Can Dreams Bring Hope? My Journey

Can Dreams Bring Hope? My Journey

Can dreams bring comfort after the loss of someone we love?

In this deeply personal episode, I share a dream that forever changed my understanding of grief and loss—and ultimately led me to write the book, Lost No More....A Mother's Spiritual Journey Through Her Son's Addiction. Dreams can become a source of hope, healing, and connection during our darkest times which it clearly did for me.  I refer to this as a miracle and believe in miracles ever since.

Whether you believe dreams are spiritual experiences, messages from our subconscious, or simply part of the grieving process, my hope is that this conversation encourages you to remain open to the many ways love continues to reach us.

In this episode, we'll explore:

•  Why dreams often become more meaningful after loss. 
•  My own life-changing dream and what it meant to me. 
•  Different ways grieving people experience connection—through dreams, signs, memories, music, or an unexpected sense of peace. 
•  How to remain open without feeling pressured to believe any one explanation. 
•  Why every grief journey is unique. 

No matter where you are in your grief, I hope this episode reminds you that love doesn't end when a life does.

Thank you for allowing me to walk beside you.

Thank you for listening to Hope After Loss: Conversations on Grief.

If this episode spoke to you, please consider sharing it with someone who may need support and hope today.

This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health treatment. 

If you have a question or a topic that you would like me to gently explore,
 you’re welcome to email me at [your email].

While I’m not able to provide individual counseling through email,
I would be honored to hold your question and possibly share it in a future podcast, so others may feel less alone.

Thank you for allowing me to walk beside you.  Until next time, be gentle with yourself.  Learning to walk with this pain begins one day at a time, one choice at a time to love yourself. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning, everyone, and happy 4th of July weekend. I hope you're enjoying this special occasion. This is Hope After Loss, episode 9. Can dreams bring hope? My journey. I'm Marilyn Burns, licensed professional clinical counselor, author of Lost No More, A Mother's Spiritual Journey Through Her Son's Addiction, and most importantly, a mom who has walked the heartbreaking journey of losing a child. My son's name was Christopher. Today we're going to explore a topic that many grieving people experience but often hesitate to talk about their dreams. Some people believe dreams are messages from our loved ones. Some believe they are part of the remarkable healing process of the human mind. Others see them as gifts from God. My purpose today isn't to convince you of any one explanation. Instead, I'd like to share my own experience, what I've learned both personally and professionally over nearly five decades as a counselor, and why I believe dreams can sometimes bring comfort, hope, and healing. Before I tell you about dreams in general, I'd like to tell you about the dream that completely changed my personal life. And to me, I call it a gift. There are moments in life, in all of our lives, that divide everything into before and after. For me, one of those moments didn't happen while I was awake. It happened while I was asleep. I was in a trauma hospital in California. My son Chris was on life support after a devastating overdose. I had been awake for what felt like forever. I was emotionally exhausted, physically drained, and there was nothing left for me to do but wait. I walked into the family waiting area. It was quiet. The lights were dim. The room was cool. It was perfect for me. I just wanted to close my eyes and just rest my mind and my heart for just as long as I could. And I really just intended to rest for a few minutes. Almost instantly I found myself with Chris. He wasn't lying in a hospital bed. He wasn't struggling. He was simply there. He looked at me with tears in his eyes and apologized for everything that we were all going through. But he repeated often how much he loved me and how much he appreciated me and I was the best mom I could have been for him. Then he said the words that no mother is ever prepared to hear. Ma, you have to let me go. I'm already gone. Up until that moment, a part of me still hoped for a miracle. Even though the doctors had explained that his brain had suffered irreversible damage, my mother's heart desperately wanted to believe that somehow he might come back. Kept on referencing these stories of people that came out of comas and people who healed from brain damage and concussions and blah blah blah. And I just wanted to hold on to those stories. I wanted it to be my story. But obviously it wasn't. But in that dream, Chris gave me a gift. He released me from the impossible burden of wondering if I was making the right decision. He was asking me to let him go. Before he left, he asked me for one more thing. He said, Ma, I want you to write a book for me. I believe I can help people from where I am now more than I could with a life on earth the way I was. As his mother, I could never say no to him. And I felt like he was asking me to please do this final, final thing for him. Well, the dream gave me the strength to sign the papers to remove him from life support. It also became the beginning of a journey I never could have imagined, a journey that led me to write Lost No More, to become even more passionate about helping grieving families, and eventually to sit here with you today. So today I'd like to talk about dreams. Not to convince you what they mean, because I don't know, not to tell you what you should believe, because that's up to you. That's your choice to decide what you want to believe in, but to share why dreams have brought comfort to so many grieving people, including me, and why they may become one of the quiet places where hope begins to return after you've had to say goodbye to someone. For years I've wondered whether I should tell people about that dream, what they think I had imagined it. Would they think grief had simply created that experience? Maybe they thought I needed a time out and to take some time away from work. After nearly five decades as a counselor, I realized something remarkable. I wasn't alone. Thousands of grieving people have had dreams that changed them. And I'm wondering if you've had one of those. Well, I'm going to put my counselor hat on right now for a few minutes and explain that grief dreams are very common, as I said. And there are several different ones. I did my homework when I had that dream because I really was afraid to talk about it. And when I finally did, I got one of those raised eyebrows of concern. And, you know, kind of led me to conclude that maybe I shouldn't talk about it. But after a while, I had no choice. And the reason why I had no choice in my mind was because for a solid year before I sat down to begin to write that book for Chris. Chris came to me in so many dreams, over and over again. And he was asking me what to put in his book. And he was pleading with me to find certain pictures that he wanted in his book and what he wanted the cover to look like and what he was hoping I would do with the back cover. And over and over again, there was information that was given to me in dreams, enough that I bought a small recorder. And I said this in one of my other episodes because I couldn't like expect to wake up and remember everything. I was so mentally exhausted. So let's talk about these different dreams. There's a comfort dream, and loved ones will usually appear pretty healthy in these dreams, peaceful, reassuring. These dreams often leave people with an overwhelming sense of calm. They really do feel good. And I hope that at some point you might experience one of these. The message dreams, on the other hand, are the loved one will communicate something important, a message, a message that we need to hear, that they feel is important to deliver to us. Might be a message of love or forgiveness or reassurance or guidance. My hospital dream with Chris fits that description because he spoke to me and asked me to let him go. It was a clear message. Please write this book for me. It's important, Maf. I can't do it for myself. And I'm asking for one more gift from you. Visitation dreams. Many people describe these as a feeling. It's much more real than a dream. Everything is vivid, emotionally clear. They often awake convinced that they truly encountered their loved one. Whether someone interprets these spiritually or psychologically, they're deeply personal. My brother had one of those after my father died. And my dad had some messages to give us, but my brother said it was so real. When my dad just suddenly disappeared, he said he just cried. He woke up and he was just all wet from tears because it felt so real. He swore my dad was sitting next to him. And he didn't want to say goodbye to him again. And some of these visitation dreams can bring some pain, emotional pain and grief back to people because they don't want to say goodbye. They feel like they've had to lose them again and again if they have these often. Now there's processing dreams, and these can replay difficult memories or emotions as the mind works through trauma and grief. And they may not be pleasant, but they can still be part of healing. Now, the last that I know of is a celebration dream. And sometimes the loved one simply appears happy, smiling, laughing, or enjoying some time that they're experiencing. These dreams often remind us of who they were before illness or addiction changed them. And one thing I'd encourage you to say, and that is to anyone who wonders about what you're telling them when you're telling them about a dream. Whether you believe these dreams come from God, from our loved ones, from our subconscious, or from the remarkable healing capacity of the human mind, they have one thing in common. They can bring us comfort. And in grief, comfort is something we should never be afraid to receive. And I don't think that we should allow people to take that comfort away from us. That might be a time when it's going to be important to understand just how powerful our belief system is. And maybe because of these dreams, our belief system is going to start to change. Everyone is going to stand in their truth and all they can experience when it comes to interpreting the things that we tell them. I wish I could explain some of the expressions that I was up against when I told my story of the dream that changed my life. And, you know, some people were definitely wondering, you know, if I was okay. And I was, I was very okay. But I don't think we have to solve the mystery of, you know, what's going on? What happened in that dream in order to receive the comfort? All right, it's really important for us to separate that out. But just make a statement to yourself. Do you believe that came to you to comfort you? And if you choose to believe that, it doesn't matter what form the dream's gonna come in, even if it's a little disturbing, your belief system might help you to move forward with it if you believe that it came from a source to comfort you. And no one can tell you any different. Now, you know, when I look at what happened to me during the whole Lost No More saga, I had to say yes to Chris. Now remember, this came me in a dream. And those dreams continued over a year. And I knew that my son, because of the persistence, that he was really passionate about the fact that I needed to do this for him. And you know, he was promising that it was gonna help people more than I could even imagine, more than I could do for people in a one-on-one session. He felt like this book was gonna make a difference. And you know, it really has, surprisingly. I mean, I'm amazed when people come up to me and tell me where they read the book or how they ended up with the book in their hand, and how they couldn't sleep when they started reading it at bedtime because they were drawn to finish the book. And how that book showed up in in treatment centers and in jails and in people's life, like gift giving across the United States. It was amazing to me, and it made me believe in these messages that we get even stronger because I have evidence that what Chris was telling me in that dream was in fact the truth, and it played out on all sorts of levels. I could probably write easily another book about the messages that I got from people, how they found that book, what happened during the reading of the book, how they changed after the book, after they completed it. It was just incredible to me. And it kept me on a spiritual level that helped me to gracefully move forward. So, and some people will say I never had a dream. And if you've never had a dream like that, please don't think that you've done anything wrong. Because love reaches us differently. Some people will experience dreams, some will experience signs, like we talked about in the other the other podcast that I did. Some experience music, some experience memories, some experience just total peace. Every grief journey is different. Okay? And we can't all be the same because we are different. And I would like in closing to invite listeners to keep a notebook beside their bed. Stay open to the idea that you might have a dream, you might have a message, invite them, okay, like to just send their dream stories. Alright, I want to ask you to send your dream stories to me. You're welcome to do that. Okay? And I want to close with hope. Whether your dreams are heaven touching earth, your subconscious helping you heal, or something we simply don't yet understand. I hope you'll never be afraid to receive whatever comfort comes from them. So I would like to close just thanking you for spending time with me today. And remember that, you know, this is your personal experience. And I want to invite you to send your stories to me, okay? Because I am interested. I might have t not have time to respond quickly enough. I don't want you to sit, you know, on the end of your seat. But I do do believe in these, and I love when people share their stories with me. So for now, enjoy the rest of this very special holiday weekend, and I will talk to you soon.