Ever since I was a little girl I’ve believed in the power of dreams. My mother always told me amazing stories about her prophetic dreams. She would tell me of events she foresaw with strange accuracy, such as my grandmother’s funeral or premonitions she would get about whether to drive a particular route home on a given day. The collection of dream books on her shelf offered some promise of secret knowledge that I hoped would help me crack the mystery of dream symbols and their meanings.
Inspired by her and my own curiosity about the realms of dreams, I have spent many years keeping dream journals. As with any of my journal keeping, it has been off again, on again—but well worth the time and re-reads years later.
I’ve discovered more about myself or the meaning of a situation from re-reading dream entries weeks, months, even years later. I’ve also discovered that I’ve had a fair amount of my own prophetic dreams over the years, too, though I didn’t realize it at the time.
I love dream journaling for how it enriches my life: both sleeping and waking. In my dream life, I find that the more I write about it, the more dreams I am able to remember, and the more I am able to dream lucidly. In my waking life, I find that revisiting what I write inspires my creative self and feeds me with artistic energy.
As rewarding as it is, I don’t always keep up. There have been times I’d wake up in the morning with enough vivid memories to fill twenty or more pages with five or more dreams. It’s hard to keep up with that kind of volume. But getting back into it after taking a hiatus often results in days or weeks of having no dream memories. Even so, I’ve found ways to recapture that thread between sleeping and waking to keep the dreams alive:
- Upon waking, lie still for a moment and try to recall any dreams before moving or opening eyes. Quick movement can disturb a dream memory.
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