Dreams

My two constant dreams are that I am back at work but at a much older age than I was then and being looked up to for my experience or being pregnant again and so very happy.
I think in the difficult time that my life is now I go back to much happier times. I am very sad for a time when I wake up and wish I could go back to sleep and continue the dream but it has never happened.

Perhaps it's the story of all our lives absent.
We work hard all our lives but our endeavours don't culminate in a single, final performance.
Rather we have to observe small successes along the way, accept compromise, and recognise there will be hard times and sad times and failure too.
Perhaps acceptance, contentment, and gratitude for what we do have is the final prize.

The strangest dream that I had happened when we were staying in a hotel. I was dreaming that I was looking after my grandson when he became unwell and my late mother arrived to look after him. There was a dog in the dream as well. I think it was her neighbours golden retriever that mum used to take for walks when her neighbour became ill. I was woken by my husband getting up to use the bathroom. I know I was awake because I could see and hear him, but the dog was still there, sitting near the bathroom door and sort of glowing in the dark.

I have recurring dreams – I think most people do when there is a worry issue or a major change happening in their lives. I did, however, have a dream that I can only describe as a serial.

I started dreaming that a number of leading women authors, including me (this is, remember, a dream), had been invited by the RSC to produce a Shakespeare play. I chose As You Like It. All week, I worked really hard on that play in my dreams – and there is particular scene that I feel quite strongly about. I woke up every morning quite worn out with how much I had worked on these rehearsals.

I was really pleased with the approach I had taken and the way my cast had worked. Four nights – all night – I had poured all my energy into the production of this play. Friday night – I missed the first performance. I have never seen it. Is this the story of my life?

I had never heard of dreams stopping and starting again when waking until DD2 had one where her friend's late brother was in her dream. He was telling DD that he was worried about someone in his family. DD woke up, went to the toilet, when she fell back to sleep her friend's brother was back in her dream talking about his relative.

DD asked me the next day should she tell her friend, I said yes, it's important, so she did. Her friend said yes they knew and had been worried about the relative too.

DD2 has always been like this, once having a dream which she told me about and the next day it happened. Other times she would dream and then she would tell me she had a commercial dream. A dream that cut into her dream and she would see herself doing something and sure enough it would happen shortly after. Simple things like someone borrowing a pencil at school, then the dream she was having would continue on after the "commercial," like a film.

I've never carried on the same dream after going back to sleep. I occasionally have more than one dream a night though.

shot=short*

I often remember my dreams, and some of them are so nice I really do want to go back to them. I keep having the same one about a house.

It is a big house with split level rooms, a roof terrace!! and a utility room with a huge old sink in it, and forms like you have in a greenhouse, from the utility room a twisty shot staircase goes to a green wooden door which leads onto the terrace. It all feels very homely, and I am waiting for the day when I may come accross it in real life, so to speak

I've had dreams that are so "real" and upsetting that I've had to force myself awake to "get away from the situation". The last such dream, a few weeks ago now, was so awful that I woke myself up "silent screaming " and had to properly get up and go and make a cup of tea, but I was apprehensive that, like you, the dream would recommence when I fell asleep again. Sometimes I remember dreams for days afterwards, if they've been really vivid; other times not at all. Definitely more vivid now than when I was younger but maybe that's because, as you get older, you don't sleep as well?

I often have dreams like that. It's very disconcerting at first but you sort of get used to it. It's quite handy if it's a good dream but not so good if it's a nightmare.