Near-Drowning

The dream that woke me up

I almost drowned last week in my dream. But this was no nightmare. This was a healing dream. In the waters of the dreamscape, I left behind something that has been weighing me down my whole life: the story of my wounding.

I grew up with a mother with a personality disorder. Things only got worse when I was a teenager, and by the time I was an adult, I was a full-blown co-dependent. Makes sense.

Through many years of therapy, courses, trainings, and relationships, I told my story countless times. Reenacted it, came to understand it. Began healing. I grew up, became a mother and an upstanding member of the community. Ask anyone.

But although I was largely healed and highly functional—a beautiful family, a fulfilling career, a healthy lifestyle—I was still embodying my story of wounding.

I identified as a motherless child, a wounded child. Perhaps a wounded healer. But wounded nonetheless. I was almost enamored with my wounding. It sat at the core of who I was.

My mind often visited the stories of loss, longing, and betrayal. The original mother wound I sustained was compounded by the step-mother wound. Then, the wound of betrayal when my best friend and my boyfriend left me for each other. The deep forever-wound of losing my daughter who was born too early. Those were my stories and I was sticking to them. The pain made me who I was. A survivor. A miracle.

And then, I had a dream that changed everything:

I am walking around Paris when it begins to rain. Slung over my shoulder is a heavy duffel bag. The rain starts accumulating in massive puddles, and as they get deeper and deeper, it becomes more and more difficult to slog through the thick water. I am submerged to my waist, then to my shoulders, now my neck. My bag gets stuck in the mud, and although I tug at it, it won’t budge. The strap breaks, and the water rises over my head. I have a decision to make:

I can stay with my bag and drown, or I can let go and live. I’m fully underwater now, and suddenly my instinct to live compels me to let go. I emerge from the water with a gasp. I’m standing on the sidewalk, soaking wet in all my clothes. It’s still raining, but I’m alive. I’ve lost my stuff.

In the dream, I am clinging so tight to my baggage that it almost kills me. Truth is, I wanted to keep my stuff. It was part of me, and I didn’t want to lose it. Most people don’t. We don’t want to let go of the things that have defined us. Wounding keeps the bar low. When you’re wounded, success is a miracle rather than an expectation.

Terrifying dreams capture our attention, and you better believe I was listening because the dream-author had something important to tell me:

You no longer need to carry these stories around wherever you go. You don’t need to identify with your baggage. You are free. Rise up to the surface. Wake up.

I opened my eyes, and as Paris and puddles and rain drops all faded with the soft morning light, I thought about that watery grave where I could have stayed for eternity, pondering, analyzing, pitying, and longing. Holding on to my shit.

But I didn’t. I rose to the surface, woke up, and realized that after 45 years I am finally identifying with my healing, not my wounding.

And this changes everything.