Divine Dreaming Workshop in April

Dreams. Art. Tarot. Put them all together and you get an abundantly creative and juicy workshop! Each night the juicy details of your unconscious emerge in your dreams, illuminating your soul. On the eve of a New Moon, Leila Jo of  Crafting the Sacred and I invite you to explore a dream of your choosing through divination, collage-making, and dreaming the dream forward. Materials will be provided; all you need to bring is a dream.

You can contact me to register at katrina{at}katrinadreamer{dot}com or by visiting Jo's site: http://www.craftingthesacred.com/divine-dreaming/.

Divine Dreaming

When: Saturday, April 2

Time: 2:30-5 p.m.

Fee: $40

Location: 

East Bay Healing Collective

1840 Alcatraz Ave.

Berkeley, CA

Dreaming of Iona

To be drawn to observe and write about nature is not a withdrawal from the world, but a coming to know the divinity in all matter. ~ Clare Cooper Marcus

Recently I finished reading an extraordinary book: Iona Dreaming: The Healing Power of Place. I found it while searching Google for spiritual travel guides for Scotland. The author, Claire Cooper Marcus, writes about the six months she spent on a tiny island in Scotland named Iona. This island at the edge of the world helped her heal during two bouts with cancer and taught her invaluable lessons about place, relationship, and love.

As I read the book I was stunned over and over again by parallels between my life and hers. Her first introduction to Scotland (as will be mine in a few short months) was Findhorn. She believes in the power of place and spent her career teaching and writing about it. Dreams play an important role in her life and during her time on Iona she called her dreamworker weekly to discuss her dreams. Synchronicity plays a role: the book relates many incidents of waking and dream life mirroring one another, of chance encounters, of nature reflecting her emotions. She is interested in Celtic spirituality, she talks to fairies, she struggles with ego-ambition. I found in her a kindred soul.

How could I not, when she writes things like this: Dreams are "the compost of the psyche, a rich medium promoting our future growth."

And: "What the world needs now is not just environmental activists, but also quiet observers and poets of the environment whose words and images speak to people in ways that will arouse deep emotions about nature and, in turn, perhaps trigger their own moral outrage about what we are doing to our planet-home."

She speaks my language. And she's encouraged me, through her healing retreat to Iona, to find a place of my own to which I can retreat and deeply connect with myself. It's a yearning I've felt for quite a while now. I've found a few days here and there when I can slow down, but I need an extended time to go out to some natural landscape in order to go within. This is my quest, to find the time and the place to do this. Cooper Marcus has lit the fire that will light my way on this journey. I do not know where this place might be, but I have hints: Scotland, Iceland, Big Sur, the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the Baltic Sea. I also do not know when I will be able to do the deep work of retreating, but I can feel that it is not far off. My soul and the land are calling.

Honoring the Dream

For this month's DreamTribe post, I wrote about one of the ways I like to honor my dreams: by creating collages. This brings the energy of the dream into waking life in a creative way and allows me to put aside the yammering of my Inner Critic who always shows up when my paints and pencils come out. Click the link to see the full post.

Dream Tribe: Nature Dreaming

In my latest Dream Tribe post, I discuss synchronistic dreams I've had about events connected to nature. We're all connected and we're all dreaming about (and as) Nature. We might not notice it in our everyday lives, but I believe if we start to pay attention to our dreams and to Nature in waking, we will start to notice patterns of nature dreaming.


Check out the post to find out more.

Dream Tribe Debut

I'm beyond thrilled to have been asked to be a part of the Dream Tribe, a site dedicated to helping people connect with their inner dreamer as well as all those dreamers out in the wide world.

For my inaugural post, I chose to write about the spider-scorpion, a dream character that helped facilitate a great deal of healing within me. The post went live at the same time as news came from Texas Tech University that a pseudoscorpion had been discovered living in caves in Yosemite...scorpions that are a cross between a spider and a scorpion. Synchronicity, anyone?

Registration Open for Art of Dreaming Wishstudio Class

I'm thrilled to announce that registration is now open for my juicy Art of Dreaming class at the Wishstudio!

Four delicious weeks of diving into the Dreamtime to bring back gifts that can enliven your art. And by art, I mean a lot of things...your paintings, your photography, your music, your pottery, or the creative way you live your life. Calling yourself an artist is not a prerequisite to signing up for the class. To register, follow the link above.

The details:

When: Begins January 8, and runs for four Saturdays.
Cost: {$58}
How: Class is online and a new post goes up each week. There will be a forum where class members will interact with each other and with me. I'll also be online each Saturday to answer questions and chat.


Connecting with the dream world can enliven and deepen your art!


This course will set the foundation for artful dreaming. First, we’ll look at creative ways to remember and record your dreams. We’ll also look at different artists who have used dreams in their art.

Second we will seek out dream allies who can take us in new directions or strengthen our skills.

Third we will play around in the hypnagogic realm, that space between waking and sleeping that is ripe with possibility and creativity.

And last, we will look at the different areas in which dreams and art dance together.

During the course, students will share artwork inspired by their dreams, and, if they wish, share dreams they are having. Katrina will work with one person’s dream for the second, third, and fourth classes to give participants a deeper understanding of how to work with their dreams.

Ancestral Dreaming

I'm inspired by Samhain and Day of the Dead to speak about ancestral dreaming.

This can have many meanings. We may dream about the land where our blood ancestors lived. We may dream about the land upon which we were born. We may dream about lands we lived on in past lives.

And it's not just the land that comes to us, but the ancestors as well. I know many people who have dreamed of grandparents, great-grandparents, and even more distant ancestors who have passed away and visited in dreams. In my own work, I've come to believe that it's not just blood ancestors, but the people I call spiritual ancestors, who come to us as well.

Three years ago, on the morning of Halloween, I had just such a dream.

I see a spinning globe with red lines being drawn all over it. One line is drawn down Eastern Europe or Africa, I'm not sure which. Then I hear someone telling a story about hundreds of orphans. I am one. I am in a house with the people who adopted me. I am drawing a big blue and green eye on my hand between my pointer finger and thumb. It is shaped like the eye of Horus. As I draw the eye, I have a memory: I work at a market. Every day I see another girl who works there who has a beautiful brown horse. I want to go see her, but I am afraid. Finally, I do. She has symbols drawn in purple on her hand...one is a half-moon, another may be an eye. She is a gypsy and a psychic and she tells me I have the gift too. That night, as I am drawing the eye on my hand and having this memory, a violent storm blows in with lots of lightening and pounding rain. I am scared at its power and feel it's related to me somehow. My adopted mom and I look out the window and see our house surrounded by a flood.

That night, I was lucky enough to work this dream in a class I was taking. We did Gestalt dream theater in which each piece of the dream is played by someone in the room. When I walked up to the woman playing the gypsy psychic, she said, "This is your lineage." I had shivers.

I knew the ancestors had come to me in my dream. You can see the importance of the land in the dream as well, from the map to the market to the house. And storms play a big role in my life, so it's no surprise I have a violent, scary storm raging outside in this dream. I've worked with this dream on and off during these three years and it continues to bring me gifts.

I encourage you to do your own ancestral dreaming, especially at this time of the year. Speak to the ancestors. Call out to your ancestral lands. See what comes.

Here are some other writings on ancestral dreaming to whet your palate.

Dream Genealogy by Amy Brucker

Connecting with the Ancestors on Day of the Dead/Samhain/Halloween by Robert Moss

Initiation Dreams by Erin Langley

Fall TerraPlaces Project Launched

Autumn begins this week, we get to enjoy a gorgeous harvest full moon, and we also get to revel in the launch of the Fall TerraPlaces Project!

During this three-month phase we'll be exploring the connection between place and dreams. How do landscapes show up in our dreams? How does a deeper connection with the land affect our dreams? I'll be teaching you how to foster a more in-depth relationship with both the land and your dreams. We had a fantastic time during the last phase sharing our places with one another and I can feel the momentum growing already with this new phase. Come and join us!

Nature Dreaming

Here is a startling example of how nature inhabits our dreams, straight from my own dreams.

On July 31 I had the following dream: I am in a cozy cabin with a fire going in the fireplace. I settle in and feel good, but there is a nagging something in the background. I look at the view -- I see the Golden Gate Bridge and the sun setting, but something feels off. Then a huge, luminous, gorgeous tidal wave sweeps toward me. It is so beautiful! Illuminated from the inside and turquoise and green. It is also scary. Then a goddess in a yellow dress appears in the room with me. I know she is the sun. She stands in front of me and says, "Jump!"

The next day, solar storms occurred on the sun that affected the magnetic field of the planet, causing gorgeous aurora borealis visible by many people on Earth. Pictures of the aurora that I saw featured colors that reminded me exactly of the tidal wave in the dream. When I heard about the solar storms, I was blown away...this is what my dream was telling me about!

There are many hints within the dream: the fire, the Golden Gate Bridge, the tsunami (the storm looks like a wave on the surface of the sun), the sun goddess. It's all there. Of course, the dream had personal significance for me as well with the emotional upheaval I'm going through. I believe most, if not all, dreams have several layers of meaning.

These kinds of dreams happen all the time and some have them more than others. I'm someone who happens to dream of natural elements, especially storms, quite often.

Image courtesy of NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Mourning the Gull

This morning I awoke with the following dream:
I am swimming in a bay watching two gulls sitting in what looks like a car from a rollercoaster. It's floating in the air. One of the gulls is badly burned; she looks dark pink and nearly featherless. The car touches down into the bay. The burned gull flies off and the other, healthier-looking gull remains. He cries, mourning the loss of his mate. Then he is hovering over me as I lay back in the water. The water is very thick, like foam padding and it is deep gray. I am surprised it can hold me like this -- I don't have to make any effort. I start sobbing, mourning the loss of the burned gull. I weep and weep. The gull comforts me. Then a big wave comes and pushes me away from the gull. I am sad, but I know we must be separated.

This dream demonstrates my feelings about the dying Gulf of Mexico seabirds and the sea turtles being burned alive as BP tries to clean up the oil. It shows that the ocean will still hold us, that there is still the possibility of relationship even though we have so thoroughly let the ocean down. There is hope.

I'm having trouble mourning the Gulf in waking life...the pain is so tremendous that I don't let myself go there very often. This is the case for most of us: the devastation is overwhelming to the point of numbness. But we still need to try, as much as possible, to feel the anger, the sadness, the pain. Because the numbness is what got us here. It is what has keeps us disconnected from Nature.

Terry Tempest Williams recently wrote a moving piece posted at the Great West Institute's blog.  In it she makes the connection that this wound gushing from the center of the earth is our own wound: "How many people killed, how many communities destroyed, how many ecosystems ravaged, how many species lost, before we will begin to see this dark open wound gushing from the depths of the sea as our own?"

This is one reason why this crisis is so devastating and painful. This is our blood pouring out. We are wounding ourselves. She goes on to say, "Carl Jung has described the ocean as a symbol for the unconscious. May our unconscious death grip on the planet be brought to the surface and released as we seek individual and collective help for the trauma we are inflicting on ourselves and all life on this beautiful, breathing Earth, from our self-destructive behavior and dangerous dance with oil."

This is "trauma we are inflicting on ourselves and all life." It bears repeating because it is important for us to understand how deeply this affects us all. So what is to be done? Must we all just sit with our grief, not knowing what to do, ignoring it, numbing out?

No. We can do several things. First, we can look at our own individual dependence on oil. By now we all know the solutions: biking or walking to work and nearby errands if possible. Cutting way back on consumption. Eating local. These are all good first steps.

But there is more, and Terry Tempest Williams shares this step in her piece: we must bear witness. I bore witness in my dream this morning, as well as in the pelican dream I shared earlier. This is one way to bear witness. Another is to listen to the stories of the dying animals, the dying livelihoods, the dying ocean. Yet another is to look at images, watch video of the damaged waters. And finally, we can literally get ourselves down to the Gulf and see the crisis first-hand. That is what Williams says she will do.

It is not necessary to go to the Gulf physically. We can go there in our minds, in our hearts. Watch your dreams: you may be traveling there at night. As Williams writes, "We can bear witness each in our own way, each in our own time, each with the gifts that are ours. The adage, 'all disasters are local,' has never been more true."

Find your way of bearing witness. Transmute the pain and grief into an action you feel comfortable taking. This is the most important work we can do right now.

Dreamer of San Francisco

My lovely friend and classmate Linda Mastrangelo wrote an article on me as part of her Dreamers of San Francisco series at Examiner.com. The article describes my work in the world, providing a glimpse into where the universe is taking me. It also talks a little about the the final project I just completed for my master's in Consciousness and Transformative Studies.

And be sure to check out the others featured in this series...dreamers are fascinating people!

Embracing the Pelican

A few nights ago I had the following dream:

I'm standing at the edge of a marsh or wetland. I see a bald eagle flying toward me. It lands in the water, wings out. It comes right toward me. Then it changes into a golden eagle with a strange, long, duck-like bill. It has red-brown eyes that hold sadness. It walks right up to me. I back away slightly and so does the bird. We hesitate. But I realize it wants me to pet it. I begin petting its head and it turns into a pelican. Soon it is right up against my body and it is the same size as me. It rests its head on my shoulder. I feel so much love for the pelican and I want to protect it. As I pet it, its feathers dry off and become incredibly soft. As I pet the pelican, I talk to it, trying to soothe it.

My heart is absolutely breaking at the situation in the Gulf. So many animals are dying: pelicans, sea turtles, dolphins, marlin, shrimp...the list is enormous. The tragic results of our greed and over-consumption are nearly more than I can bear. I wish I were able to save every single bird languishing in the oily Gulf waters.

The collapse of the Deepwater Horizon platform came just 10 days before a major collapse in my own life. At the end of April, my husband and I decided to divorce. I felt everything crash in around me. We were already losing our physical home to foreclosure, and now we are losing our metaphorical home as well. I have to rebuild everything from scratch.

Although my husband and I will remain good friends and the separation has been as amiable as possible, the grief runs deeper than I could ever imagine. As a result of my personal upheaval, I have had a limited capacity to work with the grief I feel over the death in the Gulf of Mexico.

But this dream provided a doorway into that grief. As my mentor Karen Jaenke said when we worked this dream, if I can inhabit my personal grief then I can better hold the collective grief over the oil spill. I am creating a bridge to the collective grief in the dream when I hold the pelican despite my own suffering and attempt to relieve its suffering. We meet halfway, each coming from our own tragedy, in order to heal each other. As I soothed the pelican, I also soothed myself and it soothed me.

I feel stronger now. It's been more than a month since Lance and I made the decision to split. With each day that passes I feel more capable of holding the Gulf tragedy in tandem with my own crises. The next step is to transform this grief into healing, a step I imagine will take many, many months.

Both images courtesy of the International Bird Rescue Research Center

Struggling

I'm struggling. Slowing wading through muck. Kind of like Atreyu and Artax in the Swamp of Sadness.

I'm going through a major life transition that is so much bigger than graduating. There is much loss in my life and I'm having a hard time coping. I may appear to have it all together on the outside, but on the inside it's all collapsing.

On my better days I can see that this is all for the best. I've been told by mentors and intuitives that this is what my soul yearned for. And I've gotten dream and active imagination messages that tell me the reason this change came in such a chaotic way was because I've been repressing my true feelings for so long. Sometimes, things just have to burst open and be dismembered so the new life can begin. I know this to be true, but the pain is hard to bear.

My dreams involve phoenixes and eagles. They feature massive trees growing up through buildings and breaking through the roofs. Shadow figures have been pushing their way inside my house. I can't hide from this anymore.

And now is the time to walk my talk. This too is difficult. I just want to hide, numb out, run away. But I can't. I have to keep pushing forward like Atreyu does after Artax dies, overcome with sadness. I can be brave, I can be strong, I can push through these obstacles, face the Gmork, and stand in my truth to create a whole new world.

Joseph Cornell -- Swoon!

My husband just told me about Joseph Cornell -- Lance was introduced to the artist in one of his classes at Expression.

I've fallen. Hard. Cornell's works are magical, dreamlike, delicate. He used found objects to create assemblages that capture the imagination.

Clicking around to find out more about Cornell led me to Joseph Cornell's Dreams, the book and Web site about Cornell's links to the dream world. Included on the site are some of the dream fragments Cornell recorded in his journal. It's all so inspiring! And it's making me want to pull out my National Geographic magazines and get snipping to create some new collages from my dreams.

Somatic Dreamwork

Ever since my first exposure to it in a class called Dreams & the Body taught by Karen Jaenke, somatic dreamwork has become one of my methods of choice, both when doing my own dreamwork and when working with others.

Somatic dreamwork involves listening to your body, and specifically finding where dream images live in your body. According to the somatic dream theorists, dreams live in our bodies in much the same way memory is stored in our bodies. The dreams stay in our bodies until we unearth and work with them.

How does one connect the body and the dream? A great technique is focusing, developed by Eugene Gendlin, who wrote one of my favorite dream books Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams. Basically, the dreamer closes her eyes and focuses on her body while holding the dream or a specific dream image in mind. Usually within a few moments a body sensation or felt sense appears. It can feel like a stabbing pain, a murky unpleasantness, a warmth, tingling in the thigh...any number of sensations can appear.

After finding the felt sense, the dreamer stays with it as long as comfortable and tries to see what the sensation has to say. This can involve asking it a question or merely staying with it to see what comes up. In my experience, what the felt sense has to say surprises the dreamer and leads to an "a ha." Other times, the felt sense moves around like a slippery fish, trying to escape detection. Usually though, if the dreamer stays with it, she will gain insight into what the dream had to say through the body sensation.

While working with Karen in a recent session, she asked me to feel a specific dream character in my body. Immediately I felt nauseous, one of my least-favorite sensations. However, I tried to stay with the nausea. As I watched it and allowed it to be present, it began dissolving and eventually morphed into relief. Instead of pushing against the nausea, which had a specific message, I allowed it to appear and held it gently, listening to its message. After I received the message, it did not need to remain and it disappeared. This is important: often body symptoms have a great deal to teach us if we are willing to listen to their messages rather than pushing or medicating them away.

Remember my friend with the house dream? I used somatic dreamwork with her, asking her to feel where the house lived in her body. It turned out that the house was her body. This caused her great surprise and gave her a valuable message.

I recommend trying this the next time you have a dream you can't figure out. Choose the most potent image from the dream. Close your eyes and ask the question, "Where does this live in my body." Give it time to appear. Follow your body sensations...do you have a crick in your neck? A warmth in your leg? Any sensation you have is valid. Then stay with the sensation. Arnold Mindell would recommend amplifying the sensation, making it more intense in order to get its message. Then ask the sensation what it wants to tell you. Listen. If it moves, allow it to move and simply follow it with your attention. Patience and an openness to your body's messages are key.

I've found that these methods get past all the complicated work with symbols and archetypes. Don't get me wrong: I love work with symbols and archetypes, but sometimes I want to find the message of the dream in its pure and immediate form. And this method can be incredibly and deeply healing.

The Reluctant Dreamer

She said she never remembered her dreams. She said she felt intimidated about working with dreams because everyone else has epic dreams with many scenes and incredible characters and she doesn't have those kinds of dreams.

I asked her if she could remember anything at all from the last few weeks. She paused. "No," she said. "Nothing." Pause.

"Although I do have a theme."

A theme? How was that possible if she hadn't remembered any dreams at all?

"Well," she said, "the theme is houses."

Aha! We were on to something here. I asked her if she remembered any of the houses.

"Not really. I mean, there was one house, a beautiful Victorian." And then she described an amazing house in full detail. I could picture it in my mind, she described it so well. I knew this was my chance.

I asked her if she would be willing to work that dream.

"Dream? That isn't a dream, it's just one image."

I told her even one image, especially one remembered in such detail, counts.

We proceeded. I asked her to become the house through a technique called gestalt, and asked her to answer questions as if she were the house. When she finished, I proposed she read the answers imagining she was reading about herself and not the house.

At first she was silent. Then she clucked her tongue, shook her head, and widened her eyes. I wasn't sure if I'd bombed or hit the nail on the head.

"Wow," she said. "That's amazing. It totally tells me about myself right now."

From there, I asked her to feel where the dream lived in her body, which led to more insights. This is why I love dreamwork. It brings us home, right to the center of ourselves, and shows us what we haven't been paying attention to.

All you need to work a dream is one image. Even if it is in black and white. Even if all you can say is that you remember an elephant. Or a pencil. Or a bush. You can tease a lot out of an image: what feeling does it evoke? What does it remind you of? Even those two questions can take you on an amazing journey of self-discovery. It doesn't have to be fancy, you don't have to know about archetypes and symbols, and you don't have to have an advanced degree in mythology. All you need is a little time, the dream image, and a mind and heart that are willing to hear what your soul wants to say.

Intuitive Readings and Dreamwork

I am thrilled to announce that I now offer intuitive readings! For the last 18 months I have studied in the clairvoyant training program at Intuitive Way. I am trained in several types of readings: aura, past life, spirit guide, relationship, life path, and career, as well as custom readings.

Why get an intuitive reading? They validate you and give you a healing. They help you grow and transform. This is not me giving you advice. This is me communicating with your higher self/spirit in order to give you a direct link to your inner knowing. The process is illuminating and exciting.

Visit my intuitive reading page at Katrina Dreamer to find out more. I'm currently running a special: buy a 30-minute session and you'll receive a 15-minute session free.

I am also proud to offer private dreamwork. As you know, dreamwork is one of my passions and I find the process endlessly exciting. It is often difficult to do dreamwork alone; working with someone else who can offer feedback and help you unpack the symbols takes the pressure off of you to figure it all out on your own. I only go as deep as you are ready to go and I always create a safe space for the dreamwork.

Visit my dreamwork page at Katrina Dreamer to find out more. I am currently offering a special for dreamwork as well: if you schedule a 1.5 hour session you will receive a free 15-minute intuitive reading.

I look forward to working with you either as a reader, a dreamworker, or both!

Healing Strategies

My surgery is set for August 11, so I have two weeks now to prepare. During the last week I have explored many options to help me through surgery and recovery. I feel incredibly lucky to have friends and colleagues who have given me a wealth of ideas.

One resource landed right in my lap: my friend Lisa brought me a CD produced by Kaiser Permanente called Preparing for Successful Surgery. The CD, created by Belleruth Naparstek, has led to reduced anxiety, more successful surgery, and less pain after surgery even after listening once (read a study done on the CD here). It includes three parts: guided imagery to prepare for surgery, a series of affirmations, and guided imagery for healing. I've listened to the CD twice already and I can attest that it dramatically reduces anxiety and has helped me manage my pain. I am considering asking to listen to the CD during surgery, something Bellaruth suggests on the CD.

Another practice I'm utilizing is healing through dreams. This happens in several ways and I've experienced a couple of them. The night after finding out I had to have surgery, I dreamed that my one-year-old nephew (who turned one the day I found out about the surgery) was healing me with his hands. It was a powerful and uplifting dream.

That same night, an amazing elephant came to me in a dream. The elephant petted my head and face and I awoke with an incredible sense of calm and love.

A few nights later, I dreamed of a beautiful macaw perched on my right arm, and a cockatoo perched on my left arm. The two flew off, swooping down over the canopy of an immense rainforest and crossing paths before disappearing into the greenery. When I awoke I consulted Ted Andrew's Animal Speak and learned that macaws are a symbol of healing for some South American groups.

So now I have two new healing allies: the elephant and the macaw. I can return to these dreams at any time to gain further healing or work with the energies of elephant and macaw. I can also call on owl, hawk, and bear, my main dream allies to help with healing. I am a novice at dream healing, though, and I would like to learn more about this technique.

The third piece of my healing practice involves buying a plush uterus and ovaries from the fabulous I Heart Guts. It is a humorous move that will inject fun into my healing, and it also holds meaning for me. I know if I can hug an adorable representation of my female parts it will help me send those parts love and healing.

Another strategy for me is performing a ritual to honor the cyst and its message. In this ritual I will thank the cyst for bringing wisdom and send it energy for successful removal. I look at the surgery as a kind of birth; the cyst representatives my creative energy and the trauma I've stored within me for years. When the cyst is removed, my creativity will be unleashed in a new way, and, on one level, the trauma will be released.

I also plan to have a reading and healing done at Intuitive Way the weekend before my surgery. The readers will look at my energy and also the mock-up (or intention) I have for how the surgery will go. I hope I'll be in a really good place by then as a result of listening to the guided imagery CD. After the reading, I'll get a healing on my aura, chakras, and sexual organs. With that under my belt, I should be ready to go!

With all of these strategies available to me, I feel more secure about my ability to handle and recover quickly from this surgery. If you have any additional thoughts or suggestions, please let me know.

Why It's Important to Listen to Your Body and Your Dreams

My body and my dreams are infinitely wise. They patiently send me signals that I mostly ignore, but sometimes, on my better days, I listen. Now I plan on making it a regular practice to humbly and respectfully listen to what they have to say.

I've had intense dreams, many of them including disintegration, dismemberment, bloody animals, knives, and things lurking in the shadows, since January. It was apparent these dreams were telling me something, but I wasn't sure what. And I never wanted to entertain the idea that they were about my health.

I've also had a twinge in the left side of my pelvis for probably two years. At first it was tiny and I dubbed it my intuitive twinge...many times when something was not quite right, this area would twinge and I'd thank it for its message, a message that usually saved me headache.

However, for about the last six months, that twinge morphed into pain. The pain became debilitating during my period, something that only a few people knew about, and only my husband had witnessed until last weekend. A friend came over on Sunday and saw me in my pitiful condition. I was weak, barely able to stand up to walk her to the door. When I saw her reaction to my state, I knew it was time to go to the doctor.

I'd recently been given the name of a gynecologist by another friend and on Monday, I made the call. They got me in yesterday.

I have to back up a moment and tell you that I've been avoiding gynecologists for years because of trauma suffered during previous gynecologist visits. I had a male gynecologist make derogatory comments about my body when I was a teenager and a female gynecologist do a rectal exam without telling me first. A third gynecologist failed to help me with recurring yeast infections. I gave up on Western doctors at that point. So, although this twinge became more and more persistent, I ignored it, hoping it would go away so I didn't have to deal with the gynecologist. Also, I didn't want to deal with bad news.

Back to yesterday. I visited the capable and friendly doctor. I explained my symptoms. She gave me a pelvic exam and then brought out the ultrasound machine. And that's when she found a 6" cyst attached to my left ovary.

I began to cry. I cried because I was scared, overwhelmed, upset, and I felt guilty for not coming in sooner. She told me I need surgery. It is a complex cyst, both fluid and solid, and although she thinks there is a tiny chance it is cancerous, she has to make sure. It has to come out or it will continue to grow and cause me more pain.

When I left the office, I called Lance in tears. I've moved past the guilt and the intense fear, and I've come to a better place thanks to many phone calls and conversations with friends. I know that I'm going to be okay. It's laparoscopic surgery so it's minor, outpatient, and minimally invasive. The recovery typically only takes a week. And after that, my greatest wish is that my periods will no longer cause me debilitating pain.

As part of my process, I've thought about this growth on a symbolic level. I believe, because it is a complex cyst made of fluid and solid mass, that it holds two things: my creative/feminine self and the trauma I've accumulated over the years. The fluid is the creativity, the solid mass the trauma. Once it is removed, I will have truly given birth to my beautiful creative feminine side and I will have removed the trauma holding me back.

I know it is important is to work with this on an energetic level as well. I plan on exploring therapy, dreamwork, psychic healing, and visualization techniques during the three weeks until I go to surgery. And I'm also going to hold a ritual for the energy of the cyst to honor the wisdom it is bringing me. Everything happens for a reason, and my body created this to send me a message. I plan to deeply explore what that is so I can learn from it and move on.

It's going to be quite a rebirth. And, like any rebirth, it is scary, dark, and risky. But once I come out the other side, I will have new gifts and wisdom to share.

Post-Conference Reflections

Experiment with Lensbaby...see more at my Flickr

I've been back for nearly two weeks, and I am in awe of how the dream conference shifted my consciousness. I had an inkling before I left that something major would happen in Chicago, but I tried not to think about it while I was there lest I find significance in irrelevant things like how the waiter folded my napkin on the third night. I believe looking for synchronicity is a fine art, one that takes discrimination (although, I suppose one could argue there is significance in everything!).

The more I think about what message the conference brought to me, the more I see two clear themes emerge: I need to make my health my priority, and I need to stop hiding myself and my talents.

About my health: I had one of the most challenging weekends I've had in a long time this past weekend, experiencing pain that had me in bed for two days. I have avoided Western doctors for four years and yesterday, on the recommendation of a friend, I finally sat down and made the call. I have an appointment tomorrow. I'm a bit scared and I am trying not to let my past experiences color what I have in store for me. My hope is that I will get questions answered and that there is help for me that doesn't just include taking medications or getting surgery. I want to get to the core of the problem and take measures to truly heal it and prevent it from returning.

Making that phone call felt monumental. It tells me I am finally ready to take care of myself, that I am finally ready to listen to the signals my body and my dreams send me regularly. I tend to punish my body and I've started to wonder where I think that will get me. It deserves my respect and attention.

About sharing my talents: This is a recurring theme for me. I tend to make myself small, something I learned growing up. But all the messages in the last two weeks have been to ignore that urge and to instead be BIG. To bravely put myself and my talents out there. And to stop apologizing for who I am, hiding who I am, and feeling I am not good enough. I am good enough. People do want to hear what I have to say, and they want to see what I create.

As a result of this revelation, I am even more firm about my conviction to send some of my children's manuscripts back out to publishers. In a month I'll receive the brand new edition of the Children's Writers and Illustrator's Market and right now I'm polishing three manuscripts so they'll be ready to send when the Market arrives in the mail. Look how far I've come. Four years ago, I dissolved my contracts with my old publisher and I began a downward spiral, believing my career as an author was caput. This rebirth feels scary and painful and absolutely wonderful.