Pregnancy dreams - part 4

As before, I don't feel it's fair to leave you all in my unconscious without a line back to reality. So for all of you - and especially for my own mother who will be worried that I am losing my mind - here's why my most recent pregnancy dream is so cool. 

The theme of 4 and the symbol of the house

Jung writes about things that come in 4's in dreams.  His case studies discuss people, corners, objects that appear in 4's.  He wrote about a dreamer who had a dream of four people that I found most helpful. In the dream, the dreamer had 2 other people he felt comfortable with and the fourth, a woman who was more unsettling.  Jung wrote that the woman represented the 'anima' - an archetypal representation of the primal part of ourselves. Often denied, repressed, dismissed, sublimated.     

My dream house has been a recurring symbol and I have been trying to find my place among the four floors.  In this dream I finally get a glimpse into the fourth level and all it's frightening terror.  This seems like the realm of the unknown, the things I have put away for my own safety and sanity - my anima.  It only wants my attention, but I flee, all the way past the comfortable level down to a dark basement.  Here the scene is too childlike to feel at home and I land back in an adult role, albeit an uncomfortable one. 

Being pregnant and staring down the prospect of parenthood is certainly a time that is liable to bring up the deepest fears.  And within that are parts of me that were unexplored, like the rooms of the upper floors.  There are also parts of me that are childlike that no longer suit my life. They offer solace from the terror of confronting my new role and myself head-on but I can no longer play by the rules of being a child.

The frightening woman and the old woman

The frightening woman of the 4th floor embodies the qualities of an anima archetype, like those Jung wrote about.   But what about the old woman following me, pinning me in to a place where I meet the frightening woman?  

There is an unavoidable intersection between the life I knew and the unstoppable mysterious yet natural thing happening to me.  Being pregnant is unknown territory for me, yet my body knows what to do.  I feel like an instinctual being of nature, that is as long as I can set aside the modern comforts of the information age.  Google is not a pregnant lady's friend, it is the breeding ground of my anxiety.  

The old lady following me feels very different from the anima woman of the 4th floor, yet something I desire to avoid all the same.  She is following behind me, hemming me in like the demands of the world and society that don't allow me to be totally the anima woman and all her wild, untamable nature.  I will after all have to be responsible. Find a way to raise these two while keeping a hold on the rest of my life, my friends, my career, my husband.  And somehow struggle with being an acceptable mother to myself and others.  It isn't all just being part of nature and able to create a life that will make me a mother.

The family where I don't belong

All this confronting and escaping my emerging new role is necessary.  I come from a family but it will no longer be one where I completely belong.  I will carve out my own way and take responsibility for my own family.  It will mean seeing myself in a different way.  No kidding, but I have considered this when looking at my own belly button in the shower.  I was once that little person connected to another through and umbilical cord.  The scar of it remains.  And now I am the one with a little person (or persons) attached to me.  I am used to the role of 'daughter' and as terrifying as it is to take on a new role, the old one won't work and won't be satisfying either.  For all the fear and uncertainty ahead, it is preferable to remaining where I no longer belong. 

Just some of my thoughts.  If you still think I'm going mad, that is also a distinct possibility.  Blame the hormones and give me the grace to see if I snap out of it before calling in the straight jackets, please.

Pregnancy dreams: part 3

Update on my active dream world.  If you dare take a peek into my unconscious, feel free.  Again, any interpretations welcome.

I have a recurring dream theme.  It's a house with 4 stories.  It is old.  In the dreams, I live in the house but I reside mainly on the lower floors.  In the previous dreams, this was because these were the only floors I owned,  or in other dreams because the other areas of the house were being used for something else.

In the latest house dream, I am aware that there is something on the fourth floor that I don't want to see.  Something terrifying.  I am somehow aware that the fourth floor is small and contains only a small bed and a window.

In this house dream, I am on the ground floor and there is an old woman pottering around.  I want to avoid her and begin to climb the stairs.  I intend to hide in the toilet of the second floor, but she is quicker on my heels than I expect and opt instead to try to out-rush her to toilets that are on the 3rd floor.  I rush into a antiquated bathroom, decorated with frilly pink and lock myself in a cubicle.  It's a large cubicle with a toilet but also antique wall lighting, a chair, pink carpet, a basin and generally a lot of room.  The old woman is just behind me, but I manage to evade her.

I try to turn on the wall lights, but they don't work.  I suddenly become aware that the ceiling of the third floor is not complete and opens to the fourth floor.  I look above me and see a terrifying looking woman glaring back at me.  She descends into the cubicle with me.  I threaten her to stay away,  but she threatens me right back and shows a small blade.  She doesn't attack me but demands that I listen.

All at once, I am flying down the stairs, using the hand rails to slide and jumping from floor to floor.  I find myself in a basement that I didn't know what there.  There is a little girl and then it seems that I am the little girl.  She is playing with a doll's house and there is a man there with her.  He seems like a father or uncle.  The basement is dimly lit.  He states that she normally plays with the doll's house in a certain way, but she turns to him and says that she will do it differently now.

Suddenly I am in a lounge on the ground floor.  A man who is my husband (but does not look like Thom) is reading to our child on the sofa.  I am standing, looking at a stained glass window that contains the images of the people of the house, depicted against red glass.  The face of the man and the child are there but the face of the woman is not me.  It is someone who was in my place before.  I stamp my feet to demand that she leave the house.

And then I wake up.