New Photo Album of my Ancestors

I am back in Wolverhampton, around the shops at the intersection of Birches Barn Rd and Stubbs Rd. This is very near Eagle Street where my Maternal Grandparents used to live and where I used to go and see them - Kitty and Hotspur. I am with a friend who I think of as a "witchy" friend from London and we are walking around. 

She says to me that our pasts are interconnected and therefore, she has a photo album which may include some pictures of my family. She says she doesn't want it any more and wonders if I would like it? I am a bit unsure at first but take it anyway.

I start flicking through it as she goes into the shops and I wait for her (I wonder event if we have a pram with a baby in it that I am looking after? Anyhow, I remain outside.). I flick through an array of black and white photos and then - I am surprised to see one that is a picture that is of my family! My focus goes deeper into the album ...

I see several more, they are all black and white or "old fashioned" photos. They contain pictures mostly of my mum and her parents - then sometimes of me too - but the timeline is all skewed (i.e. I am there age about 10 with my mum in her early20s).

As I look at the photos something strange happens ... I step into them and they become short holographic vignettes. I.e. a few seconds of "action" around the still photo; I am immersed in these scenes as if I was wearing the most advanced of 3D specs!

Oh MY!!! I exclaim loudly ... I am seeing things for the first time about my family. In each picture the action that unfolds is pretty similar. They are outside with strangers (e.g. walking along a sea front on holiday) and then they start to do something comedic and hilariously funny.

E.g. one of them will start walking like "the ministry of silly walks" from Monty Python, the rest of us will catch the gag and follow suit all laughing hysterically. People around will notice and sometimes even join in with us.

I immerse myself in the photos, revelling in just how FUN and silly my family was. In my therapy journey, I have focused on some very difficult aspects of my family, so its amazing to connect with the laughter and humour in it too.

C comes out and I say to her effusively "THANK YOU!!! You have given me a new insight into my family, I have seen things that I never saw before!" She smiles warmly and is pleased.

Cold Dead Dad Dream

 I am walking down a street with my brother. I start to speak with a sense of dread in my heart - "M, you know, I can't quite remember, but did Dad die? I can't quite recall if he is dead ....". He confirms that yes, Dad did indeed die recently.

I say "but we need to make arrangements then? You know, funeral, ashes etc, there is so much to do!".

Next I am at a funeral parlour and they are taking me to see Dad. They take me to a big open freezer that is white plastic, a bit odd like a food freezer I think but never mind ... The director leaves me with my Dads dead body.

I think to call the funeral director back because I can see Dads body is moving! He is all white, frozen and with ice crystals on his skin, but his chest seems to move as if air is moving ... I think to myself "its ok, dead bodies do this, they settle and they move, thats all it is, don't be scared, don't be silly ..."

I move closer to him, until I am right by his side. Then in one slow awful movement, his whole body - arms extended - rolls and turns slowly towards me in one frozen rigid movement. I scream as his hands land on my arms.

I wake up in a state of terror ...

Gypsy woman flower seller dream ...

NB I had this dream in Feb 2011, in the year I was turning 40. It popped up in my FB memories (I posted it there at the time) and I am now in my 50s. In the summer of 2011 my father became ill and died.

The end of a long journey facing many trials, I find myself in an unknown country nearly "home". I ask a Gypsy* woman if I can jump on the back of her rickshaw to get "there" and she obliges. We bump along, me waving to people, enjoying the ride. At the bottom of a hill too steep for both our weight combined and the rickshaw stalls ...

... so I climb off and say "it's ok, I am nearly there anyway".

Earlier in the dream is I faced a number of trials, mostly about drawing boundaries and saying no, all of which seemed fearful at first but then I passed really easily.

I am walking up a steep cobbled hill with the gypsy woman, reflecting I am nearly "there" (though all through I have no idea where I am going) and feel grateful to her. We reach the top of the hill, I see her flower stall and we are about to part.

I say I would like to thank her, and open my purse to give her something. The purse is lined with purple silk and filled with gold coins. I fumble around a little embarassed as I realise the coins I have are wrong currency for this country. I search in vain for the right currency.

The whole exchange suddenly feels not right, I wish I had just accepted her help and walked on. It feels my desire to "thank" is superfluous and clumsy.

Next thing I know she has reached into my purse and took out a hitherto unseen £50 note and replaced it with a 50 of some other currency saying "there, look, you will have some currency for this country now."

I pause for a moment uncertainly feeling something is wrong...

Then say "no, this 50 is worth much much less than the one that you have taken" and hand it back, the switch back happens easily. The £50 goes back in my purse and she laughs at me., not unkindly but a bit cheekily and with a wink she waddles off to her stall.

Finally over the way at another market stall I see my family, I can hardly believe I have made it here. When I did not even know where I was, where I was going, how I would get there - and yet, somehow, it all just happened.

It feels there is one more trial to go - I realise with sorrow that one of the family I am greeting is ill, but, I am home with my family.

Comments from original FB post

I feel there is something really significant in this dream. Hmmmm. Any reflections?

The "50" in particular the gypsy woman tried to take from me, it was a very specific sum. A very important looking piece of paper, purple, lots of scrolls, something of value and significance nearly lost.

There was no sense of maliciousness from her, more like she was the vehicle for one last test, to see if I had really got the lesson. She was a coyote trickster kind of figure, there to chuck the banana skin under my feet.

Had I really grown up, and grasped the need to drop superfluous and meaningless gratitudes?

Can I simply receive the magic of spirit?

And why in the last instance, finally coming home, the one sick family member (an older brother).

Hmmmmmmmmmmm

SIGNIFICANCE OF NUMBER 50 (from a bible study group site)...

FIFTY: is the number of jubilee or deliverance.

points to deliverance and rest following on as the result of the perfect consummation of time.

In the 50th year, known as a Jubilee year, all debts were to be forgiven, all Hebrew slaves were to be freed, and all land returned to the original owner....

How relevant is that to the dream!!!

I was in the dream delivered into rest, coming "home" after a long travel. The £50 note was part of an exchange in which I erroneously felt I owed a "debt" - the debt was then returned back to me, the original owner.

* I know this is not a correct or respectful term for Romany people. However I use it as that is the term used in the dream. A cousin of mine said of my Dad "of course when your mum married a Romany your Grandad was very angry. He was part of a Romany gang".

My Dad turned out to have French & Jewish heritage (on his mothers side) as well as Essex UK. The term Gypsy was probably applied to him as a slur at the time: he was olive skinned with dark hair and his origins 'mysterious' (even to him) when he married my mum. I discovered his maternal roots through many years painstaking genealogy work.

A curious side note, Romany people often appear in my dreams and a psychic upon meeting me for the first time in person instantly said "You didn't tell me you have Romany ancestry?" expressing certainty that I did. It has always felt very curious to me.

Solstice Healing Dream

 I meet a crone-ish Goddess, I have gone to see her to ask for help. "I am blocked in my expression, at my throat chakra I think". She lays me on a massage table, thoroughly scanning my body.

"Hmmm" she says "the problem begins lower, in the solar plexus." She begins manipulating my legs, bending and freeing my hips. She rubs a healing ointment that glows magically like sunshine into my solar plexus, then moves the energy up through my heart and throat.

She chats to me all the way through, I don't really remember her words, just her loveliness and cheery warmth. The whole healing process is very thorough, detailed and lengthy - a complete healing session, in dream time!

I awake the next morning with healing energy pouring from my hands, and lay for a while drinking this into my body. Solstice I celebrate at a fun and silliness carol singing evening, with lovely friendly Hackney people, singing my heart out: yes I can state with some certainty, my throat chakra really opened!

Ha ha happy solstice everybody

Divine Ridiculous

 Two dreams about power

I am with a friend P (pronouns they / them). Someone else is inviting us on an adventure to somewhere very icy, cold and dangerous. They are unsure but i say "it maybe an opportunity, this person really knows what they are doing, lets go!" so we do.

We arrive with a group in a tent in the snow. There is an odd moment when P has gross snot pouring out of their nose. I recall that they had a constellation once about their infected sinuses and the constellation revealed the issue to be the witholding of their power (the theme of power laces through the two dreams ....)

Looking out the tent I see two big brown grizzly shaggy bears, a daddy bear and a son. Oh Shit! I unzip an opening at the back of the tent and run out, I recall feeling vaguely responsible and guilty for us being there and for fleeing for my life too.

Next I am in a town. A woman has taken me from the frozen landscape to escape, we are heading to an apartment. As we enter the apartment I see a woman walking down the road. She is like a Dickens character, dressed in once wealthy Victorian attire now all ragged. She says "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow ..." and then "if you go in there it will be an endless row of Sundays, forever Sunday, Sunday, Sunday ....".

I am unnerved but go in anyway.

Inside its rich, I realise we are in the bears apartment! They have become a man and a son now. I see another man from the tent, its B from the divine ridiculous group. He is wearing a big ceramic mask that covers his whole head. Its crude, thick, shapeless, with a grid of big holes in the front to see and breathe out of. I realised he has escaped here with me, with the woman too.

I can see us wondering together what will happen here, though we don't acknowledhge with words.

B tries to speak to the young son, to engage, to say his name. The boy and Dad who have looked quite nice and friendly till now suddenly turn. The boy says to B - "how dare you address me! Don't speak until you are spoken to!".

I / B / we realise now, this isn't looking good. Its not going to be easy.

At the same time, deep in my bones I know that there is something here we need to learn, we are in the right place, we SHOULD and NEED to be here to learn this lesson. I am not scared. I wake up energised, stirred, cleansed somehow.

I fall back to sleep and have a second dream ...