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.

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.

The neglected baby

 I am in a large old communal building of some kind, it is institutional but with big beautiful wooden bannisters and stairs.

A family lives in one of the rooms. I become aware that they have left their baby in there, alone and unattended. I feel how awful it is for the baby to be alone - I feel and sense her, her aloneness, the emptiness and quiet of the room, her abandonment, sense of annihilation even - before I even go in to get her.

I break into the room and take the baby, I comfort her, hold her, she is responsive to me.

In the corridor outside I meet the family - in particular I recall the Dad. He is tall, cocky, arrogant, defensive. I shout at him "You should never leave a baby alone, EVER, NEVER, there are absolutely NO circumstances in which what you have just done is OK. NONE, what so ever."

I am repetitive and forceful in my argument, he seems to take it in.

Post script

I have been having a difficult couple of weeks when I have this dream, feeling often despairing and hopeless. In bed before I fall asleep I am tuning in to this sense of despair. I wonder where it comes from, is it me? Someone else in the house has been having a difficult time, am I feeling her feelings I wonder?

I am wondering all this lying in bed when I spontaneously place my hands on my solar plexus. This feels very calming of the despair, I feel a sense of "sunshine" - something gold and warm. This is the first thing that has genuinely touched this sense of despair in the the last two weeks.

I fall asleep holding my solar plexus then have this dream.

I am struck by the solar plexus being the seat of the sense of self, and how this dream perhaps represents a place of annihilation in my infancy - when my mom (and primary mirror) retreats to bed in depression when I am 6 months old.

I am curious about the building in the dream too. It is very like the convent that Sister Catherine Mary lived in - she was a nun in the hospital when I was born, her hands were the first to hold me. We would go and visit her once a year in the convent which was a very peaceful and tranquil place, I loved her Irish smiling eyes and warmth of voice.

Why was this lost baby (the lost inner me) in this place?

I don't know - but the retrieving of this part of me feels very deep and profound - like a soul retrieval.

The Seatbelt

I am in a car; someone who resembles my mother (but isn’t) is driving. There are two children in the back and someone who resembles my father (but isn’t).

The step mother (I will call her this for convenience) seems agitated. She says “At the next stop I will pull over and put some shoes on those children, their feet are cold.” I am furious with her for slighting my ability to care for my children (I realise when provoked that those children are mine). “Look” I shout “if you don’t think I am looking after them then just say”.

“OK then, I don’t think you look after them.”

Infuriated I grab the children from the back, a baby and toddler. I put socks and shoes first on the baby, then on the toddler. But the socks are too thick and the shoes too small and the baby leads me to believe that she is perfectly warm and would rather not wear these awkward encumbrances (she communicates this telepathically with a smile).

I put them back in the rear of the car, the toddler stands next to the amiable but weak step father who is playing with the baby. As I look at them I realise that now they really are in danger: the stepmother who drives this car is senile (I start to tell her so but then chicken out) and now my children are travelling in the back without their safety belts: I picture them travelling at speed towards the windscreen.

I become horribly aware that an emergency stop is imminent; having wrapped them against false fears of cold I wonder if they will survive the real threat.

The Festival

I am at an outdoor festival.

There is a man there that I love – I deny him.

There is a man there that I once loved but no longer do (at least not in ‘that’ way), he is leaving me and I am afraid to let him go.

I wander around the festival alone. It is night and scattered across the dark fields are inviting large round tents lit from inside by warm lights and laughter; I am the only person outside in the field.

I wander into a tent but when inside I see there is nothing there so I leave. Some people pass me on their way in and I say “Don’t go in, there is nothing inside.” They ignore me and pay the entrance fee and I hear their laughter from inside the tent.

I continue to wander and see some food vendors. I go over and look because I am hungry but they only sell hot dogs and other things that I don’t like. As I look around the field of tents I feel indecisive and lost and I cannot make up my mind which one to enter so I just hover in the dark.

I decide to go ‘home’ – back to the tent where my family is. I find it difficult to walk in the increasingly dark and muddy field and so discard a walking stick and some bags I am carrying, realising that they are weighing me down.

My Dad is there and gives me pocket money to go buy some biscuits.

Angel Eyes

I find myself seated with a blank sheet of paper in front of me, a brush in my hand. I have watercolour paints on my right and a pencil too. I pick them up and begin working (I notice that I use my right hand which is strange as I am left handed).

I am not sure what to do - I have no image in mind – so I begin to paint content just to see what will happen. A portrait begins to emerge; I find my attention drawn in by translucent flesh and an elegant jaw line.

A mans face is forming, he is beautiful: I look into his eyes and feel myself falling in love for the very first time. I think how he looks like an angel.

I become aware of a distraction off to my left. My father is there and he keeps asking me something. I try to give him some of my attention to see what it is that he wants. He is prodding me in the side saying, “Do one of those drawings you do, you know, like a caricature”.

He keeps on prodding me “go on, go on” and I find myself loosing faith in those beautiful eyes. I try to think what it is Dad wants, I have a vague recollection of what it is he seeks: but my attention is now divided and I am rendered unable to act. In a rage I throw my sketchpad across the room with a scream that rips me in two.

Fixing a Car

Mark (my brother) is trying to fix a car. He is an adept technician and has almost done it, but one remaining fault perplexes him. He has a cylinder (big) with 6 lights and one of them (the outer one?) has been vandalized and has stopped all of the lights from working. He has got them all to work again however, except the last outer light.

Dad goes off and gets some things, mark is sceptical thinking dads solution won’t work, but dad brings back exactly the right thing – mark is so grateful he spontaneously hugs him.

I am so happy I nearly cry.