Anguish

Dream: Julia (my 15 year old daughter) wakes me up to tell me that Melissa (my 17 year old daughter) has died. Melissa had been at a hospital when she died. I think she had some sort of acute sickness. I start screaming with deep anguish. I keep saying that it doesn’t make any sense. She was so alive last night. How could she have died? I talk to Mark and ask him if he was with her when she died. He tells me that he was. He said that she said “mom” before she died. I wake up crying.

As you can imagine, this dream is very upsetting and powerful. I am either crying or on the verge of tears all day. Dreams can feel so real and the experience of having my child die in this dream is beyond what I can express in words. It is difficult being able to function in this state of mind. I really am quite a mess. I contact Rodger to see if we can talk about the dream…. soon. I don’t want to wait until the next session.

Rodger helps me to understand that this dream is not really about Melissa. As in most dreams, it is usually about the dreamer. The dream is strongly pointing out that I have lost part of myself – in this case… my teenage self. Although it is a difficult process to endure, the dream is helping me to feel the pain of that loss. As I mentioned before when the little boys showed up, children often represent a part of our soul self that has gone missing – a part of us that we are longing to connect with again. The loss of the teenager showed up in the “creek girl” dream as well although not so dramatically. The teenager represents passion, primal feelings, assertiveness. The use of Melissa in the dream is appropriate because in some ways, I have been living my life through hers. It’s almost as if I have been trying to reclaim my teenage self through her. Her ups and downs have become my ups and downs. Her excitement or her disappointments have become mine. Rodger suggests to me that instead of living through her, reclaim that part of me and model it for her as a way to live.