The Wheel at Home

I woke up from a strange dream last night, and for the first time in a long while, I actually remembered enough about it to think about it properly the next morning.

It wasn’t one of those dreams with a neat storyline. It was all a bit jumbled and odd, with familiar places somehow not quite right, a feeling that something was happening just out of sight, and eventually… fire.

The details probably aren’t as important as the feeling of it.

There has been a bit of tension around me lately. Nothing I particularly want to go into here, and nothing dramatic, but enough that I’ve probably been carrying more emotion around than I realised.

So, when I woke up from a dream involving fire, confusion and that strange feeling of trying to work out where the danger was coming from, it did make me wonder.

Maybe my brain was simply sorting through things in its own weird way.

I don’t really believe every dream needs to have some enormous hidden meaning. Sometimes dreams are probably just bits of conversations, worries, memories and completely random nonsense all thrown into a blender when we sleep.

But I do think dreams can sometimes show us how we’re feeling before we’ve really put it into words ourselves.

Dreams seem to speak more in symbols and feelings than straightforward sentences.

They can be strange, beautiful, uncomfortable, funny, unfinished, or completely ridiculous. And sometimes the actual events of the dream disappear within minutes of waking, while the feeling stays with you for hours.

I still remember a childhood dream where I was being threatened by wolves, and a badger casually wandered past and said hello to me. It sounds completely random, but I had recently watched An American Werewolf in London and was also reading The Wind in the Willows at the time. (Yes, I know – slightly odd childhood.)

When I later looked into the symbolism of wolves and badgers, it was actually pretty interesting. Being attacked by wolves can symbolise conflict, fear, or feeling threatened – which, honestly, fits with how parts of my childhood felt. Badgers, on the other hand, are often linked to tenacity, boundaries, self-protection and standing your ground, which also felt strangely fitting.

I also once dreamt that a boy from school landed near me in a helicopter and told me he was there to “rescue me”. A few years later, we became a couple and, although it didn’t last, we had two children together. I had completely forgotten about that dream until I found an old dream journal my mum had given me as a teenager.

Coincidence? Maybe. But still – pretty cool.

That was enough to make me think I’d like to start paying a little more attention to my dreams.

Starting a Dream Journal

Starting a dream journal is such a simple way to bring a little bit of magic into everyday life.

Keep a notebook and pen beside the bed, or have your phone notes ready, and when you wake up, write down whatever you remember from before the dream starts to disappear.

It doesn’t have to be a whole story. It might only be a feeling, a colour, a place, a person, a strange little moment or one random sentence. Over time you may start to notice patterns – places you return to, emotions that repeat, certain people, animals or symbols that keep reappearing.

There’s no need to analyse every dream or decide that everything has a meaning. Sometimes it can simply be interesting to notice what your sleeping mind comes up with.

And there’s something a little magical about capturing something that would otherwise disappear.