I have repetitive dreams. I believe they are a teaching dream, and I always wake up confused by the imagery and the subject’s repetitive nature. This has not been a one-time occurrence; it has happened several times since we lost Woody. I’ll describe a few.
The first time I remember these repetitive dreams was in September of 2024. I had just met a Native American man in the parking lot of Santa Cruz Guitars. I don’t believe in coincidence; I just happened to drop by. We were supposed to meet. We were both excited and scheduled a sit-down a couple of weeks from then to discuss a film about his story. For two nights before the meeting, I dreamt of people or beings sitting around a circle with a fire in the middle. The same dream occurred both nights. On the day of the meeting, I was excited by his story and couldn’t wait to start scripting and shooting. That night, I had the dream for the third time, but this time the beings were leaving the circle around the fire; they were dissolving into the air. I woke up troubled that I had misread the meeting. I believe that, in reality, the opportunity was not available to me because I had more important things to focus on, like my healing over the loss of Woody. My dream was right. His project would have distracted me from the true healing that I needed. Without this distraction, I started writing Woody, My Journey through Joy, Grief, and Healing with a Dog. I also got sober a month later (15 months today, and I’m never going back.)
For the past three weeks, I have been doing an Ancient Ancestors investigation with Ophilia Mandara, one of the co-writers of my book. I had a lot of second thoughts about participating because I couldn’t get past my feelings about my parents. My parents were mean, unloving, and not interested in me or my future. I believe they expected me to become a janitor in the school system where my father worked. I was having none of that. During my high school years, I lived with the conviction that I would be nothing like my parents. I would be loving, non-hypocritical, and present for every situation in my life. I wasn’t sure that I would be able to let go of my feelings and go past them to my ancestors who worked so hard to survive.
One week of the study with Ophilia was centered on free-form drawing from your dreams. The night before, I dreamt of the location of my parents’ graves. I have never been there. I wasn’t told of their deaths till weeks after it had happened, but in my dream, I could see the cemetery. As I began to draw, I started to draw this dream. Rather than the tombstones scattered about, my drawing focused on the fence that surrounded their graves. It was horribly overgrown with vines and briars. I looked at my drawing but couldn’t make the connection between my dream and my feelings of hatred for my parents and the way they lived their lives.
Again, last week, I had a recurring dream. I had it three nights in a row, and when I woke up in the dream, I could re-enter it. I could see three circles in my dream. During the dream, my perspective would change: sometimes I was above them, sometimes on the ground, and sometimes I became part of the circles. Our ancestral session this time was centered on free-form writing from your dreams. I chose three of my allies: earth, water, and dreams. As the session ended, I realized that I had written the lyrics to three songs about these allies. I looked at my drawing of the fence from the previous session, which represented my parents’ ancestral baggage. I had now broken through the fence and was free of their smothering of my life. I felt lighter in spirit.
I walked on the beach today for the 3rd time since my ankle surgery in July. In 2025, before surgery, I walked by the water every day. Today, I was hit with a “sneaker” wave because I wasn’t paying attention. As the rising water reached my knees, I wondered if I could withstand the force of the wave. In that moment, I was struck by how strong my legs really were. The wave, like a wave of grief, subsided. I was wet and recharged by the power of my water ally, and how life-changing love and courage can be.
