This week, we gathered on Zoom, the new warm, welcoming place to gather with friends. These friends were writer-friends, the best kind. And the topic was dream interpretation. Ooooooo.

Had a Good Dream Lately?

Dreaming is your body’s way of being heard, of guiding you to your life’s purpose. Usually, your body submits to the brain’s will. The brain is driving the bus, but your body holds the map. A vivid dream is a time when your body – or intuition – is working to get the bus driver to make a turn.

Not long ago I had a vivid dream. When I woke up, I felt compelled to write it down in detail. Not surprisingly I dreamt I was in Paris – I love Paris, and it would be easy to assume the dream was about my longing to return and visit the haunts of my college days. But this crazy dream had images you could only call weird:

A crowded, noisy marketplace of fish mongers; a line of fashionable, indifferent women standing in line outside a hair salon still wearing their smocks and hair foils – waiting for the bomb scare to end; a young mother kissing and cooing with a “baby” in a box – never been opened; And a little red-headed girl, named April who was my lost daughter, and who lived in a circus cage to be “safe.” (You gotta love dream logic, April, in Paris.)

How to Understand Your Dream’s Message

If you’ve had a memorable dream, follow these steps to decode it and wake up to the wisdom of your dream!

1. Wake up and write the dream down immediately.
2. Circle all the symbols, which will be most of the people, places and things. Note: I underlined my symbols above. A symbol is anything that was remarkable/noticeable to you.
3. Write each of the symbols in its own row, in Column 1 in the table below.

Dream Interpretation – How-To Worksheet

What is Your Dream Trying to Tell You?

Let’s ask! First you must become each of the circled symbols, one at a time. And then ask yourself – as the symbol these 2 questions

Question #1:

[Symbol], complete this sentence with three adjectives describing yourself:

• I am the [symbol name] – I am… [three adjectives.]
• Ex: “We are the Bomb-Scare Women, we are indifferent, conventional, detached from what’s important”

Write these answers in column 2, above.

Question #2:

[Symbol], why are you here?

• What do you have to tell [the dreamer]?
• Ex: “Nothing. We don’t care. We are not conscious women. You should not waste time on us.”

Write these answers in column 3, above.

The Tricky Part

Read your column 3 answers (What Each Symbol is There to Tell You) and ask, what is the message of your dream? What can you intuit about what your dream is trying to tell you?

This is not an exact science. Your answers are, by their very nature, subjective – it’s about what you think the symbol means and what you think the symbol is there to tell you.

If you allow yourself to go through this process, you can truly unlock a message about yourself, your choices and the direction your unconscious – your essential self – feels you need to go. This is the dream that launched my career as a creativity coach. The bomb-scare women told me to leave behind “conventional” women. April was my brainchild, neglected, overprotected, who needed me to adopt her and care for her. Even the baby in the box had something to tell me – Play more! I’m very glad I woke up to my calling. I hope I can still get myself to Paris sometime soon, but for now my April, in Paris dream-come-true is playing with my creativity, and coaching the creative people I help.

We had fun doing this together – it was just part of what we like to do in the Write Without the Fight FB group – which is always free. Join us, if you haven’t already. It’s also not too late to join the Mighty Writers Club – where this is the kind of in-depth class I offer every month. And the rest of the month, we enjoy writing together, twice a week, and having a group coaching call, so none of us stays stuck for very long.

Join the Mighty Writers Club if you want to make your writing dreams come true.