Like Waking From A Dream

You know that split second after a vivid dream where it still feels real, like the person is still there? That’s the doorway we walk through today, because grief often behaves exactly like that: irrational, symbolic, and completely untethered from clocks and calendars. I

We talk about how both dreams and bereavement collapse time the past becomes present and the dead feel alive. Rather than treating that as weakness, we name it as the mind doing what minds do: trying again and again to metabolize a loss it cannot fully accept. 

We also face the hard part: the nightmare moments. Sometimes the most painful waves are the most honest, because they put us in direct contact with what’s real. I reflect on C.S. Lewis and the idea that love’s “impact” continues even after death the other is gone, but the impact remains. The takeaway is simple and sturdy: we don’t get over grief; we learn to dream differently, until this landscape becomes something we can move through without drowning.

If this resonates, subscribe, share the episode with someone who’s hurting, and leave a review so more people looking for grief support can find it.one who is grieving. 

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SPIRITUAL DIRECTION WHILE GRIEVING IS AVAILABLE :  candeelucas@soulplusgrace.com

ATTEND MY SUMMER WORKSHOP ON "SOULFUL LISTENING" THROUGH THE MARKEY CENTER AT SANTA CLARA UNIVERSITY VIA ZOOM.

https://events.scu.edu/markey-center/event/359741-soulful-listening-workshops-on-the-ministry-of

Art:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/vasonaArts?ref=seller-platform-mcnav
and  https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/candee-lucas

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F2SFH4Z6

Music and sound effects today by:   via Pixabay

Transcript

Welcome To A Grief Library

Candee 0:31

Welcome to Solace: Soul + Grief. I'm glad you're here. My name is Candee Lucas. I'm a spiritual director and grief chaplain. When we started this ministry several years ago, we had determined to make an accessible library of grief topics. So you, the listener, could find a topic that was most pertinent to your current grief moment and look for some assistance or solace. You're always welcome in our circle of healing, love, and support. You know the feeling. You're dreaming, vivid, warm, real, and then you wake. And just for a few seconds, the dream still lives in you. The person is still there. The place still exists. The feeling is still in your chest. Then it dissolves. Every morning. Dreams don't follow rational rules, and neither does grief. You can be fine one moment, then gutted by a song, a smell, a slant of afternoon light. That's not weakness. That's dream logic. In dreams time collapses. The dead are alive, the past is present. Grief works the same way. The mind doesn't know that love has to obey calendars. This is one of the reasons grief feels so disorienting. Because you're living in two time frames at once. Have you ever had a dream that keeps coming back? Grief is a recurring dream. Not because we're broken, but because the mind is trying again and again to metabolize something it cannot fully accept. Freud called dreams the royal road to the unconscious. Grief is very definitely that same road, walked in daylight, often against our will. We don't choose to grieve. We are visited by it. Dreams have taught us three things that apply directly to grief. One, you cannot force them to end. Struggling only deepens them. The images are symbolic. The thing you're mourning is often not what it appears to be. And number three, they carry messages. Grief is trying to tell you something about what you loved and what you still are. Here's the hard part. The nightmare, the worst dream is also the most honest. In grief the nightmarish moments are when we feel most alive to what is real. C.S. Lewis writing after his wife's death described the precious gift of marriage as the constant impact of something intimate, yet unmistakably other. Grief is that impact continued. The other is gone, but the impact remains. And that impact is love refusing to stop. We don't get over grief. We learn to dream differently. That dream shifts from acute, raw, disorienting to something more like a landscape you know how to move through. You still visit it, but you learn where the soft ground is. This is what healing looks like. Not the absence of the dream, the ability to dream it without drowning. Every person within the sound of my voice is carrying some version of this dream. It might be fresh, rocked close to the surface, or it might be old worn smooth by years, or it might be anticipatory, the grief you are already beginning to dream before the losses come. All of it is real, all of it is love, and here is what I want to leave you with. The dream doesn't end because the dreamer wakes. The one you grieve made you a better dreamer. That is not nothing. That is everything.

Closing Blessing And Where To Listen

Candee 7:27

That concludes this week's episode. A new one drops every Friday morning. I'm Candee Lucas, your host, spiritual director, and grief chaplain, trained by the Jesuits. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon. Be gentle with yourself this week. Travel with God always at your side. Vaya con Dios.