The Frozen Center and Forgotten Dreams
If you have an old refrigerator and haven’t defrosted the freezer in forever, chances are good the sides of the freezer are covered with thick, hard ice that looks sort of like snow. This is the freezer of my childhood. It’s also how I picture my insides when I’m enduring a time in my life when I can’t find any dreams worth getting excited about and living for.
This feeling of hamster wheeling it to the next day because what else is there to do can look and feel like depression. Probably because it is. Life without dreams is like cake without cake.
Not having great dreams for yourself and your life can be a sign that you have one hand over your own mouth, and maybe even both hands. And if not your mouth, then maybe your brain. Maybe you have both hands over your brain, trying to keep it from dreaming and making you wake up and do something different, like, come alive.
If by any chance you are feeling this way—cold and stuck—I’m borrowing from some ideas Martha Beck presented in her book Finding Your Own North Star (if you like these ideas, you should read her book because she presents them much better than I do here):
What if you made a list of forgotten dreams? These are dreams that maybe you once had when you were younger and more hopeful or dreams you generally don’t even let yourself imagine.
For example:
Hug my (now dead) mother one time.
Earn a million dollars.
Go out with the man who married someone else (and have him be single).
Live in Paris for a year.
Then, put one of these ideas that sparks some form of aliveness in you on the top of a piece of paper and under it draw a line vertically down the middle of the paper.
On the left hand side, write “My dream is coming true” and on the right side put down the first response your brain gives you to that statement. For example, “You can’t bring your dog there.” Keep repeating this exercise, writing “My dream is coming true” on the right side and your brain’s response on the left. Let your brain show you all the reasons it believes your dreams aren’t possible. “You don’t speak French.” “You’re too chicken to try.” “Dreams are for dreaming, not for doing.” Keep going until you write something that sparks an “a-ha"!” in you. I’d pick “Dreams are for dreaming, not for doing,” and then I’d write about that belief. Is that really how I think? Is that really how I want to live my life?
By uncovering my beliefs and examining them, I can start to come alive from the state of being frozen and find some hope in the desire to move forward and actually DO SOMETHING that has meaning to me!
I think adoptees in particular are really good at freezing their dreams and forgetting them. This is a way of trying to fit in without causing trouble. This is a way of not existing.
It’s SO YUCKY.
Maybe when a baby is adopted, they should come to their new family wearing a t-shirt that says I’M GOING TO CAUSE TROUBLE so everything would be out in the open from day one.
The back of the t-shirt could say I HAVE DREAMS.
The back of their diapers could say I’M A BADASS.
You get the picture. Now go get a piece of paper and a pen and have at it. Dream away.
