a girl and her dreams

the most sacred place within us that no one else will understand in this world, or anywhere.

My posts will always be transparent, FYI.

In contrast to the dream I had (a few posts ago) of the modern house on the hill in a world of almost complete darkness, I had a dream a few days later, only this time it was light. I was in my bed in the same modern house, but the windows allowed so much light that I could only see light. I was inside my inner sanctum, in my bed, inside my dream. There were sparkles of colors that travelled and floated in the light, they were finite, but my eyes could focus on them perfectly as they travelled. I experienced some of the same feelings as I did in the dark dream, only they would come the way contractions do during labor. Every few minutes another “attack”, almost to the point of paralysis. Even some anger was coming up, but I just stayed in bed, kept turning and moving under the cloud of blanket, until I found a “safe” position. I have done this a lot in dreams, just wrestled with feelings and fought sleep paralysis. For me, it comes in clusters and then I don’t get it for quite a while.

This is a part of the process of healing, of facing the music dealing with what life has thrown. I see this as a cathartic experience, a way to work through the deeper stuff, calm my nervous system and tame my emotions. It feels so good to do that, to allow myself to be dysregulated, instead of push myself to be balanced always, and just being there for myself is all I need to get through it. So, for several rounds of these little attacks I rolled around “in it” in bed, emotional pain is hard to face – almost harder than physical. And I bet I have a lot to face because I am a busy mom, so from experience I can say…it’ll getcha.

Part of me wanted to wake up if I wasn’t going to get up and go do something amazing like fly, or run, or drive. But I stayed and listened to the sound of my emotions. Instead of responding, I just listened. It was like air, like shattered glass falling, like the knocking of branches on glass, like the sea crashing into a rock, like a broken record. I was letting a lot go, a lot of family trauma, a lot of self-doubt, a lot of resentment. This was clearly the light I needed before in the darkness dream of almost pure void, the one with my enemies. This light was no ordinary light. And my love is no ordinary love.

When I finally woke up what came to me was the feeling of coming out of a chrysalis, and I realized that my dark and light dreams were a metamorphosis to emergence from my past to breakthrough. The chrysalis is a phenomenal layer of translucence and allows in light, and at first the caterpillar has no vision, but after developing into the butterfly it begins to allow light in. Tough job!

As a child I was always dreaming, I was able to draw from my inner sanctum without shame or fear, it was safe to feel and experience emotions. It was my chrysalis, and the architecture of my dreams was as perfect as the architecture of biology, science, the mind. We all have inner space and that voice in our head, but inner sanctum is as sacred as it gets. Mine is where my most sensitive memories are stored and preserved in a way that no one will ever see in this world -that’s how safe it is. My inner child roams freely there, inspiration is endless, nothing has to make sense, and I can time travel as far back or into the future as I desire.

Why one would not want an inner sanctum is relative, probably personal and a matter of preference perhaps. Maybe it’s too sentimental. That’s totally okay. To each their own.

Some may see their inner sanctum as a place of prayer; others may see it as a bubble or a cave. It could be a shrine or a part of a temple, a cloud or a garden. Whatever it may look like and feel like – it is private. It was designed to be private. It is always protected even if at times it seems like it isn’t. It may not feel protected if there is trauma involved, or abuse, or threats of any kind.

As a child I heavily relied on my inner sanctum for development, especially the development of my dreams as they are my soul purpose.

Since I was a child, my stepdad (Dad) and I have had a bond that is like no other. It all began before I could even talk. I was his first child and we were healers together, ancient souls in this material world, when I was with him my inner sanctum was activated and thriving. My dad anchored me and showed me how to find my true north; his guidance grounded me in connection with ancestors. My dreams were fed; my imagination was not just alive, it was conscious. Our trailer up north was a sensorium of therapeutic play, mystic vision, ancestral healing and metaphysical mirrors. There are certain people in our lives that have chosen us, or vice versa, especially in our childhood. My dad was my person right from the beginning. And this was my first relationship besides my mom.

We both loved my mom in the most harmonious way, like rhythm and music supporting her voice as a mother. I have memories of sitting in my dad’s arms looking at her beautiful soft cheeks as she smiled, looking at me through doorways in our trailer. her fun-loving personality always stole everyone’s hearts whether at the bank, or a doctor’s office, the grocery store or the school. Seeing her glow like a Queen when she was in the hospital bed quietly and calmly holding my new sister made me feel like a princess from a royal palace. She had found temporal safety with my dad, this was an end to crisis mode for her, the repair work post trauma, post betrayal. The intimacy and depth of love that grew from us as a tribe was family medicine. Literally.

My inner sanctum was sensitive to outside influences, and as a child who was gifted with the ability to create and travel dreams, I was vulnerable. I felt bombarded by neon lights, voices too would overwhelm me – but only ones I didn’t know. I didn’t mind television, music or the sound of water, almost ever. I loved wind, air and the chill of the snow.

When my parents had people over from our family that I didn’t trust, or from the community that didn’t seem like they were in our inner circle, I would hide behind the curtains of the living room window. There I would search for inner sanctum, hovering over the heat vents, staring at city lights until I was taken to bed. I loved going to bed. It’s where my brain shut down and I was able to visit “home” in my dreams. When we moved from up North to the west coast, there were some side effects of being transplanted. My dreams were scattered; my inner sanctum became a restoration area.

There was a moment I wanted to know who “he” was, and it was only natural to fantasize that somehow, he would see me and fall in love with the idea of being my dad. That moment was over as soon as my mom got of the phone from making arrangements with him for me to go visit for the first time. He wouldn’t pick me up at the ferry terminal on the other side. So, I had to take a coach bus from the ferry terminal to downtown Vancouver at 10 years old to meet him at an intersection on Cambie Rd after he got off work. I met him, “my father”, for the first time – by myself at least – in the middle of Vancouver by myself.

I don’t know how many other little girls had to share a bed with their estranged fathers over Christmas, but I have never wished harder for a hide-a-bed. I would cry as quietly as I humanly could on the edge of his mattress. One time he even said something, it was super invalidating I don’t think it even made it to my ears as proper English. I tuned it out before I could even listen, I was just so sad and desperately wanted to go home to my mother. I was obviously building walls around myself since birth with this stranger, and no matter how much of a hippie my mom was, I was her love child – not his. I was alienating myself from him, and as much as I wanted my mom to win in court and get the child support she deserved – I was not going to be his little girl. Ever.

As I got older, the people I felt most vulnerable around were the relatives on my paternal donor side; they were part of a spiritual organization that believed in God. When I visited my biological paternal donor, he would usually drop me off with these very relatives. I would then be passed around between relatives and often go on calls with them to strangers’ houses. This would happen a few times a year, and it was confusing because he would celebrate Christmas, which was also 5 days before my birthday, but these relatives didn’t celebrate Christmas or birthdays.

I was the youngest on that particular side of the family and most of them were unmarried women. I would be dressed up formally like a mini version of them, carted around with brochures, door to door, preaching information to people in neighborhoods with gargantuan mansions. From one car to another, then to a convention, to a mall, back to a family meeting across the other side of Vancouver, then to a restaurant where I would finally see my so-called-dad. He would take me to his “business” meetings late at night, after hours, where I would sit in a restaurant booth alone eating chocolate mousse while he “talked” in the kitchen with restaurant people. Finally, we would arrive at his apartment, he would put on a movie, chain smoke cigarettes and drink whiskey in his house coat 3 feet away from me. I would ask for something to eat, and he would usually say in a condescending voice, “you’ll have nightmares if you eat before bed.” He’s a red seal chef. What chef doesn’t eat at night before bed, especially after coming home from one of their restaurants? Also, what chef literally does not cook one meal for their daughter? Questions I’ll never have answers to I suppose.

I knew that one day I would rise from the neglect and break the cycle for my mom. It didn’t take me long to figure out that she was 14 when they met, that he took advantage of her, abandoned her, cheated on her, and then tried to manipulate his way out of providing for me. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to truly forgive him for what he did to my mom. I forgave myself though for visiting him and wasting my time.

She was so young, just a child.

My inner sanctum was doing okay until I was sent on these “trips” to visit this man that called himself my father. The way he occupied this sacred place in my life was detrimental to my mental health and my dreams. He didn’t want me, it was clear, but he wouldn’t let my stepdad (Dad) adopt me. My stepdad raised me since I was barely walking, but he was denied the right to the title he deserved. It wasn’t even about the title; it was more about acknowledgement. But this man who called himself my “biological father” acknowledged everyone’s shortcomings but his own. And his sperm was that valuable in his opinion. Though he used his coercive family members as surrogates that took on his responsibilities when I visited, my mom wasn’t allowed a legitimate co-parent on her end.

There was turmoil in my inner sanctum for years. I had been brainwashed, miseducated and intimidated by the paternal side of my “family”. They tried to convince me that I needed to be saved, that I was born a sinner. They knew fully that I was already hurt by the man that used every excuse in the book to avoid me -they knew. They told me I would find eternal love and everlasting happiness, that it was up to me and no one else. A 10 year old.

There were times I abandoned myself and followed them and their God to meetings just to be part of the family. I sat at tables with these people and looked at them as if they were my loyal kin, unwavering and true. When I went home, I wasn’t born yesterday, I knew I had betrayed myself, but how else was I going to figure my life out? I became a little people pleaser, trying to find a balance between my own dreams and their promise of a perfect love life without suffering or pain. I thought that I would be accepted into “their” family if I let them teach me. But I only developed more insecurities every time, comparing their wealth to my mom’s wealth, their weddings to my mom’s wedding, their family photos to our family photos. I didn’t think I had a chance at life without the donor and his lifelines,

I was very close with my grandfather on that side; I act more like him than anyone else does. I even have his hair, slenderness and musical genes. Finally, I was invited to a wedding, actually I pretty much invited myself by asking my grandfather if I could come (because when I asked the donor he said he’d have to get permission. Such chivalry). The person I spent the most time with on the big day was my grandfather. He had done this before and was in fact sort of bored and seemed glad I was around. But no one else was – and they made that clear to him. I guess because I hadn’t made the executive decision that I would become one of them, I technically wasn’t supposed to be there.

That’s the day I realized he was part of the “everlasting life organization”. He became a stranger that day, it was so sad for me, the entire time I felt our relationship dissolving and my heart sinking by the hour. I soon realized that he was sacrificing his relationship with me to make the family happy – and I also soon realized I didn’t want to sacrifice the relationship – I had with me.

The weird thing is that donor was never part of the organization. Why was his father? I never understood that.

Anyway, I had nothing left to hold onto anymore, I was almost a teenager. Neither my father nor anyone on that side of the family had ever cherished me the way I needed to be. Once I was in high school these repressed feelings exploded, mostly as tears but sometimes rage. My mom sought therapy for me, but the worst layer of all this trauma was the extreme high school bullying from nearly the entire grade 11 and 12 classes. I’m pretty sure it was due to my fragility which likely impacted my facial expressions, promoted insecurities and made me the perfect target.

It all happened at once in the first month of high school and neither the staff nor my parents refused to even look into the severity of it. When my grades slipped a few months in, Mr. donor called me to lecture me about getting good grades and going to college like he did. I said, “if you care so much why don’t you send me a plane ticket and I’ll come live there.” Our conversation ended with me hanging up on him and saying to my mom, “My math teacher knows me better than he does.”

I can’t lie. It was exhausting to be holding space for my mom (and her inner child), my stepdad (who also came from a background of family trauma much like my mom’s) and my own childhood trauma. I was the only one in therapy.

The thing is I loved my parents; I wasn’t going to give up. And so I turned inward to that inner sanctum for strength and resilience. Every fight we had, it was a nightmare come to life. Every relapse. Every episode. Every conflict. Hell.

The organized eternal life scouts often still harassed me, calling me (however they got my phone number) often using statements like, “we miss you; we worry about you. You were so cute as a child, so silly…” They came after me and my son the first week he was born, wanting us to go to a meeting, to talk about our future in Paradise. Eventually I learned to say no. Eventually.

I fought through it all continually rebuilding myself from the inside out, reinforcing my own beauty, my own personality, my own faith. My inner sanctum is where I was able to go for peace, to visualize myself surrounded by love. Doing the work to gain my autonomy back meant I needed to isolate. I regained my ability to dream and took my power back, cleansing myself of the family toxins that impaired my judgement and vision.

About 10 years ago I found a letter from “him” that he wrote to my mom when I was about 5, saying, “I want a relationship with our daughter, I want to provide you with more support, I know I haven’t been as involved…I’m sorry.” I demystified it immediately, sending it straight to his inbox on Messenger (because he was on my Facebook) and he deleted it within 20 seconds or whatever the limit is to remove for both of us. I removed him from my friends list right away. Done.

All my sperm donor cared about was money. To me he was mindless. He could still never pay me enough to call him Dad. He visited me, my son, my sons father and my parents when my son was just a newborn. He brought his wife and his own son who was a year or so older than mine. Over coffee he told my parents that he would not condone me being with my sons father. I won’t even go there.

He is a tool. There needs to be a box in life where we just tick when we want to write someone off.

A couple of years ago I got an email from donor that read: “I’ll be in Kelowna this weekend and would like to take you out for dinner.” First of all, I hadn’t been living in Kelowna for over a year. So, I sent a response the length of a thesis which included full description everything I had lost along the way as his so-called daughter, freeing myself of our trauma bond, freeing my mom of their trauma bond and all trauma bonds that followed. I made it clear he was done standing me up, capitalizing on my energy, and that he had never had the place in my life he had claimed all these years. I stopped responding to him.

He had the audacity to add me to Facebook some months later. No, man… Just no.

Since then, I have been rediscovering parts of me that were overshadowed by his exclusive VIP family club. I have set boundaries with them fearlessly out of love for my inner child, my mom, her inner child and our tribe.

None of those relatives have ever made the effort to honor me or my world, they’ve never asked me who I am, or support me in my ambitions. All they wanted was another member in their organization. When they couldn’t get my mom, they went after me.

Who knows why my mom ended up with him at such a young age. Maybe she just needed a roof over her head. Maybe geographically they just ended up in the same house under government care. I have a photo of her at that age making perogies from scratch, she has a cute little bandana on and the innocence in her gaze is so soft and beautiful. I don’t know how he ever could have missed how insanely beautiful she is. When I look at pictures of her now, I feel less resentment, and he’s not in the picture at all.

I don’t see this as cutting cords, I see it as cleansing and purifying, it’s been a seriously slow drip to healing my somatic nervous system. My inner sanctum has been rebuilt where emotional architecture had collapsed, by me taking my power back, I am no longer serving the people who hurt me as a child or condoning that kind of abuse at all. I have boundaries. They aren’t unbreakable but I’m learning.

Children are vulnerable and delicate, yet profoundly resilient, and predatory people know that. They learn how to bring children down with their own weaknesses while weighing in on their strengths as a means to get them hooked on false admiration, praise and short-lived rewards like commendation. Because I had such a heightened awareness from being so blessed in the realm of dreams, I was able to navigate this childhood trauma. It wasn’t without its repercussions; I definitely had some responses and some even involuntary which I will share in the future. It took years to be even able to communicate with myself about it without fumbling and stumbling. I had to allow my anger to come up and learn to release it fully, let it go, leave it in the past. bury it. To this day I am still faced with dysregulation when triggered by my kids or events outside of me. I have had to be okay with that and change my responses. Radical self-acceptance, self-reliance and self-efficiency has helped me express myself constructively – bringing me back to a state of love and trust in myself when I have been off balance.

I can say that it is essential to keep a strong inner sanctum that is strictly private and sacred for oneself, a place to heal the nervous system, process personal experiences, emotions, and if possible – dream. Self-love grows in sanctuary and becomes the most solid possible foundation for psychological development. A safe inner space is essential for cultivating healthy and loving relationships, as well as a safe community and support network.

Eventually. Gently. Firmly.

a girl and her dreams

image: How To Recognize Signs Your Inner Child Needs Healing