleasant (I'm no bliss-ninny), but I do want to remind myself to stay centered in my own truths. I know what I'm talking about, do you?
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2 comments:
Ah, Colleen, the light -- It's my sense these dreams are the night terrors of mothers everywhere. Content may change; language may change; generations may change but we moms know the anguish. There's a place between awake and asleep that holds our deepest fears and our grandest desires. Sometimes it's hard to know in which place we mothers reside - perhaps we're not supposed to know? Have you read Wendell Berry's, "The Peace of Wild Things"? It tore at my heart but I return to it again and again and again. SMG
So TRUE!
I love Wendell Berry. He gets right to the poetic truth.
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