{"id":1786,"date":"2017-11-06T05:30:51","date_gmt":"2017-11-06T10:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=1786"},"modified":"2017-11-06T06:39:06","modified_gmt":"2017-11-06T11:39:06","slug":"searching-in-my-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/searching-in-my-dreams\/","title":{"rendered":"Searching in My Dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/SearchingPost.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1787 size-large\" title=\"Searching in My Dreams\" src=\"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/SearchingPost-683x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Robin Botie of ithaca, New York, photoshops woman prisoner searching a haunted house in her dreams.\" width=\"625\" height=\"937\" srcset=\"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/SearchingPost-683x1024.jpg 683w, https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/SearchingPost-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/SearchingPost-768x1152.jpg 768w, https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/SearchingPost-624x936.jpg 624w, https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/SearchingPost.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 625px) 100vw, 625px\" \/><\/a>In my dream I had lost everything. My house, my money, my family. And I was incarcerated. For a crime? Or for being crazy? It wasn\u2019t clear in the dream. What was clear was that I was searching for something. In the middle of a group of women prisoners, I was always on the lookout for something as we were taken to various parts of town to work, supervised by some nice man. Who loved me. And maybe I loved him back. A little. Because when the dream ended and I woke up, I lay very still, trying to get back into the dream.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">\u201cDon\u2019t move when you wake from your dream,\u201d I\u2019d been told in real life, at a conference for bereaved parents months ago, \u201cor you\u2019ll forget it.\u201d They\u2019d given me a blank journal to record dreams of my daughter who died. But ever since I got the journal, Marika stopped showing up in my dreams. Completely. This latest dream, about being an inmate, had not included her. So I let it go. The journal still sits on my night table. Still blank.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">How are you supposed to dream if you hardly ever sleep? Most of each night I lay awake with my mind racing, and tell myself it\u2019s enough to just be resting my body.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Somewhere, I\u2019ve read that we dream what we think about. Hah! Also, that our brain is simply remixing and replaying our waking times, and searching for connections between unrelated experiences.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Maybe dreaming is really just our minds continuing to search, endlessly, even as our bodies rest. And maybe the important things in life are not who we are or what we have, but rather what we\u2019re searching for. I\u2019m just putting that out there, being one who searches day and night, awake or asleep. All that seeking; you\u2019d think it would tire me out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">New plan for before bedtime: watch less of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt2372162\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Orange is the New Black<\/a>, the Netflix series about women prison inmates, and read more of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anne_Lamott\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Anne Lamott\u2019s <\/a>inspiring books about finding hope, and mercy, and faith. Spend more time looking at photos of my daughter. And maybe even consider taking a peek, now and then, of the offerings on Match.com.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Dreams don\u2019t matter, you say?<\/span> <\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my dream I had lost everything. My house, my money, my family. And I was incarcerated. For a crime? Or for being crazy? It wasn&rsquo;t clear in the dream. What was clear was that I was searching for something. In the middle of a group of women prisoners, I was always on the lookout [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1062],"tags":[1369,1367,1363,1364,1365,1368,1366],"class_list":["post-1786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1062","tag-bedtime-ritual","tag-dream-journeling","tag-dreams-searching-for-something","tag-looking-for-someone-in-dreams","tag-orange-is-the-new-black","tag-what-we-dream-about","tag-why-do-we-dream"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}