Expressive Arts Carnival No 14 – Hopes and Dreams

This month’s Expressive Arts Carnival theme is:

Through drawing, painting, or any other visual means, create an image that incorporates your personal hopes and dreams.

I have blogged on this theme too many times to count! It felt too tedious to recreate any of these posts or images here, so – always the rule breaker in this Carnival – I did something slightly different. Here is my entry:

This is a photo I took on one of my travels. Travel continues to be one of my hopes and dreams, but that isn’t the point.

For me, the point of this photo is to remember that attaining my hopes and dreams as a pathway, a journey. It’s not always easy; in fact sometimes it’s downright difficult – but if I keep working at it, even one step at a time, then one day I’ll (probably) get there.

I say ‘probably’ because there are no guarantees – other life events get in the way, we change our hopes and dreams as time goes on, and sometimes, we find the journey too hard at the moment, and we turn back.

I also say ‘one step at a time’. This is an important part for me to remember because I’ve tended to be an A to Z person. As my therapist once said, I thought I could go in, spew out all the heinous sh** from the past, and suddenly feel better. Well, of course that didn’t happen! It’s the same with my hopes and dreams. I need to remember that half the point is the journey itself, and enjoying that along the way, or if I can’t enjoy it, then at least to remember that it’s a journey!

On a slightly different note – it’s funny how these Carnival entries sometimes don’t turn out the way you initially expect them to. Like this one, for example. When I started on this, it felt tedious and ‘boring’ because I’ve blogged on this topic many times before. But when I finally stumbled upon the approach I’ve ended up taking, it really sat comfortably inside. I know when I pay attention to that particular feeling I’m on the right track … or path.

Strange dreams

I had the strangest dreams last night – three of them. It’s not just the events in the dreams that are strange, but the fact that they have both literal and figurative interpretations.

In the first dream I received a text message from my therapist. It was casual, like we were in the middle of a conversation. In her message she said something like, “Do you need flowers or [can’t remember], chocolates or [can’t remember]…” Strange. The interwebs tells me that dreams of text messages signify telepathy and a desire to connect with the other person.  That’s true. They also mean I want to get to the point. That’s also true as I have a session today, and a lot to discuss, and I want to get into it, without my therapist phaffing about with a lot of chit chat.

In the second dream (which occurred at the same time and place as the third dream), I dreamt that a friend of mine had to sell her home. Now the literal here is that this friend has recently separated from her husband and wants to keep the home, but doesn’t know yet if this will be possible. In the dream the buyers decided they didn’t want the house afterall, and then decided to move the land and house to another location. Apparently dreams of “disappearing” houses mean I’m not feeling grounded; that I’m feeling uprooted by something in my life. Yep, I am. Actually I’m going to start going to meditation this week in the hope it will help with the grounding. Here’s where this one gets a little complicated. The land the buyers were selling was shaped like a triangle (it isn’t, in real life). Apparently triangles symbolize my aspirations and potential, but also mind, body and spirit.  

In the third dream, another friend of mine (who already has five children of her own), gave birth to five more – quintuplets – as a surrogate mother. One of the real world connections here is that the friend in the second dream and the friend in the third have experienced a rift in their relationship. I think that’s why they both appeared, anyway. The interwebs says that dreams of birth suggest I might be “giving birth” to a new idea, or that there might be new beginnings. Seeing babies also signifies innocence and warmth, something in our own inner nature that is pure, vulnerable or helpless. As these were quintuplets, they were very small, which apparently symbolises my own helplessness and fears of showing my vulnerabilities or incompetence. That’s true, though I can’t pin down why I’d dream of this now.

If I’m to connect these dreams, and the symbolism in them, I come up with this: something about new beginnings in my life that are connected to my aspirations, but feeling vulnerable about this. I’m certainly afraid of failure, and consequently not feeling grounded (it’s almost like I feel controlled by other events). I’ve also recognised recently that my feelings about this are completely normal, and I’ve tried to be gentle on myself – how I’m feeling is just how I’m feeling. It doesn’t mean I’m useless or pathetic or worthless – it’s just how I feel in a given moment and it will, eventually, pass. There’s gotta be some progress in there somewhere, but I’m getting befuddled with all this overanalysis.

One things for sure – the dreams were strange. I’m not stressed by them – just find them curious.

Scary Dream

I was woken last night by a scary dream. I know that nightmares and PTSD go hand in hand, but this wasn’t the usual triggery flashbacky hell. It scared me, though, and I can’t make sense of it, so I thought I’d post it here and see if any of you can make any sense of it.

In the dream, I was up in the hills with my mother. We were on trains and out in the bush and making tea and listening to news about some gangsters on the run. There were cats there, too – specifically a little ginger cat. It’s the third time this week I’ve dreamed about animals (once about elephants and twice now about cats).

Then my father appeared, out of nowhere, as often happens in dreams. He was upset because these mafia-type guys were coming to get him (not the ones we’d heard about on the news). They were big guys, taking him away somewhere, and he didn’t want to go. And I was fiddling with a little plastic something (not sure what it was, just remember the feel of the plastic).

What freaked me is that I was also a bit upset because my father was upset. Not so much in the dream where I was just telling him it would be ok, but when I woke up. The only thing I can possibly relate it to in the real world is the seemingly endless conversation I have with my mother about it being passed time Dad went into a nursing home. But I haven’t had that conversation for ages. What the…?

No one said dreams had to make any sense, but this one … weird.