The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships (36 page)

BOOK: The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships

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Page 184


Parents' Day


I am back at the camp I went to as a child. One of my friends tells me that it's Parents' Day. I see my mom and dad arriving into the parking area in a new car. Even though I am an adult now, I'm so happy to see them. I rush up and hug them, feeling excited and happy. My mom looks very beautiful, and my dad looks very handsome.

Bruce's parents had divorced when he was a teenager. When he awoke from this dream, he said, "I remembered how much I missed seeing them together and having contact with my dad, whom I rarely saw or even spoke to on the phone. I saw that I had been blaming my father for this lack of communication all these years." Out of this dream, Bruce realized his own responsibility for being out of touch and decided to do something about it. He told his wife about the dream, and they created a proclamation of "We are a close family" that motivated them to act on their vision. They immediately arranged for the whole family to visit his father and stepmother. These visits continued on a regular basis until his father's death about ten years later. Bruce and his wife were also able to maintain a close relationship with his stepmother afterward, thanks to the foundation they had already created out of their vision. One wonders what would have happened to that relationship if Bruce hadn't paid attention to his dream.

Dealing with In-Laws

In addition to divorced parents and stepparents, couples often have difficulty dealing with their spouse's parents. In fact, problems with in-laws is one of the most frequent complaints that couples bring into marital therapy. It is often hard enough to work out the relationship with our own parents, let alone

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adjust to someone else's. To make matters worse, this often creates added tension within the marriage, and the couple ends up fighting with rather than supporting each other. There is not much guidance readily available for how to work out these conflicts. That is where dreams and visions can be invaluable in creating new possibilities with in-laws. One couple, Jennifer and Mitchell, who have been happily married for twenty years, had been arguing about his parents ever since they met. They were having little success changing the situation, as reflected in Jennifer's dream, which alerted both of them to the seriousness of the matter.


My In-laws

We arrive at the house where Mitch grew up. We go in the house, which is crowded with people. More and more people are arriving. There are children and toys all over. I go from room to room, tripping over balls, dolls, and teddy bears. Everyone is laughing and talking so loudly that the sound has become one big roar. My head hurts, and I feel dizzy and exhausted. I lie down on the couch and place my hand, palm up, on my forehead, looking like a Southern belle having a fainting spell. Mitch sees me and asks if I am all right. I say, "Yes, but I have to rest now," and I proceed to go to sleep.

The visit Mitchell and Jennifer made to his parents in Georgia shortly after this dream closely resembled what took place in the dream story. The memory came back to Jennifer when it came time to plan the next trip there. She shared her memory and the dream with Mitchell, and they decided to heed the warning this time and create a visioning dream for their visit. The vision they wrote out and took with them goes as follows: "We are soul mates on vacation in Georgia, being ourselves, taking care of each other, having a great time, creating a

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space for genuine acceptance, appreciation, and love for family." They felt much better about the visit afterward. Mitchell's family eventually accepted that this trip was different from earlier ones and supported them in their new vision, including their staying in a hotel instead of at his parents. They had a great time and are now looking forward to future visits.

You don't have to wait for a special occasion to create a visioning dream of the kind of relationship you would like to have with your parents or in-laws. A vision can change your everyday interactions if you make use of it. This is what one man did who had been having trouble getting along with his mother-in-law for years. He asked a friend for some coaching to deal with it. When his friend asked him what he would like his relationship with her to be like, he said, "I want to have the kind of mother-in-law I could go out to lunch with and talk to like a friend." His coach told him to proclaim that as a vision and to start acting on it now. He took his mother-in-law out for lunch the following week, had a great time, and continued to do so regularly until she passed away.

Dealing with Sick or Dying Parents

Visioning dreams can be particularly useful in dealing with our parents in the last days of their lives, when they are ill and dying. These can be poignant and intense times, and it is often difficult to know what to do. They can be either positive or negative experiences, depending on how we handle them. Creating a visioning dream for your couple or family can provide some structure and help keep up everyone's spirits.

We found this to be the case for our family in dealing with the terminal illness of Peter's father. When we heard that he was losing ground rapidly, we decided to plan some visits to go see him with the children. Instead of a sad occasion, we wanted to

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make the visits a celebration for our whole family. We wanted Dad to see us enjoying ourselves rather than being in mourning. So we rented a nice car, arranged interesting things to do between visits to the hospital, and shared with him our pleasure visiting him. Our vision and positive attitude allowed us all, including him, to have a good time and to have fond memories of his final days of life.

Remembering Our Parents

It is fortunate that our dreams can alert and motivate us to do something about our relationships with our parents while there is still time to act on them. But the utility of dreams in helping us to work through these significant relationships doesn't end when our parents die. If anything, dreams about our mothers and fathers become even more frequent within the first several years after their deaths. Perhaps this is a way that our mind lets us know there are some important things about our parents to resolve in ourselves. Once the funeral is over, there usually isn't much opportunity or structure for resolving the grief or issues that remain. Dreamwork can provide both. In fact, we can get even closer to our parents in our dreams after they're gone, without that pesky waking reality to get in the way of increasing our intimacy. Our parents can be dead and alive at the same time, and our relationship with them can go on as long as we would like in our dream life.

Like the sixty-three-year-old woman in the following dream, you may find yourself finishing arguments and coming to terms with your father or mother through your dreams in ways that you may never have done while they were alive.