I dreamt I was in a different time dimension. First of all, I was so tired last night I had no choice but to go to sleep around 10pm. It wasn’t hard to fall asleep even despite the rolling bass from the amusement park across the driveway at the fairgrounds. I woke up in the middle of the night of course; I always do when I crash early. Once back in bed it was nice to hear nothing but peace and quiet, it was almost twilight and I knew I had enough time for a dream – of some sort.

My dream started with going back in time as close as possible to “home”, and I knew I was close to home because I saw a building that had that “home” feeling. It was a building with lots of windows, sort of like a school with lots of windows and I could see the colors of primary school on one floor in the corner of the building. I felt really safe in this place, and could sense that this was an opportunity for me to work through some childhood issues.

Just a couple hundred feet from a corner of the building there was a small bunch of trees, the kind of trees that you see in fairy books, big knotty roots and low curvy branches. A group of people from my life was sitting amongst the trees and my youngest daughter was playing and toddling around. The father of my youngest two, who we call Papa Tree (his chosen name) was talking with the group of people. I am very wary of people, I grew up with very little boundaries around me, and I’ve broken that cycle fiercely in my life.

I knew that in my dream I was safe so I wasn’t having a lot of anxiety but I still wanted to be alone with my little girl, I didn’t want strangers in my dream, even if they were friend with their Papa. I told Papa Tree we were going inside the school to do art, he asked if he could come. I said of course, but only him and his mom.

Once inside the building I found some art supplies and paper, my girls love drawing and if they aren’t drawing, they are doing cartwheels. The room that we were in was like a big sheet of paper for all of us to stand on. I could still see the old trees outside the building, but we were entering a different dimension and they felt further and further away by the “minute”.

On the sheet of paper I could draw, and I had oil pastels, and while I drew we were also in the drawing. I propsed to Papa Tree that we play the squiggle game. It’s a game, if you didn’t know, where one person draws a squiggle and then another makes something out of the squiggle, and so on to the next person. The girls love it. But after a few squiggles they wanted me to draw something more elaborate.

I began to draw some palm trees, a whole row, and as I drew them the became life size and we were walking under them. I drew some bigger and bigger until they were standing like real palm trees. Tall ones. Eventually we were in another time dimension on an island, and all we had was pastels and paper. I started to get very curious and wandered off on my own onto a ship where I found a jewelry box, more like a small treasure box. In the box I started to take out heirlooms from Papa Tree’s family.

Papa Trees family in real life owns a store with thousands of trinkets and treasures, so it wasn’t surprising that I was finding beautiful earrings, even lipstick and photos. I felt like I was discovering proof of a magical lineage, and when his mom recognized one of the jewels she started to tell stories, not in English but through vivid imagery.

Eventually reality was calling, and though my heart wanted to stay so badly, I knew I was going to have to wake up. That’s when my oldest daughter peeped in through my door and said “oh oops it’s Saturday” haha. Which it is, but I am glad she woke me up because I had slept 10 hours. I think it was just enough time in that parellel reality that I wouldn’t forget what happened and it wasn’t too much so I was able to remember everything and come out and write about it.

Papa Tree has vision issues, I think this dream was showing me how dreams can help with that, we were sort of in an abstract “reality” in our dream. This dimension of time and space is challenging when we have health issues, we are bound by gravity, we have to be very careful, we are not limitless. Having a major illness or physical barrier is extremely frustrating and can be depressing. Dreams are absolutely amazing for dealing with this kind of hardship.

xoxo

a girl and her dreams