I had this dream last week. Matt had gotten up early to go mow his grandparents’ lawn. He kissed me goodbye and when the door shut behind him I drifted back to sleep for half an hour until my alarm went off. I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular as I closed my eyes, but I was thrown into the dream’s vividness immediately.

Like most dreams, the setting was irrational – I was in a hospital that looked like a nail salon, nurses bent over patients’ feet, administering manicures instead of IVs. I tell them I am here to pick up my mother’s belongings, she has died, can you help me?

They ignore me completely and I grow visibly upset. I see a doorway and walk to it defiantly; I don’t care if I’m not allowed in there, I will figure it out for myself.

And then I am in a bedroom, and a girl I knew from my childhood is there, someone I haven’t seen or talked to in years. I am crying and she tells me to stop, no one cares anymore what you’ve lost, you need to move on. She leaves the room.

I see my mother’s belongings shoved underneath a desk. An evening gown and black satin heels, a curling iron, a makeup bag, a tube of lipstick. I shove them into one of those plastic hospital bags with her name written on it in Sharpee.

I turn with the bag and my face wet with tears and I’m surprised to see there is someone sitting on the end of the bed, an elderly man with a white beard and overalls and a flannel shirt. I’ve never seen him before in my life, but he looks like Santa Claus dressed as a farmer. I want to feel repulsed by this stranger that has wandered in unbeknownst to me and witnessed my private grief, but he holds his arms out and says softly, it’s okay to cry. I sit down next to him and he embraces me, all large, protective arms, and scruffy beard and wide chest. It’s okay that you’ve lost her and miss her and don’t know what to do. Don’t listen to them. Don’t feel ignored. It’s okay to cry.

My alarm goes off and I wake up, surprised to feel my face wet with salty, hot, real tears.

I go through the motions of getting ready for work, all the while totally confused by my dream. Why a Santa Claus figure? Why a nail salon and a bag of belongings that weren’t really hers and harsh words from a girl that I haven’t talked to in a decade?

And also,

I didn’t think I needed permission to grieve.

But do I? Is that what the dream is telling me?

My independent, eldest child/only girl spirit doesn’t want to accept that answer. And she doesn’t want help, either. She doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, though he’s a nice idea.

But instead of letting my own subconscious irk my independence, I took the dream’s meaning at face-value, and let myself feel the unquenchable sadness of seven months and 23 days (and one year) sink into that hallow corner of my heart. I stayed quiet for a few days, asking myself things like, am I really going to write another sad blog again? And also, can I quit the internet? Because lately it seems plagued with politics and controversy and incessant arguing and it makes me tired.

I didn’t quit the internet, you’ll be happy to know. And this isn’t intended to be another sad blog, another reminder to each of you that this year I lost my mother, a pity party , or ploy for attention.

Instead, I’m here just to ask a question :

When you’re a twenty-something and you’re supposed to figure out your life and learn how not to be a student or a child or a follower anymore, how and when and where is permission relevant to us?

Because I realized that I have unintentionally been waiting for it – in my work, in my writing, in my grief, in my faith, in my own politics.

Do I need permission? How do I give it to myself? How do I let others give it to me appropriately, without depending on it to the point where I am immobile without it? How do I help someone else understand that they have permission to be who they are, emotions and words and tears and all? If you’re older than twenty-something, at what point did you learn to give yourself that grace and permission? Or, who helped you understand it?

Because the truth, as deeply painful as it is to admit this to you, is this :

I am afraid that if I admit that I need help I will give away my dignity.

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In sleep I dream of strange things
Closets, lobsters, dead dogs
and old friends
Boats and voices
Vivid colors that fade to black and white
Earnest feelings that ache in waking life.
When I’m tired I wish for sleep
When I sleep,
I fall
Hoping to find something -
A sweet lie,
A vacation,
A kiss I needed -
But always I wake up
And my mind is too revealed.

I recently had a dream that I am still mulling over.

In the dream I was driving down a street in my hometown when I saw an author that I really respect passing out flyers and advertisements about his new book. I was so excited that I slowed down and called out to him. He recognized me, greeted me by name and then invited me to meet him at a conference he was speaking at later that same day at the high school I attended. When I arrived at the school, I searched but could not find him. Frantic that I was supposed to meet him but was late and lost, I continued searching but the more I looked and dashed down hallways and opened office doors into broom closets, the less I recognized my surroundings and the more lost I became. Gradually, I could not remember why I had wanted to meet him so badly, what we would have talked about, and then – who was I looking for? Where am I? What was I doing before? I woke up sincerely confused – what was that about?

I can make a lot of projections about that dream. Maybe in my search to speak with an author I regard so highly, who so often speaks to my own fears and insecurities and hopes and beliefs, who leads the kind of life and professional success I desire for myself, I confused my envy for his career with respect for his writing. Maybe, in some sense, I am doing this in my waking life and God was trying to reveal how fruitless it is to pursue someone else’s success rather than being satisfied with the simple act of practicing my passion. I can already write. I love the act of writing, and I love to read, and people enjoy reading my writing. What else do I need that I don’t already have, and could that author have given it to me?

Or maybe as a friend suggested, the author represents the writer in me, the part of me that writes for writing’s sake and does it well and is self-assured in it, and I somehow feel that I have lost her and am desperate to reconnect with her.

Or maybe, like my husband says, the dream is a lesson in not reading too much right before bed. But like I’ve mentioned before, my dreams often reveal important things about my life and have a lot to do with my writing.

Either way, the dream has lingered with me for several days, begging the question:

Am I pursuing success, or am I pursuing my art?

I often get self conscious about my blog. It’s a blog about the process of creativity and writing, but how often am I posting my writing versus posting my thoughts on writing? There is art, and then there is talking about art. Like this post, for instance.

I started to write a different post today, but as I reflected on this quote I stumbled across early on Monday, my thoughts took on a new form:

“If you have a rhythm, if you get up every morning and work for a few hours, and you like the getting up and the work, and you don’t think about how great it will be when it’s done, but rather how great it is every day that you get to get up and do the work, your creation will be tremendous. Don’t think about the finished product. Stop rewarding yourself with something that doesn’t exist, and may never exist. Instead, think about how delightful it is you get to do this, you get to make this, and how delightful it will be to get up and do it again tomorrow.” -Don Miller

An interesting connection of seemingly unrelated dots, I think.

I’ve written four poems just since reading it, but why? That’s more poetry than I’ve written in three years, easily. It could be any number of things. Maybe it was the simple act of enjoying the form and the act of writing rather than pursuing some imaginary success and “reward that may never come” as Miller put it.

I still struggle with the idea of submitting or posting my work. I can stand on both sides of it and make cases against whether or not to expose my work to anyone. If I do, I could get rejected. If I don’t, what’s the joy and purpose of doing it at all?

Miller addresses this question, too:

“Most of the things we worry about as creators never happen. We are not as rejected as we think we are; in fact, our creation has given us a greater community, even if we do have a few critics. And we did not fail as badly as we thought we would; and if we did fail, people hardly noticed. Most of the fears we entertain as creators have to do with hypothetical situations, things that could happen. But this is a waste of valuable creative energy. Most likely, things we think will happen won’t. A creator takes risks, a consumer lives in safety. Are you a creator or consumer?”

I know the answer to that question: I want to contribute. I want to create. But sometimes it feels easier, safer, to link to someone else rather than say it myself. It is sometimes easier to talk about doing it, rather than actually doing it. Because writing is an act of vulnerability. It is an act in voicing thoughts and allowing people to study, scrutinize, reject or partake in who I am and what I believe. I’m good at gathering and collecting inspiration, bad at making that brave, vulnerable movement into the next step: creating.

In the spirit of making the move, tomorrow I’ll post one of my poems that I wrote this week. So what move are you struggling to make this week, friends? Take the leap with me.

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