Author name: richard vendor

The above title is powerful to me. There are so many things I could and should learn to let go of. I’m going to try to focus on letting go of the interpretation of my dreaming. I am an every-night dreamer, and during the night, I dream multiple times with different scenes. Right after we lost Woody, I was having the same dream every night. I was having it multiple times, and it got to the point where I didn’t want to go to sleep because I was in fear of the dream returning. I was drinking myself to sleep (15 months sober now), and my relationship with my wife was falling apart because of my behavior. In the repetitive dream, I would see Woody way out on the ocean, and he was very small. I could never reach him. He would disappear, and I’d wake up. I had hoped that someone would be able to explain it to me, as I was getting pretty desperate. This dream was the main reason that I started working with Ophilia Mandara.  I went through 12 very intense dream “sessions” that were an hour long. In these sessions, she would explore the dream, and we would establish “anchor points” in the dream that I would return to during meditations in the coming week. In the beginning, I hoped I’d understand it, but in reality, the anchor points would send me down a much different, deeper path. I continue this practice and work to this day. I’ve learned that before I go to sleep, I address my dream allies, be they good or not, and tell them that if they have some gifts to share with me after I fall asleep, I welcome those gifts, be they ones of lightness or darkness. It can make for some pretty interesting dreams for sure, and I am grateful for this gift of dreaming. So, my intention is to let go of trying to understand my dreams and to accept the experiential lessons and teachings I experience in them. One of the things that I see most often in my sleep is a timeless space. There is no horizon or floor, there is no sense of time. I feel as if I am floating between two worlds. That recurring visualization bothered me at first, but now I look forward to the undefined, floating backdrop. The bonus part of learning to let go is the realization that I don’t have to ask anybody except myself for permission to experience my dream wonderland.

I got up this morning and walked into my back yard. The waning moon was shining through a gap in the branches of my 300-year-old oak tree I stared up at it and said to myself, “I’m right where I should be right at this moment”.  I looked up in the tree and saw a family of finches, a seagull flew by, then a pair of crows. I marveled at the life around me. My clarity at 6:15 in the morning shocked me. I was right where I’m supposed to be in that moment and I realized that was truth in so many different aspects of my life. Woody used to steal a clear plastic cup I used for laundry soap. I’d take it away and hide it from him. He’d find it and I’d hear him chewing it. Last week, I was cleaning under a bookcase and I found it. I could see his very sharp teeth marks in the plastic. I fished it out from under the bookcase and held it in my hand.  I broke down on the floor and couldn’t stop crying. I could feel his energy in the cup and when I finally did stop crying, I felt bad about being overcome. It’s been close to 2 years since we lost him, and here I was, lost in grief. I remember my PCP and my therapist telling me that grief would come in waves, that the waves would come further apart but there would be sneaker waves that would feel like being swept off the rocks and into the boiling sea. They were right. As I reflect on the moment now, I can have some perspective on how I felt, and I realize that I can’t hurry the healing in my life. My time with Woody was short but so potent. I realize that if I accept my feelings, then I can climb out of the depression much faster. We live near a middle school (where Frank Zappa spent some time in his youth) where there is one crosswalk that is pretty dangerous. The school has taken to putting holders on each corner with flags in them. The purpose of that is that the children carry the flags across the street, wave them if they need to attract attention of the drivers and then they put them in the containers when they safely reach the other side. Right before we lost Woody, I was training him to carry one of the flags in his mouth until we reached the other side. He loved walking with the kids. When I walk past that corner it’s always a trigger for my sadness. Today, as I walked across that intersection, and I nearly made it across before I started to break down a little. I know this memory is a strong one, and that what I am feeling is exactly the right feeling for where I am today in this moment. It takes courage.

After Woody passed I started dreaming very intensely. I discussed it with my therapist and my PCP. They would listen quietly but could offer me no answers or meaning. At the time I thought that dreams could be interpretive, maybe they can but for me, I was living the dreams when I slept. It was torture. Three months after his passing I started to have the same dream every night. I was standing on a beach looking across the water. I could see Woody way out on the horizon; he never got closer in the dream. I would have the dream 3-4 times a night and wake up, sometimes in tears because I could see him in my dreams, but I couldn’t hug or hold him. Every day, I cried a lot in the morning after my wife left for work, I’d just sit in the chair in my office and look out the window. My therapist recommended I work with a “dream specialist”. Ophilia Mandara. I spoke to her on the phone and we set up 10 Zoom meetings. Before she would work with me, she asked me to define my intent for this work. I spent the next two weeks defining why I wanted to work with her, and what I came up with was this, “It is my intent to grow through this grief into a more powerful and loving life”. It was really hard for me to define how I wanted to begin healing, I went through several legal pads of ideas before I came to my intent. It became the beginning of a life changing experience. Ophilia began to guide me through my dreams. She asked me to accept the fact that when I was dreaming that I was out of my body, case in point, if I was in my body, I’d be dreaming about being in bed. That made perfect sense to me. She took me to the shore where I could see Woody way out on the horizon and helped me invite him to play with me. I can’t really describe what happened next, but he came to shore and allowed me to hug and hold him (or his essence). That night, the dream that I had been having for close to 3 months, vanished. As my study with Ophilia deepened, we went to some very dark places. When I became afraid, she would remind me that the darkest earth was the most fertile and allowed for the most growth. I won’t go deep into some of this dreamwork here because I covered it very well in the book, Woody, My Journey through Joy, Grief and Healing with a dog”. I dream almost nightly, some I understand, some scare me, and recently I’ve had another repetitive dream. In this dream I am standing in front of a never-ending box with divisions in it, like an old printing press shop would use for type, letters and symbols. I realized after the third night that I was dreaming that I was doing was sorting out feelings and emotions and putting them in the correct order. I have a lot of sorting dreams, and I feel they are now my guides and allies as I sort through my emotions and begin to understand what happened to me in my early life. I find so much peace and understanding through my dream life now. Ophilia writes a blog published here, but to stay current, I’d direct you to her Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/dreamyourselfwild/ I wish you all courage and peace.

October has been hard for me. I miss Woody every day, and it often brings me to tears, even though it’s been almost 2 years. It seems that the veil between different life forces merges together in this time of harvest and shortening days. We reap the bounty of our hard work over the summer, and the earth is entering shorter days and longer nights. I noticed this same thing last year during this month (2024). It was a year ago that I began to write “Woody, My Journey through joy, grief, and healing with a dog”. So much has happened during the past year. This past week, Woody has been very present. When Wendi had Faith at work last week, and I was alone in the house, I heard him bark several times. I see him out of the corner of my eye. Last night I saw him standing in the hall. You can choose to believe this or not, but for me, it’s so real, and I feel his presence constantly; I accept it. I’m reading a great book by the Irish Poet David Whyte called “Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words”. I can’t recommend it enough. One of the words he talks about is Haunted, here’s David’s words: “Haunted is a word that denotes an unresolved parallel, a presence that is not quite a presence, a visitation by the as yet unspeakable…..when we make a friend of what we previously could not face, what once haunted us no becomes an invisible, parallel ally, a beckoning hand to our future.” For the longest time, I couldn’t face the fact that I had lost him in such a sudden way; one minute, he was with me, the next, he was gone. I’m encouraged and comforted by David’s words and my work with Ophilia Mandara. Even though Woody has left the material plane, he is still there in my dreams, an ally who helps me understand what I don’t understand. He appears almost nightly in my dreams. A couple of weeks ago, I dislocated a finger on my right hand. The pain was intense. As I got to my doctor, I realized I was having a PTSD moment of when I was 19 and living in my parents’ basement. I was carrying a guitar amp up the stairs and smashed my little finger into the wall, breaking the knuckle. I went upstairs and showed it to my father, who said, “I’m not paying for that, put some tape on it.” Cruel. As my doctor was setting my finger this time, I was in full flashback, remembering the smashed knuckle. I got little sleep that night because of the pain. I talked with Ophilia about the flashback and my finger; here are her words of counsel, which I’ll share with you. “It makes me think once again of how much you’ve endured and the immense way that the body stores memories. I’m glad that there are no broken bones, but I do lament the painful way that your father interacted with you in this memory, and in so many others. It is so tragic—the degree to which some people never learned to be loving and compassionate. You deserve and deserved much better. Sometimes, when I engage a painful memory, one with a painful interaction or harmful behavior, I’ll ask myself what I would have wanted and needed to hear at that time, or what actions would have been supportive to receive. I spend a little time imagining the ideal words and actions that would have come from a loving and supportive presence. Then I say those words to myself, write them down, or print them out and keep them somewhere I can see regularly. I’m sure I’ve also shared about this before — but another practice I’ve done in the past is to call on the “loving, nurturing, and caring fathers and grandfathers” within my lineage, to show me what compassionate support from “the masculine” is like. I ask those who can show up in this way to support my days, my healing, and my work in the world. And then I tell all others —those ancestors who are still confused —to “get clear and align to love” before influencing my life. Essentially — if there are ancestors who are not yet in service to my love and wellness, they have to step back and make room for those who are.” Her words immediately found truth in my heart, and they brought me a lot of relief. When I went to sleep that night, I had a dream that I was walking in a very undefined space, almost as if I was walking in clouds. Suddenly, a gigantic set of stairs appeared before me; they stretched up into infinity. Suddenly, Woody was beside me, and we both lay down at the base of the steps. I knew at this moment that Woody was there as an ally to help me through this. I felt that I was lying at the feet of my ancestors, and I asked them to please leave me alone unless they could serve the loving life I am pursuing. When I woke up that morning, I felt calm, as if I had crossed a Rubicon that I had never ventured into before. Am I haunted? In some ways, yes, but I am not afraid to continue this incredible journey into a deeper understanding of my heart and my path; it takes courage.