Dreams

This week I thought that I'd write about dreams.



I had an insightful dream a few days ago which helped me to understand something in my life of concern at that time.  Once I  had reviewed the dream and worked out what I thought it's message was, I felt much better and less upset.  The dream was simple and it comprised only images and a couple of brief thoughts but no-one spoke.

I found that the dream contained much meaning for me and previously hidden truths.  It was such a helpful experience I thought  I'd discuss dreams this week, tell readers about my dream and what I learned, and also tell readers about another really interesting and helpful dream I had many years ago - which taught me about a worry I had which I wasn't consciously aware of.  

Lastly  I've written a short story of fiction about an important dream.



Firstly to briefly discuss dreams.


Everyone dreams.  Some people may not remember their dreams but we all dream.

Dreams are a succession of images, ideas, emotions and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep - mostly the REM (rapid eye movement) stage.  REM is a stage of sleep
when brain activity is high and resembles that of being awake.  You are more likely to recall dreams if you wake during the REM phase.  People have, on average, three to five dreams per night.  They range in duration from a few seconds to 20 - 30 minutes.

The content and purpose of dreams are not definitely understood, though they have been the subject of a lot of study.  Dreams are thought to be a connection to the subconscious mind. They are thought to be often symbolic and you need to interpret the symbols to understand the meaning of dreams. Dreams tend to need interpretation as they tend to be more visual than verbal, although they're not necessarily complex.  The pictures need to be interpreted into ideas.  Some researchers think that dream symbolism is very personal and the dreamer may be best to decipher the dream.

Carl Jung thought dreams related to a dreamer's unconscious desires, as did Freud,  however beyond this Jung also thought that dreams were messages to the dreamer.  Jung thought dreamers should pay attention to dreams as they could contain helpful information for them - revelations which could uncover and help resolve emotional problems and fears.

Jung wrote that a recurring dream suggests that the dreamer is neglecting an issue related to the dream.  He thought many of the symbols and images return each dream and every person in the dream may represent an aspect of the dreamer.  Furthermore, he thought that memories formed
during the day play a role in dreaming; the unconscious mind re-enacts those glimpses in a dream.  He called this 'day residue'.

In ancient times and also today some people believe dreams can direct messages from people who have died or even predict the future.




Now to my dream this week...but first some back story to the dream.

Anyone reading my blog,  although so far I fear that it has been mostly only me reading it, will know that I started to write my blog about 2 weeks ago.  I am a medical doctor working four days per week and I have four children ranging in age from four years old to sixteen years old; so most of my life is work. Heavy sigh and cue violins.  I enjoy my work and I love my kids, and I also love my dear husband I'd better quickly add, in case he reads this and notices he is conspicuously absent from my list of loves.

But about 18 months ago, in the few hours of spare time I get each week, I began studying creative writing - which is a delicious pleasure just for me.  I will add here that I think everyone has the right to do something just for themselves everyday.  Everyday.

Anyway, back to my backstory.  I was so excited when I  started writing my blog and I anticipated a flood of readers hungry for my next inspiring edition of ideas and prose.

Also, another exciting thing relate to writing that happened in the last two weeks was that  I wrote a letter of support to a well known national media identity.  He wrote in the newspaper about being the victim of bullying in his workplace.  I e-mailed a letter of support and encouragement to his newspaper e-mail address, listed in the newspaper, and I never expected to hear anything more about it.

I sent my e-mail after work - by which I mean paid work and then all the mum duties work - help with the kid's homework, dinner, kid's to bed etc.  So I didn't get to send the e-mail until about 8.30pm.  To my amazement the national celebrity wrote back to me personally via e-mail, at about 11pm that same night, to thank me for my support.  He told me that  my letter was inspirational.   I was so excited that something I wrote had been read and it had helped someone that I admire so much as a writer and as a person.  I imagined that he may have read my 3 page letter before he went to sleep that night and he may have felt some comfort from my words to help him sleep.

Well, after 18 months of very slow part-time creative writing study - I'd started a blog and written a long letter which had helped a well known writer!  I was so excited.  I imagined my writing life had begun.  Lots of readers.  Applause.  Admiration.
However, the reality was...nothing.  No-one reading my blog - except me.  Although I will admit it was still fun to write it.

Nothing had happened beyond the heady excitement of starting to actually write something and a few words of thanks from a real writer.  I felt deflated and sad for a few days.  Then I had my dream.



In my dream a young man dressed in the clothes of a middle-ages peasant walks into a mysterious dark and expansive cave-like world, similar to a fantasy genre movie such as The Hobbit.  Large dark willow type branches hang down from above, swaying in the still air.  The young man on entering this place picks up a gilded mirror and spends some moments admiring himself.  He then seeks out  trophies and framed certificate tributes to himself on the cave walls.  Soon after this opening scene I become an old man, large and looking down on this interloper.  I have been in this world for many decades and I have done amazing things; I have conquered giants and performed many heroic feats however I have learned that I did these things because they were the right thing to do and it was what I needed to do.  I did not look for recognition or reward like this vain, foolish young man who had been in this world for mere moments and looked for praise and recognition already.

At this point in the dream I woke up.


My dream was still vivid in my mind and I lay in bed, my eyes still closed, considering the strangeness of it.  At first I didn't think it related to me - as the characters were male.  However, as I let  my thoughts drift back through the dream I realised that it actually did relate to me and some worries I had during the previous week.
I had felt disappointed that the excitement of starting to write had resulted in a deafening silence.  Nothing!  Zilch!  'Other foreign words' meaning 'nothing'!   I felt let down and disappointed.


However, the dream helped me see that I was behaving like that young man in my dream - entering this new world of writing and fiction, represented by the fantasy  setting for the dream.  In a world of writing I have only just got one toe wet.  I had been expecting recognition and applause when I had  paid absolutely no dues.

I think that the old man in my dream represents a writer who has been writing for many years.  That writer has worked very hard and has done many things in the writing world - yet he writes for the love of it, he expects nothing from his craft except the love of it and the pride he gets from it and the hope that it might entertain and/or help other people who read it.  He is humble and  content.

I came to appreciate how silly and vain I had been.  I then felt really  happy and content.  I developed perspective of where I was on a writing journey.  I have just begun.  I have just walked into this world of writing  and taken less than a single step on a journey of one thousand miles.   I deserve nothing.  Maybe one day.  Maybe.  However, if I never get any recognition or rewards I will write because I feel I need to and because it makes me happy in and of itself.


What a good dream that was.  I learned something from, possibly, my higher self.  How much more wisdom do we hold in our subconscious minds  that dreams can teach us.




Another recurring dream, which I will tell you now, is one that  I had many years ago, when I was about 28 years old and I was working as a registrar in a major teaching hospital, studying to be a Paediatrician.

My entire life then was work and study.  As a senior registrar I worked 60 - 70 hours each week in the hospital  and then I would drag myself home only to do many more hours work in the form  of study for the specialty exams.  All in all I would work and study for around 100 hours each week.  I never rested or had time for fun in my 20's looking back.  As one of the other registrars said at the time - we would watch the seasons go by through the window.  We were virtually never free to be outdoors unless we were walking to and from our cars to get to and from work.  We would arrive in the hospital at about 8am and leave no sooner than 6pm, but regularly not until11pm or even not until the next morning. We worked at least 6 day per week,  but often even 7 days in the week.


It was also at about this time that I started to think it would be nice to have children of my own.  I looked after other people's children as a paediatric doctor - but, although I'd been married for about four years,  I was delaying starting a family of my own until after I'd passed my specialty exams.


It was around this time that my recurring dreams started.


There were a couple of variations on my dream - but the theme was the same and I came to realise that the message my subconscious was trying to give me was the same for both versions of the dream.


In one version I was a young woman standing on a river bank and I was throwing apples into a river.  Another woman, of a similar age and appearance to me, would approach me and I would try to run from her.  She would chase me and I would try to push her down a deep ravine.  She then would grab my foot as she was falling and she would call to me, as she dangled over the endlessly deep void, "If I go ... you go too!"

At this point I would wake with a start.


In the second variation on the recurring dream, I would find myself at a lovely sunny holiday resort.  There was a beautiful swimming pool with a multi story apartment building.  Holiday makers were enjoying themselves all about me, and I was having fun and feeling relaxed as well.  People were playing games, beach balls were begin thrown around and there was a real carefree feeling around me,  similar to when I was a child and not yet an exhausted doctor.  I would then see another woman, with an appearance again similar to me walk into my holiday place.  She would carry a pile of text books,  she wore glasses and appeared both studious and serious.  I would follow her in the dream and try to inject her with poison to kill her.

Once again I would wake at this point in the dream - thinking that I was a murderer and feeling upset.



The two dreams recurred regularly over many months.  One day I told my husband about the strange dreams in which I am always trying to kill another woman who looks like me.
My doctor husband is interested in psychology and he had read quite a lot about the symbolic meaning of dreams.

He explained to me that when you dream about another same sex person, similar in age to yourself - it is your shadow figure, which means another aspect of yourself that you may or may not be aware of.

He said that fruit often symbolises off spring - children and babies of your own;  and a river of represents time and life passing by.


With this understanding I could see that the other woman that I tried to kill in both dreams I was in fact me.  It was the two opposite aspects of myself - shadow figures.

In the first dream where I was throwing apples into a river.  This could represent that at 28 years years of age I now wanted to be a mother - but I was delaying motherhood to focus on my academic career.  I was throwing the idea of children, symbolised by apples in the dream, into the river, a symbol for  the passage of time and my life drifting by.  The other woman didn't want me to do this and she would chase me.  She was my shadow self; my more maternal side.  Meanwhile in the dream  I wanted to get rid of her and continue what I was doing - delaying motherhood to focus on my career.
She would then say in the dream,  "if I go ... so do you" - which  could mean that she was a part of me which I could never get rid of.


In the second dream I was carefree and having fun.  The studious, boring, hard working woman who entered this scene was the academic me - shunning any fun and relaxation in order to endlessly study and work.  The less academic, more fun loving me wanted to get rid of her - via killing her off as well.


I would wake after always finding that I was unable to kill the other woman - which I now realised was the other side to myself - both sides had been represented in the two versions of my dream where I was feeling torn between my academic, career ambitions and my maternal desires and sadness at missing fun in my youth due to working constantly.

Once I understood my dream and I made a deal with myself that whether I passed my specialty exams or not I would allow myself  to try to have a baby by the age of 30 years old.  With this compromise both side of myself were satisfied and the recurring dreams stopped.


Interestingly, the fun-loving maternal side of myself eventually won and that is who I found I am mostly now.

I did pass all of my specialty paediatric exams by the age of 30 and  I had my first baby at 30 as well.  However, I found being a mother while trying to finish advanced specialty training was too hard.  I had no extended family to help and after four years of trying to be both an academic career woman and a mother - I finally had to choose one or the other.  I either needed to get a nanny or I need to find another job that allowed me to be with my children more - especially when they were sick and couldn't attend child care.

Like my alternating dreams from a few  years earlier - I had to choose which side to myself would dominate my life - career academic or mother - one or the other.  I found that I couldn't be both.  I know some women can do both, probably in different circumstances to me  and maybe harder working or moe organised than me - but I had to choose one or the other.

After much contemplation I left paediatrics and focused primarily on being a mother.

It was a hard decision in that I was qualified for no other job, I had a large mortgage to pay  and I had put so many years, all of my 20's, into passing the exams and doing the very long hours of training as a registrar. I left and I found a job with the flexibility and reduce hours I needed to cope with being a mother without a nanny or any extended family.

No answer here was necessarily the right one.  Other women would have made a different choice to me, that is continue work as a specialist doctor, hire a nanny and still be a wonderful mother.

We are all different and we all have to make hard choices in our lives.  We just all try and do what we can and what is right for our lives.






Finally, a short story involving my theme for this weeks blog - dreams:






The Dream



Sandra knocked on the old wooden door.  Fine splinters in the aged timber grazed her knuckles and she noticed the door's faded red paint was peeling.  Her gaze drifted around the bungalow's portico as she waited; the place she had spent so many happy hours playing hide and seek and hop scotch and many other childhood  games. Lush green foliage surrounded this little nook near the front door, so thick that  the street beyond it could not be seen.  Fragrances from jasmine and roses and even lemon hung heavy in the still cool air and Sandra drew them into her lungs in a long deep breath.  This was the place where she felt happy and safe.  Safe from all the worries in the world and especially in her own life lately.

Footsteps on the wooden floor beyond the door grew louder and heralded the arrival of her grandmother, Hilda Mellors.  The door opened.

"Sandra', the slim elderly woman with silver hair and laughing eyes looked up at her grand daughter,    " I'm so glad you're here.  You're a bit early today but I've just boiled the kettle.  Come in darling".

"Hello gran', Sandra replied, following the older woman through the house into the  kitchen.  She had noticed lately that her grandmother's gait was slower  and she seemed more feeble than usual.  She had taken to using a walking stick  and Sandra realised with disappointment and a degree of surprise that her grandmother was now quite elderly.  She worked through some numbers in her head and decided that she must be around 81 years old.

The kitchen was  typical of the 1920's bungalow style.  Unlike renovated houses in the suburb with young families increasingly moving into the area, this kitchen was almost as it would have been 90 year earlier. The cupboards were off white, wooden with battered silver handles.  An old sink sat up one end of the kitchen adjacent to a  small window which looked out onto a large metal clothes-line in the back garden.  An ancient oven sat against another wall next to few more cupboards, and a large battered white fridge stood in a corner.   No modern conveniences made their way into this kitchen.  There was no dishwasher or microwave oven or mobile phone.  Hilda liked things the way she had always known them to be; familiar and comfortable.

Sandra sat down in her usual seat at the large kitchen table.  The same seat that she would sit in on all of her weekly visits here.

"How have you been Gran?"
"Fine dear".
"Did you have a nice time in the volunteer shop at the hospital yesterday or were you taking the book trolley around the wards?"
"I didn't go this week", the elderly woman placed two coffee mugs on the table and went back to get the biscuit tin from one of the kitchen cupboards.
"Why not ?" Sandra's voice was high pitched and she felt a slight panic in her chest.  "Were you sick?  You should call me if you're not well..."
"I was just a bit tired dear"

Hilda shuffled back across to the tabled and sat down holding onto the chair and her stick for support.  Sandra's anxious eyes studied her.  This didn't look good.  She wondered if her grandmother might need some extra care.  She had offered to move in and look after her but Hilda wouldn't hear of it. "You need to look after Ethan, and you are more comfortable in your own house", she had said.  It annoyed Sandra that her grandmother was so independent.  Although, Sandra knew that she always had been.  She was a strong and independent woman - even now.

Sandra knew that her grandfather, John, had died as a young man in WWII.  He'd been a navigator in the Australian airforce, but he'd died  soon after her own father was born.  Hilda had never remarried.  She had said that her husband, John, was her soul mate and he was the only man for her.  She always said that she was happy alone.

"How have you been, dear?"Hilda smiled across the table at her grand daughter.
"Fine gran".
Sandra took another sip of her coffee and took a Nice biscuit from the tin.  She couldn't tell her grandmother the truth.  Things were not good in her own life.  Studying medicine was hard - especially this year - her fifth year.  She had only one last year of study after this year and then it would be her intern year and then she would be a doctor.  The big problem was that she had begun to think medicine was not for her.  She had been thinking of deferring and travelling overseas.  Her brother Ethan was 18  now and able to take care of himself.

Their parents had been killed in a car accident three years earlier, when she was 19.  Sandra's parents  had left Sandra and her brother well provided for financially.  However,  she and Ethan had been still quite young, so soon after the accident her grandmother, Hilda,  had moved in with them.  She had stayed  for 2 years and then she'd moved back  into her own home, a 10 minute drive away.

For Sandra, deciding what to do about her future and her career was hard.  Was she suited to be a doctor?  She had started to doubt it.

The afternoon wore on and Sandra eventually  realised that two hours had passed.  She got up from the table, hugged her grandmother, kissed her cheek and picked up her bag and keys to leave.

"I love you gran," she said as she walked out the front door.  "I'll see you same time next week.  Do you need any help with anything? Would you like me to come by tomorrow?"
"No darling.  I'm fine.  You take care and give a kiss to your brother from me."
Sandra laughed.  She knew her grandmother was teasing her.  She would not kiss her brother for her gran or anyone else.  They weren't 'kissy' type siblings.  But she would send gran's regards to her brother as she always did.

The following morning Sandra woke with a start. She's had just had  the most vivid dream of her life.

In the dream she had been sitting in a  beautiful garden with the scent of jasmine, roses and a hint of lemon filling  the air.  She sat on a white marble bench and a across a small lawn a young woman had waved to her.  The woman was wearing a white dress - in a 1940's style.  Her hair was made up also in a style of that era.  She didn't speak but she sent love somehow;  Sandra could feel it.  She also felt pressure around her arms like someone was hugging her, although she could see no arms around her body, and she felt a kiss on her cheek, although again no-one was there to kiss her.
Across the lawn Sandra then saw a young man in an air force uniform walk toward the woman.  She ran to him when she saw him and Sandra heard the word, John.  The couple hugged each other for a long time.  They both then turned again to Sandra and waved again  before they walked away

However as they left the young woman turned and threw a photo to Sandra.  The piece of paper wafted through the air, like a slowly gliding paper plane, and then it fell softly into her hands.  Sandra caught the picture and looked down at it.  It was a picture of herself.  She was wearing a doctor's white coat and a stethoscope hung around her neck.  She was smiling in the picture and another young male doctor had his arm around her waist.  Two young children stood next to the couple in the photo - children aged around four and two years of age Sandra thought.  A small number was in the corner of the picture.  It read 2024.  It was a date.  It was 10 years from now.  Sandra looked up and the young couple were gone.  She felt happy and content.  She heard a young woman's voice then speak  gently to her.  "Goodbye Sandra.  I love you and I'll be with you always.  You'll find happiness.  Things will work out.  Your grandfather and your parents are here and they all send their love to you as well.  We'll always be with you."

Sandra woke and sat up in bed.  The dream was so clear and unlike most dreams it stayed with her after she woke.  She looked at the clock.  It was only 5am.  It was still dark.
She wondered if what she had experienced was some sort of premonition.  She decided to stay in bed.  She knew if she got up now she would only be tired all day. Soon after she woke again to the phone ringing.  She looked at the time.  It was now seven o'clock.  She wondered who would ring her at that  time of the morning.  Slightly annoyed she picked up her phone from her bedside table.

"Hello," the voice on the end of the phone was that of a woman. It was no-one that sandra recognised .
"Hello, Sandra Mellors here", Sandra responded, wondering what this could be about.
"I'm Doctor Gray at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.  I'm afraid I have some bad new", the woman continued.  "Your grandmother Hilda Mellors was admitted to hospital last night.  She had phoned for an ambulance herself.  Chest pain.  She has listed you as her next of kin.  I'm afraid she had a massive heart attack in the early hours of this morning.  There was nothing we could do.  I'm sorry to have to tell you that she died at 5 o'clock this morning.  I am very sorry."

Sandra felt cold.  The phone fell from her grasp.  She remembered her dream.  It was her gran...  She had sent a message.  A last message.

The tears flowed down Sandra's cheeks but she couldn't feel too very sad now.  Not now that she'd seen how happy her grandmother was in her dream.  Her dear gran was with her beloved husband, John, finally after all these years;  and also Sandra's own her parents.  She knew it would be selfish of her to wish her gran was still here with her -  no longer independent and in her own house.  Sandra knew that her grandmother  would never have been happy in a  nursing home  as an invalid.  She was just glad that she got too see her on her last day and then again they got to see each other in her dream.

Sandra also knew what she would do. Her gran had given her a glimpse of her future.  She would become a doctor.



                                                               The End



PS:
Part of my inspiration for this story was from an incident that happened to me as a resident medical officer (RMO) in a large tertiary hospital in the early 1990's.
It was around 4am and I had just certified an elderly patient on a medical ward, who was very ill and 'not for resuscitation,' dead.

I was sitting at the nurse's station writing in the deceased patient's notes the usual medical records for such an event and the 'time of death', when the phone next to me rang.  The nurses were busy so I told them that I would answer the phone.  At four o'clock in the morning the only people to usually ring the ward would be medical or nursing staff from somewhere else within the hospital.  Visitors and relatives never call at that time.

I picked up the phone and was very surprised to find that it was the deceased woman's daughter.  Her mother had died only within the last 20 minutes!  I was still writing in her notes!
I was speechless for a few moments as I was not expecting a call from the daughter at that time of the night.  The daughter told me that she needed to know how her mother was doing.

I was shocked by the fact the daughter of the woman who had just died 20 minutes earlier, at four in the morning, had needed to ring the hospital ward to ask  how her mother was.  How did she know to call then? I wondered.  Her mother had been ill for months - so why did she ring within minutes of her death?  Also, did something happen in her sleep, maybe in a dream, to wake her up?

As I put the phone receiver down I said to the nurses next to me writing in their notes, "Guess who that was?"
"A relative of the woman" they answered.
When I confirmed that they were right the two nurses smiled and told me that that happens often. Relatives ring within minutes of a patient dying to enquire about them even in the middle of the night, even when to patient has been ill for a many weeks or months, and even when the death was unexpected.

How? I wondered.

There are many things we don't understand.

PS: 

If you liked this blog or found it helpful - please let others know - as it may be helpful to them or just a nice read.