Fall 2005
for the Bereaved
Fall 2005, Issue #3
Dreaming Kevin Publications
From The Editor
Coincidence or Confirmation?
Tips
Recognizing Synchronicity
Dreamer's
Mailbox
"I Don't Dream!"
Resources
Dream Chat
Love Never Dies Newsletter by Sandy Goodman
News
GriefCast.com Interview with Carla & Dr.J Shep
Jeffreys
About
Carla & Dreaming Kevin
Subscribe
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December 2005
Recommended Reading:
Touched by Love: A Parable for Today by Harry McDonald
Letters to My Son by Mitch Carmody
A quarterly newsletter offering bereavement support using dreams as a tool for healing and reconciliation.
Dear Readers:
Welcome to our Fall 2005 issue of Dreams: A Blessing in Disguise. In this newsletter, I invite you to ‘see differently’ by using the gift of your dreams as a tool for reconciliation, healing, and spiritual growth. Each quarter I will share stories, insights, and resources about dreaming to inspire you to explore your own dream world. Please feel welcome to correspond with me and use this forum for discussion and support.
I am so thrilled with the positive and encouraging response from all of you about my newsletter! I hope you like this new format of receiving the link in an email to peruse the newsletter at your convenience rather than clogging up your mailbox. This issue is packed with stories to warm your heart and inspire your soul so print your copy or save this page for later, and snuggle up in a comfy chair…
.
FROM THE EDITOR: Coincidence or Confirmation?
In my last note to the Atlanta Newsletter before the 2005 TCF Boston conference, I confidently stated, “I fully expect our children to be directing us to meet one another to share our stories and offer the kind of understanding that only a bereaved parent knows. There are no coincidences only synchronicities on this amazing journey!”
I have to say that our children accepted the challenge and far exceeded my expectations! I can only imagine what it took them to orchestrate the incredible synchronicities and physical phenomenon that connected us with one another. That said, I want to share a few stories that will make you laugh and nod your head in agreement.
My flight into Boston was delayed five hours and I arrived at the hotel after ten pm. I missed meeting my friend Mitch for dinner and figured he had wisely gone to bed. I’d been traveling since 6 am and was hungry so I decided to explore the hotel for a bite to eat and become acquainted with the conference set-up. The fourth floor was deserted with the exception of two volunteers collecting the workshop signs posted outside the meeting rooms. They greeted me warmly and offered directions and information for the next day events. We exchanged introductions and discovered that I had once lived across the street from Marti’s brother, and his wife was a hairdressing client of mine fourteen years ago! Neither of us could believe it!
As I headed toward the elevator, I felt energized again! I pondered the significance of this ‘chance’ meeting remembering my bold statement to the newsletter. I chuckled knowing that Kevin was not going to let me slide by without a nudge or two. Quickly, I began to string together the synchronicity of this encounter.
What were the chances of my meeting someone on the other side of the country… a bereaved parent like myself, who was related to my former neighbor… who once lived on the very street where I had just recently moved from… a place where we had grieved Kevin’s death only to find new friends and new life again…a place that I was really missing but still felt so connected to…the place where I had written our story and created the workshop I came here to do?
Could I ever have imagined fourteen years ago that I would be in Boston, Massachusetts sharing my story with other bereaved parents?
At the mention of my purpose here, my inner critic seized control of the wheel and took a short detour on the Highway of Doubt. I admit it; I worried whether my workshop would be well received. Was I prepared enough? Would I remember everything I wanted to say? Would people be open to this concept of exploring dreams as an alternative tool for processing their grief on a deeper level? Was I crazy to think that anyone else would want to go this deep when dealing with grief on a surface level was painful enough!
I took a deep breath and entered the elevator sensing a rightness within me. Something happened in that brief exchange. I realized that meeting the Shoemaker’s reconnected me with not only to my hometown but also my past-- the very place where this incredible journey began fourteen years ago.
As the elevator rose to the next floor, I felt grounded. This ‘chance’ meeting was a reminder of where I had come from and the pathways I had taken to get this moment. I had come full circle to meet my past again and draw upon that experience to reach out to others. It was time to acknowledge and share the blessings. I felt a tremendous rush of excitement and hope for what was to come.
Embracing the moment, I looked up to see a woman staring at my nametag. “I know you!” she blurted out. “I get your emails about the dream chats!” I smiled in recognition of her name tag, feeling very happy that she was not deleting my emails. She was excited to learn that I would be presenting my workshop and wanted to attend!
Another coincidence? It wasn’t unusual to think that I would eventually bump into people on my subscriber’s list, right? But… right then? When I was questioning the value of my work and whether people would be receptive to it? I chalked this one up to another confirmation that I was on the right path.
Recognizing the synchronicity of an occurrence is to see beyond the obvious, to see more than we expect to see. That sense of ‘rightness’ I experienced was a gut feeling—a deep conviction that something is so without knowing why. I made a personal connection between a seemingly random experience in the outer world that directly related to me but I had no tangible proof of its validity. Becoming aware of those gut feelings and acknowledging the connection raises our consciousness to look deeper and to see differently.
It’s the same with dream work. Our dreams depict metaphors and symbols to convey a situation or perception that needs our attention. Dream symbols can manifest in our waking life as a part of synchronistic events as well. Once we start linking the connections it is like tapping the first domino, one by one the links fall into place.
And, boy did those dominoes fall for the remainder of the conference! Like the fact that my friend Mitch and I ended up on the same floor at exact opposite ends from one another in that skyscraper hotel. We laughed aloud over this because we met two years ago as presenters at the 2003 BPUSA Gathering and hit it off immediately. As we came to know one another, we discovered that we have so many things in common about our ‘grief stories’. I felt as though I had been reunited with an old friend after several years apart. We did not realize that we were staying next door to one another in the hotel until like a scene in a television sit-com, we both came out of our rooms at the same time on our way to breakfast! We have not seen one another since that conference, but have emailed weekly and talked on the phone regularly building a warm relationship of trust. Any coincidence that we ended up on the same floor again?? Bingo. I believe our boys, Kevin & Kelly paved the way to make our time at the conference feel like two old friends coming home again.
I have to mention one more terrific story about another synchronicity and then you can continue with the rest of this newsletter. I could not end this without mentioning adorable Ingrid from Canada. Ingrid ordered my book and we emailed several times over the last year sharing insights about dreaming and how the book had affected her. Ingrid knew that I would be presenting in Boston, but I do not remember whether I knew she would be there too. Nonetheless, can you imagine that out of a conference of 1200 people we were both issued tickets for the same table and ended up sitting right next to one another at the first luncheon? Can you imagine the squeals of delight, and tears of joy that emitted from our table when we fell into one another’s arms at the recognition of one another?
The amazing thing is that it was not just happening to me! So many of you at the conference were experiencing your own ‘coincidences’—connecting with one another for no apparent reason only to discover that your children shared the same birthday, or you knew an acquaintance, or met online at a chat. I could hardly contain my excitement when you shared your dreams with me and I could see the ah ha! In your eyes as you recognized the significance of a personal symbol or when just speaking the dream helped you to see the synchronicity of a dream theme appearing in your waking life. I cannot tell you how fulfilling it was to be in that moment with you.
I stand in awe of the way our children coordinated these moments so that we could share our journeys and bring healing to one another. Is that love or what?
TIPS: Recognizing Synchronicity
Albert Gaulden, author of Signs and Wonders: Understand the Language of God, remarks that Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, coined the notion of synchronicity “…to describe an interaction between two people or parallel events without appointment or plan. Synchronistic experiences tend to be deeply personal-when a person sees in her own mind connections between her thoughts and objective events in the external world.”
DREAMER’S MAILBOX: “I Don’t’ Dream!”
Dear Carla,
Why is it that some people remember their dreams in rich detail, and others, like me don’t dream at all?
No Dreamer
Dear No Dreamer,
Rather than assume that you don’t dream, let’s assume that you can’t dream. Let us assume that you are not dreaming because something or some set of circumstances is inhibiting your ability to dream or remember your dreams. Dream researchers say everybody dreams. Sleep researchers say our ability to remember our dreams can be affected by illness, medication, sleep aids, alcohol, drugs, stress, depression, all of which interfere with our biology and can interrupt our individual sleep cycle. During an average night of 7-8 hours of sleep, we should experience 5 stages of sleep. The first four stages are slow brain wave sleep, (imagine that your brain is resting too) and designed to allow the body to rest without interruption. If we are not asleep long enough to complete each cycle we may not reach the deep sleep that is essential for healing and restoring the body. Dreaming occurs during the fifth stage, the REM stage, (rapid eye movement) when the brain is active again and dream images are most vivid. This cycle can last up to one hour in length toward the end of the night and you are most likely to remember them on wakening. I encourage you to examine this checklist and determine how many of these factors might be affecting your ability to achieve the kind of sleep that induces rest, renewal and recall.
TIP: How can you determine whether you are cycling through the stages? Try this: Drink a large glass of water before retiring. Your body will cue you to wake up to relieve yourself within 2-3 hours of retiring. Keep a pen and pad next to your bed to record any images that come to mind. Drink a second glass of water so you will wake up again during the early morning when dreaming is most vivid.Let me know if it works for you!
Dreams4Healing Chat RESUMES SEPTEMBER 12, 2005
Join Carla and ADC staffer Jeannie on the Second Monday of the month, 9 pm EST for online bereavement support using dreams as a tool for healing and reconciliation. Online at www.after-death.com.
Apologies due: the server crashed on the ADC Project website that night and no one could access the chat. We’ll try again next month!
Check out The Robie Foundation at www.TheRobieFoundation in memory of Robie Masterson. I met Debra Masterson mother of Robie at the TCF conference and was blown away by her spirit of compassion and commitment to raising awareness about PDA. Her enthusiasm to help other parents in the midst of her pain and grief is an amazing testimony of the power of love.
“Our son, Robie was almost four years old and part of a set of triplets. Robie had a condition called PDA (Patent Ductus Arteriosus) also known as a heart mur-mur. A Congenital Heart Defect (CHD). In its most basic form, the mission of The Robie Foundation is to educate parents whose children have been similarly diagnosed. If we can spare even one family from what we are now experiencing, we’ll have achieved this goal.”
In keeping with my theme of Synchronicity ;o) read this cool article about Debra and her friend Kathleen-- “Foundation Promotes Awareness to Save Lives at http://www.mostonline.org/memorialview.html.
Last minute insert as I go to press with this newsletter---I just received Sandy Goodman’s Fall newsletter Love Never Dies. In this issue, Sandy shares a wonderful story of synchronicity involving our daughter Amber and Dave her husband while we were all at the BPUSA conference in LV. Sandy, Dave, and Josh (Jason’s twin) previously met at the John Edward Seminar in Denver this spring. Josh and Amber hit it off immediately and became fast friends. This story is another amazing confirmation of how connected we truly are to our children and our children to each other. Send Sandy an email and request her newsletter sandy@tribcsp.com. Tell her Carla sent you!
Listen to interview with Carla on GriefCast.com with Dr.J. Shep Jeffreys. http://griefcast.blogspot.com/ In the archives: Parental Grief Show #1
Griefcast is a program designed to help grieving people reclaim a life of meaning after loss and support those who help them. I met Shep at the BPUSA conference and was so impressed by his gentle and loving nature in companioning the bereaved. Shep’s blogcast is the latest and greatest way to educate caregivers and care receivers in bereavement . Check it out!!
My name is Carla Blowey and I am the author of Dreaming Kevin: The Path To Healing. I am also a bereaved mother whose dreams have played a vital role in guiding me through some very difficult and challenging times on this fourteen-year journey. I am very passionate about sharing my dream experiences with the bereaved because everything we need to know to understand our grief and survive this journey is within us. We must learn to trust our intuition, so we can become more conscious of the inner guidance depicted in our dreams. Dream work is a unique tool that can bring healing to the wounded places in our body, in our heart, and in our soul.
ABOUT DREAMING KEVIN: THE PATH TO HEALING
Infinity Publishing.com 2002, Paperback, 301 pgs:
In 1991, I entered the most challenging time of my life when the death of my five-year-old son, Kevin, and the nightmare that predicted it, forced me to reexamine my perceptions about death, grief and the afterlife. I took the road less traveled and journeyed to the dreamtime where she discovered that Kevin had merely transitioned from matter to spirit and that his love for me and our family was stronger than ever. Fourteen years later, I invite the bereaved to 'see differently' by using the gift of their dreams as a tool for reconciliation, healing, and spiritual growth.
To order go to www.buybooksontheweb.com and type in Dreaming Kevin.
To order a signed copy go to www.dreamingkevin.com.
I welcome your comments, questions, and dreams—contact me at carla@dreamingkevin.com
Visit Dreaming Kevin at http://www.dreamingkevin.com
Copyright September 2005
Dreaming Kevin: The Path To Healing
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Dreaming Kevin: The Path to
Healing
by Carla Blowey
To learn more about
DREAMING KEVIN
“Enlightenment consists not merely in the seeing of luminous shapes and visions, but in making the darkness visible. The latter procedure is more difficult, and therefore, unpopular.” C.J. Jung
"All Healing is a release from fear."
ACIM