When Dreams Speak: The Dreamscape as Medicine

There are dreams we forget before our feet ever touch the floor.

And then there are dreams that follow us into waking life.

They have a texture to them. A weight. We wake knowing we were somewhere. Something happened. Something moved.

I had two of those dreams recently, two nights in a row.

Both were about my estranged daughter, Amethyst.

And what followed taught me something I did not expect:

Sometimes the medicine of a dream is not that it tells us what is going to happen.

Sometimes it reveals what we are still holding.

The Brain While We Dream

Before getting into my dreams, it helps to understand just how extraordinary the sleeping brain actually is.

Sleep is not simply the brain shutting off. Throughout the night we cycle repeatedly through stages of non-REM and REM sleep, each with different patterns of brain activity.

During waking life, beta waves are commonly associated with alert thinking, planning and problem-solving.

As we relax, alpha activity becomes more prominent. Alpha can be thought of as part of the bridge between active waking consciousness and deeper relaxation.

As we move toward sleep, slower patterns emerge. Theta activity is associated with drowsiness and is also prominent during REM sleep alongside other frequencies.

And during deep non-REM sleep, very slow delta activity becomes dominant.

Then there is REM—Rapid Eye Movement sleep.

REM is not itself a brain wave. It is a stage of sleep characterized by rapid eye movements, temporary muscle atonia and a remarkably active brain. Vivid dreams are particularly likely to be recalled when we awaken from REM.

Research has also found something fascinating about the REM brain: regions involved in emotion and memory, including the amygdala and hippocampus, can be highly active, while some regions involved in executive reasoning and cognitive control are comparatively less active.

Maybe that is part of why dreams are so strange.

The analytical mind loosens its grip.

Emotion, memory, imagery and association are given room to speak.

And sometimes they have a lot to say.

Two Nights. The Same Daughter.

The first dream began almost like a concert or festival.

I was with my daughter Thea and one of her friends. We were staying in these little cabin-like spaces before going to a concert.

I remember the lighting vividly.

The cabin was dark except for tiny LED lights woven into blankets, running along parts of the walls and beneath the beds. Everything had this beautiful ambient glow.

I left the cabin to shower.

The showers were outside, enclosed only by curtains, reminding me of the outdoor earth shower I had experienced at an Earth Tantra retreat.

While showering, I realized everyone was beginning to leave for the concert.

I hurried to get dressed.

And then I saw her.

Amethyst.

She was pushing a shopping cart like everyone else heading toward the concert.

For a moment, it seemed like we made eye contact.

But she looked through me.

I followed her.

When I caught up to her, I finally said what my heart has wanted to say for years.

“Amethyst, you cannot keep ignoring me. We have to heal what is between us.”

And then something happened that still gets me.

We hugged.

Not a polite hug.

Not a quick hug.

A long one.

Eventually I began to release her.

She would not let me go.

So I stopped trying.

I held her until she was ready to release me.

For a mother who has had to grieve a living child, I cannot adequately describe what that felt like.

Amethyst has an autoimmune illness that I learned about through something she posted publicly. The disease threatens her voice and, eventually, other bodily functions.

In the dream I asked her why she was sick.

She began talking about the military. Her husband, Kellen, served in the military, and she told me how difficult that life had been.

But I interrupted her.

I told her that I believed there was something else happening too.

There was something unhealed between us.

Something that needed to be acknowledged.

Something that needed to be spoken.

Nearby, Kellen was preparing what looked like medicine.

The vessel itself was beautiful and strange, almost like a bowl made from a piece of tree bark.

He stirred a sparkling, colorful concoction.

We were standing beside a rock wall containing beautiful copper faucets and an elongated copper sink.

Kellen poured the medicine into the sink.

And Amethyst grabbed a copper straw.

Floating through the mixture were white pieces of different shapes and sizes, almost like boba pearls.

She was not trying to consume everything.

She was specifically gathering the white pieces through the straw and swallowing them.

Somehow, within the logic of the dream, I understood:

This was medicine for her throat.

And then I woke up.

And Then She Came Again

The following night, I dreamed about Amethyst again.

This dream was shorter.

She walked into my bedroom. Thea was there. Benny was there. Kellen was there.

Again, I confronted what was between us.

Again, I told her we could not continue ignoring it.

We needed to talk.

We needed to heal.

And again I connected the unspoken pain with her illness.

This time she became upset.

She walked across the hall into Thea's bathroom, closed the door,

and began vomiting.

Then I woke up.

Two nights.

Two incredibly emotional dreams.

My daughter.

Her voice.

Medicine.

Healing.

Purging.

Our relationship.

How could I not wonder whether something was moving?

The Story I Gave the Dream

I woke with hope.

Maybe she was ready.

Maybe something was shifting.

Maybe somewhere beneath all of the theology, anger, history and estrangement, my daughter missed her mom too.

Maybe the hug meant something.

Maybe reconciliation was coming.

And this is where the dream became medicine in a way I never expected.

Because I became attached to my interpretation.

I reached out to a friend and asked whether Amethyst had posted anything recently.

That was when I learned she had just graduated from an intensive discipleship and ministry program.

My heart dropped.

Because from where I stood, it did not look like movement toward reconciliation.

It looked like she was moving deeper into the religious worldview that has become part of the divide between us.

And I fucking broke.

The Dark Night

There are spiritual moments that feel expansive and luminous.

And then there are the moments when spirituality itself pisses you off.

This was one of them.

I was angry with God.

Angry with life.

Angry with whatever cosmic curriculum I supposedly agreed to before arriving here.

I thought:

I do not even want to be here.

What is the point of all of this? Life is so stupid.

Is there even really a God?

I know I say I signed up for these lessons and agreed to play this role in my daughter's life—but did I? Do I actually believe any of this?

I questioned my work.

My mission.

Everything I pour into Ahavah Gardens.

What is the point of everything I do if I am working so hard that I struggle to find enough time to simply be with my family and my children?

I even found myself thinking that maybe if I died unexpectedly, my daughter would finally understand how painfully short life is.

Maybe then she would realize how absurd it is to behave as though someone who is still alive is dead simply because our relationships with faith and God look different.

Those were not plans or intentions.

They were the anguished thoughts of a mother whose grief had completely taken over the room.

And that distinction became important later.

Because in that moment, I was not observing grief.

I had become grief.

I was not noticing anger.

I had become anger.

There was no space between Andria and the emotion.

And without that space, every thought felt true.

When Hope Becomes Attachment

This is where I began to understand what the dreams may actually have been showing me.

I initially interpreted them as being about Amethyst.

Maybe they were.

But perhaps they were also about me.

I had taken the hug and made it a promise.

I had taken medicine and made it evidence.

I had taken the dream and unconsciously created an outcome:

Reconciliation is coming.

And when waking reality contradicted the story I had attached to the dream, I spiraled.

There is an enormous difference between hope and attachment to an outcome.

Hope leaves room for mystery.

Attachment tells mystery how it is supposed to end.

Maybe the dream was never telling me:

Amethyst is ready.

Maybe it was showing me:

Andria, look how much this still hurts.

Look how desperately you want to hold your daughter.

Look at the conversation you are still having inside yourself.

Look at the relationship between voice, silence, sickness, medicine and what remains unspoken.

There is still something here asking for your attention.

That does not make the dream less sacred.

It makes it more useful.

Becoming the Observer

The following night, I sat ceremonially with ketamine.

My experience was with 200 mg troches, and I share that as part of my personal story, not as dosing guidance or a recommendation for someone else.

Ketamine is fascinating neurologically because, unlike classic psychedelics such as psilocybin, its primary pharmacology involves the brain's glutamate system. It is best known as an antagonist at NMDA receptors, with downstream effects involving AMPA signaling and pathways related to synaptic plasticity. Ketamine can also produce a temporary dissociative state in which our ordinary experience of the body, self and environment changes.

My experience of that dissociation was profound.

I stopped being swallowed by the emotion.

I became the observer.

At times I almost felt positioned behind myself, witnessing Andria rather than being completely fused with her experience.

There was not much emotion.

There was space.

I felt held by the universe.

I was in the stars.

I felt the presence of Mary Magdalene and the energy I understand as Christ Consciousness.

And from that enormous landscape, my life suddenly looked different.

I could see its richness.

Its complexity.

Its beauty.

The journey lasted around an hour and a half for me. Afterward I was still extremely altered. My motor function was impaired and speaking was difficult. I tried getting up and talking with Benny but quickly realized I wanted to return to my processing bed.

I eventually fell asleep before 9:00 that night.

And when I woke the following morning, something had shifted.

The Mountains Were Still There

I drove to the gym.

I looked at the mountains.

And I remember thinking how unbelievably beautiful everything was.

The Great Mystery was still mysterious.

My daughter was still estranged from me.

Nothing externally had been fixed.

There had been no miraculous phone call overnight.

The situation had not changed.

My relationship to the situation had.

The thoughts that had felt completely convincing during my dark night suddenly looked like thoughts born from extraordinary pain rather than absolute truths about my life.

That distinction matters.

The grief is real.

The loss is real.

Estrangement creates a particularly brutal kind of mourning because there is no funeral, no socially recognized ending and often no closure. Someone you gave birth to can still exist somewhere in the world while being completely inaccessible to you.

There are moments when it genuinely feels like being asked to pretend someone you love is dead.

It is excruciating.

But I can hold that truth without allowing it to become the only truth about my life.

My life is also beautiful.

I love.

I am loved.

I have children I can hold.

I have community.

I have mountains.

I have purpose.

I have mystery.

And yes, I still have hope.

I just cannot demand that hope take a particular form.

Maybe This Is What the Dream Was Saying

Dream interpretation becomes dangerous when we treat symbols like equations.

White means this.

Water means that.

Vomiting always means purging.

A hug means reconciliation.

Human consciousness is far more personal and mysterious than that.

Instead of asking, “What does this dream predict?”

I have begun asking:

“What does this dream reveal?”

What emotion was present?

What symbol refuses to leave me?

Where does that feeling exist in my waking life?

What am I avoiding?

What am I longing for?

What story did I immediately attach to the dream?

Could there be another interpretation?

What wants to be witnessed?

In my dreams there was a daughter losing her voice.

There was a mother desperate for a conversation.

There was medicine.

There was copper.

There was white.

There was a husband preparing something intended to heal.

There was a long embrace.

There was vomiting.

There was sickness.

There was silence.

There was longing.

I could spend years exploring those symbols.

But perhaps the most important symbol was not something inside the dream at all.

Perhaps it was what happened when I woke.

The dream revealed an attachment I still carried.

Life exposed it.

Grief cracked it open.

Ceremony gave me enough distance to witness it.

And integration allowed me to learn from it.

Creating Space for Dreams

I have become increasingly intentional about the landscape I create before sleep.

Rather than scrolling until the moment my eyes close, I can soften the environment. I can shift my phone toward warmer evening light and eventually put it away. I can read. I can work with ritual and prayer. I personally explore allies such as magnesium and blue lotus, and I have also explored psilocybin microdosing within my own spiritual practice.

But not every personal practice is established sleep science, and that distinction matters.

Sometimes the simplest practices are powerful:

Dim the lights.

Put the phone down.

Read something nourishing.

Set an intention.

Keep a journal beside the bed.

And when you wake from a dream, resist reaching immediately for the outside world.

Stay still.

Remember.

Write.

Even if all you have is:

Copper.

My daughter.

White.

I felt hope.

Write it down.

Dream memory disappears incredibly quickly.

And sometimes one tiny fragment opens the entire landscape again.

Dreams Do Not Always Give Answers

I still do not know exactly what those dreams meant.

I am actually becoming more comfortable saying that.

Maybe there was something spiritual happening.

Maybe my brain was processing one of the deepest attachment wounds of my life.

Maybe consciousness was doing something we do not fully understand.

Maybe all three can exist together.

I do not need neuroscience to invalidate mystery.

And I do not need mystery to invalidate neuroscience.

There is room in my spiritual life for both.

What I know is that the dreams spoke.

Not necessarily about what my daughter was going to do next.

They spoke about love.

Grief.

Voice.

Silence.

Healing.

Attachment.

And the unbearable desire of a mother to hold her child again.

Most importantly, they showed me where I was still gripping the ending.

Integration asked me to loosen my hands.

I can love Amethyst without knowing how this story ends.

I can hope for reconciliation without requiring it in order to experience a beautiful life.

I can grieve what is absent while remaining profoundly grateful for what is here.

And I can allow a dream to be medicine without demanding that it become prophecy.

Maybe that is one of the deepest invitations of the dreamscape:

Not to tell us our future.

But to reveal the parts of us that are still asking to be seen.

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