I Dreamed There Was A Raven Under My Dress

Last night I dreamed that I was in my Aunts basement where our families used to have dinner during the holidays.

I was in the doorway between two rooms when a raven landed between my feet.  I was wearing a long dress that fell just above my ankle.

I thought that the raven must be trained to land next to people so broke off a bit of my sandwich and offered it to her.  But she wasn’t interested in food.

So I walked into the dining room where my mother and sister were to tell them about the raven under my dress.

When I did, they both said that there wasn’t one raven but two.

And I believed them.   But I was also upset because I knew there was only one raven under my dress.

When I woke up, I felt the same as I had in my dream.  I wished the dream had ended before I went to the other room where my sister and mother were. That was the part I liked.

Their insistence that there were two ravens, diminished the power of the first part of the dream for me.

The raven was there for me, not because it was trained to land at someone’s feet and get rewarded, but because it chose to be near me.

It took me a few hours to figure out the meaning of the dream. But once I did it not only made sense but affirmed a truth I’d recently come to.

It’s about stories, memory, and truth.

We all have our stories, our version of our own lives, the events that occurred and how they played out. Even in the same family with the same event, it’s possible for each family member to have a different version of what happened.

My memories of growing up in the family I was born into are different from the other members of my family. The things they laugh about make me want to cringe.  What they want to remember, I want to forget.

Their truth is not my truth.

In the dream I went to my mother and sister, excited to show them the raven who had landed under my dress.   But they didn’t hear what I was saying or see what I was seeing.

They saw two ravens.  And because I believed them instead of what I was actually experiencing,  the importance of the raven diminished.

I gave up my truth for theirs.

And with it, I lost the joy and excitement, and possibly the message, of the raven’s visit.

Last week I wrote about the Raven as being a symbol of creating my own reality.  This was done not by getting something I wished for, but by seeing my memories with clarity, not through the lens of my family myths.

The raven in my dream was reminding me to trust myself and not give my truth away to accommodate someone else’s beliefs.

And this is the power of the dream, the message from the raven.