2. LOST CHILD

The following is the dream of a 55-year old woman shortly after leaving a job she had held for many years:

[In my dream] my mother is outside hunting for achild who is lost. It's dark, but there's a sliver of moon. I see my father looking out the window, but he doesn't come out or help. It's almost as if he has an idea where to look, but he won't. He's just waiting to see what happens. My mother hunts all over, looking and calling. I see her start to go into the woods. I want to yell and tell her not to. You're not supposed to go in there. Someplace in there the child could be trapped or held captive.

(Jane Pretat, Coming to Age, pp. 126-127.)

Commentary on the Dream (HRM)

It has been said that it's never too late to have a happy childhood. Whether true or not, it may never be too late to heal the wounds from childhood, and this dream is a cry of healing. The dreamer’s parents have died. Yet in what Australian native peoples call "the Eternal world of the Dream," mother and father are still alive. The child is lost, the mother is still seeking, the father still unresponsive.

Remember the song "Teddy Bear's Picnic?" "If you go into the woods today, you better go in disguise." In the present dream, the mother is about to "go into the woods:" that is, go into a place that is dark and dangerous and the dreamer wants to tell her not to go in there. Yet unless the mother goes into the woods, she can never rescue the child who is "trapped or held captive."

Strange, is it not, that after a half century, this child in the dreamer (in us) is still trapped, still held captive by wounds of the past? Yet every character in this dream is the dreamer herself. It is we ourselves who do not want to go into the woods, into a dark and dangerous place in ourselves, where a child is still held trapped and captive.

In this darkness, self-knowledge is like the slender light of the moon. The father (in us) has an idea of where to look, but he won't; he's waiting, while the mother (in us) is hunting all over, looking and calling. Between these two deep parts of ourselves-- one waiting, the other desperately looking-- we move in the timeless world of the dream, seeking to find the child (in us) who was never truly lost.