On August 13, 2019 when I woke up, I quickly grabbed my journal to capture every detail before it all slips away, as dreams usually do. As context, in my life at the time, I was struggling big time. I was running to stand still with my paycheck running through the proverbial revolving NYC door. I was 40K in debt and literally one paycheck away from homelessness. Even though I am considered a high earner by country medians, it is inapplicable to Manhattan. As a single mom, the toll this took on me is beyond words. I coped by lifting heavy at the gym and drinking wine at night. Zero sum game, right? While just going through these motions every day with a cloud of anxiety and depression over me, I was not at all present for my daughter. During those days, I know that somewhere in my brain, wheels were turning as I sought freedom from my own personal prison. And, every single day I would ask the Universe for signs.
My actual journal entry: Tuesday Morning 8/13/2019
Lying here on the couch in my morning ritual with Dani, we added candle burning to our ritual. Wow I had a crazy dream filled with such symbolism of where I am in my life. There were evil men and one gave me a "present", my Mom and Dad were there. They (the evil men) were going to start a world war so we were stockpiling food. This was after I was sitting in my childhood bedroom and I saw (Dani and I saw) the most beautiful pics of NYC. But as I tried to take a pic, it had all faded. I had made a split second decision when I got the box covered in flowers ("the present"), I knew I needed to take Dani and flee. I hustled, grabbed my phone, our coats and red beanie. And off we went running. I told my Mom we were going for wine, but she knew, so I said I'd contact her when we could. We went to a bus station trying to get to Delaware, but we missed the 8:05. So we continued to run. I was able to harness the power of flight with Dani in my lap (in an innertube) we went flying. The man got close, but I prayed to God for him not to fly. And we got away...
There's more to the dream, but we are still trying to dissect the rest. When I re-read this entry long after we had already fled NYC, I was blown away. On March 27th 2020, we fled to Arizona rapidly due to my breast cancer diagnosis on March 5th 2020 and NYC's denial of my treatment due to the virus. In my dream, I know "the box covered in flowers" was my cancer because cancer was a blessing in disguise and the trigger we needed to get out of NYC. The most compelling part of the dream for me was that there were evil men trying to start a world war and so we were stockpiling food. Mind you, this dream was well before COVID-19 became a word that every single person in this world would be so impacted by. The prophetic nature of everything about this dream and how so much of it manifested in my 2020 blows my mind. But it gives me such comfort in that the Universe has been giving me the signs I begged for--signs I've been fortunate to see for as long as I can remember.
