If there is anyone who reads my blog (other than the occasional comments I receive I really don't know whether anyone looks at this), you will know that I don't write very intimate details of my life. So this is a warning - the content of this entry contains intimate personal events and feelings. If you find them offensive, do not read them!
My dreams have always been very vivid, and have been a part of my life from the time I was very young. I remember many of them, even those from years ago, and I have gained perspective on my development from them.
There was a time, a long period of time, about 15 years actually, starting somewhere in my mid 40s that I began to have recurring nightmares.
These particular dreams centered around a specific theme. The first one in the 'series' that I remember; I was somewhere in the world, in a room in a house, together with two girls of about 7 years of age. One of them was the daughter of a friend in South Africa, the other a daughter of an American friend. We were playing together and I knew that there was something important I needed to tell them. However, when I opened my mouth I couldn't speak because there was a sticky gum-like substance in my mouth. I pulled at it but it wouldn't break off, and the more I pulled and tugged it, the more of it there was. The feeling was just awful. I felt a deep sense of shame and embarrassment, and there was just no end to this stuff that came out. I couldn't tell them whatever I needed to say that was so important. I felt extremely frustrated. This dream appeared in different forms and places on an almost nightly basis for years. Always I had something to say to someone, usually a girl, but I just couldn't get rid of the stuff - like toffee or chewing gum. I tugged at it while trying to hide what I was doing because it was so disgusting. I became scared to go to sleep because I didn't want to have this dream. I couldn't figure out what it meant. I discussed it in therapy, with friends, in my journals. Whatever it was I wanted to say never came out. After years they abated, although the dream still occurs occasionally, and each time I am filled with dread, both in my sleep and my awake state. What am I being told? What can I not figure out? What is is I am not saying?
My mother raised me with two maxims
Never run after a man or a tram, there is always another one coming
The other was, never become dependent on a man
This was exactly the opposite of what everyone else's mother said.
"A man will provide for you, a man will care for you. When you are married .... When you have children ......"
Of course, as most of you know, I did get married and we did plan on having children and raising a family on the kibbutz.
But it seems there were other designs for my life. I miscarried twice. These miscarriages were devastating. Not only were they painful and frightening, but they left me feeling inadequate as a woman. I felt something was wrong with me and that I had failed my husband and everyone around me. Then only a month after my second miscarriage my husband was killed in the Yom Kipur War which came out of the blue.
As the years passed many people I knew said, 'have a child on your own."
I knew that was something I never wanted to do. I wanted a child to be a product of love between partners. I asked the few women on the kibbutz why they had decided to have a child alone - the universal answer was "I wanted somebody to love me." I had a good friend who had a child, but was divorced not long after her daughter was born, and her husband left the kibbutz and the country; I asked her what her relationship with her daughter was like.
"Symbiotic" was her answer.
I didn't have children of my own, but I worked with babies and children for almost the entire duration of my working life. Other than in my latest home, my neighbours had young children and they were in and out of my home constantly. I have good relationships with friends and relatives' children. I do not feel bereft. It is now apparent to me that this particular lifetime is not for me to be a wife and mother. I know what it is not, but I have never been quite sure what it is.
Those of you who have read my entries will know that for a long time I have ruminated on time, on space, and also on our place in all of this (cosmos? universe? world?) Many of these things are beyond words - for me - I can neither write about them, nor articulate them, but this doesn't mean they do not exist. Thought too, has forms.
Perhaps it is all of these things that gummed up my ability to communicate, or that stopped me from communicating.
But something very powerful happened at the exact time of the conjunction between Pluto and Saturn with someone who is very special in my life, as am I in her life. To tell of how we met is indeed a post or two by itself. Our relationship stretches back to the kibbutz where she began her life at the age of 4, and I began my life at the age of 24.
With her permission I may write about our connections, but suffice to say, as time and space are relative, so is physicality and form. She is my spiritual daughter and I am her spiritual mother, and we help each other realise our place in the cosmos. And now I sense a deep place of security and belonging, along with a renewed sense of purpose.
I know this post will not be clear to everyone, nor will the reason be clear why I wrote it, but I simply had to put all this down, and will continue writing and posting along these themes.
I am deeply grateful.
