Dreams, My Dad, and the Unexpected

flying kites with a granddaughter

There is another world and it is in this one.

--widely attributed to Paul Eluard

Soon after I began dreamwork many years ago, my dreams showed clearly how much I loved my father.  Something I “knew” but could now feel more deeply. At Dad’s 81st birthday dinner, I remember gazing at him and words spilling out from the heart. The words have faded, but I will never forget the feeling and the way his face lit up. 

During his remaining years, I spent many days with Dad at his home in Mississippi. I will always treasure this time. In ways I could never have imagined, dreams played a vital role in our time together. Not only my dreams, but his.

Though Dad had never shown interest in dreams or told me a dream, he was supportive of my growing devotion to dreams and dreamwork. Now and then he would ask me how it was going. 

Then one day out of the blue he said, “I had a dream last night.”  He told it to me very simply:

I’m a boy riding my bike and I have to get home soon because mother will be worried about me.

He told it with a kind of wonder, but also in his matter-of-fact way, this event that happened last night. I felt amazed and touched. We talked about it briefly, and he shared memories  of riding his bike as a boy, and of my grandmother. 

The dream also felt poignant. Dad had been physically active his entire life. He loved being outdoors – playing sports, riding his tractor and clearing brush, walking, running.  At the time of the dream he was growing more frail and less able to move around as he longed to.  Yet here he was -- a boy with energy and freedom riding his bike. And he was going home. 

I’d known my father often as one shouldering responsibilities and caring for others. How moving it was to imagine him as a boy riding home, knowing he is loved and cared for. It felt so real as he told me, and it was. 

This dream led to a conversation we would not have had otherwise. Something opened up between us that day and remained open during the rest of his life. A way of being with him, acknowledging his feelings and his inner vitality on a level deeper than words.

After this day, Dad began telling me dreams from time to time. Just a handful during his final years, but each one felt precious. He would say now and then, “My dreams are wild!” 

It felt clear he wanted to tell me, and I began to feel the dreams themselves wanted to be known. When they showed up, I felt them as our connectors.  

He asked with a smile one day if I might want to share his dreams with “your dream friends,” and he sounded excited. So I feel his permission to share a few here.

Could I whisper in your ear a dream I’ve had? You’re the only one I’ve told this to.

--Rumi

Being with Dad and his dreams was a new world for me, yet also felt natural. I was not yet a dreamwork practitioner, and even had I been, I wanted to meet Dad’s dreams as his daughter who loved him.

From my own Natural Dreamwork experience with Rodger Kamenetz I knew how to let the dream speak with its images and feelings. I knew that nothing needs to be explained or figured out. Being with dreams and images in this way can feel like a living stream of healing waters. It refreshes the soul. It’s deeper than words.

Around this time, our beloved colleague Mary Jo Heyen, who passed away in 2022, had begun her work with hospice patients and their dreams. Mary Jo would go on to pioneer this way of working with the dreams of the dying and would publish many articles along with her beautiful book Dreaming into the Mystery.

From Mary Jo I felt encouraged to follow my heart sense and simply listen, and most of all to honor the dreams and their feelings as real, because they are.  To ask simple questions, like “what is that like?” 

Dad was not in a hospice setting, but these simple guidelines felt encouraging and supportive, and aligned with my own experience of Natural Dreamwork.  I was learning that dreams want us to be in relationship, and that dreams can be beautiful connectors when we share them. Since this time, other wonderful approaches to the art and practice of dream sharing have grown within the Natural Dreamwork community (examples below).  

When Dad would tell me a dream I listened closely and felt the dream with him. I might ask questions about how he felt, and we would talk about this. Sometimes this would lead to a conversation about a part of his life. It was like a door opening and we could both be in this world together where there were no boundaries, where he could be any age at all, where his feelings were alive and in the center.

One day he woke from a nap and told me the following dream:

I’m in the service and we’re in a race, hundreds of men in the woods. We all start at the same time. I feel so good and I’m running so fast and keep passing up people. I feel I might be close to winning, not the winner but close.

Dad had not felt well this day, but his energy and joy in the dream were palpable. He was not alone but surrounded by companions. We talked about his time in the service, about how he loved to run and had taken me out running when I was small.

His love for freedom and movement with others came alive here. The dream allowed us to talk about how he missed this because of illness, and how he stayed active in his own way. 

He also dreamt of climbing a tall tree in a city and folks gather all around the tree.  “I was a folk hero!” he said. Then I’m going to take a 5-day motorcycle trip with 4-5 friends who are here… we’re all going to ride on the same motorcycle.

I felt so touched by this dream. In his voice and the dream’s images I felt his boy soul, who feels love and needs it. I knew and loved this place in my dad. It was like a light. At times it felt faraway, of course. The dream helped me know how alive this place of vitality still was in him.  And that he could feel it.

Dad had his share of difficult dreams too. He hinted at these and alluded to one that took place in his former workplace. It felt painful and helped me feel the reality of this for him. But he chose not to share all of these with me. This was up to him.

However, one of the last dreams he told me brought up the sorrow of my mother having Alzheimer’s, how painful this was. In the dream he’s with her at a big party and “it’s loud out of sight, food all over the tables. There are all these gifts. We have a glass of wine but when I go to taste it there’s not much in it and it’s frustrating.”

In its clear way, the dream expressed the anguish of this time. Dad had looked forward to enjoying life with my mother in their later years, but that life was no longer possible. They couldn’t taste the wine or enjoy the gifts. We felt the sadness together. The dream spoke so much that was hard for him to express. He did not have to explain anything. The dream spoke with its images. He was seen and known by the dream, with compassion, and I got to witness this. 

As I write this it’s been almost a decade since Dad passed away. The dreams he shared with me are woven into my experience and memory of him and feel like tender miraculous gifts. It brings me happiness to know he had the chance to feel their aliveness and to feel less alone in his feelings. 

It was a great privilege to listen to his dreams. And I know it is no small thing to share a dream and have it received with an open heart, as a real living experience.  I feel forever grateful for this simple natural approach to dreams that is Natural Dreamwork.  

My father’s dreams helped us grow closer and helped me see him not just as my father but as a living child soul, who is beloved. This gave me a deeper knowing that the “other world” of imagination and feeling and mystery is alive in each person. And that the simplest dream can be a doorway.   

RESOURCES:

Dreaming into the Mystery by Mary Jo Heyen can be purchased HERE

 If you are interested in sharing dreams in community here are some opportunities:

The Dream Circle with Kezia Vida (ongoing) – learn more and register HERE

An Experiential Introduction to Natural Dreamwork:  an upcoming online class taught by Keren Vishny and the Natural Dreamwork practitioner community, which will include dream sharing in small groups. Learn more and register HERE