The first step is learning to listen to and acknowledge the information you’re receiving each night. One of the best ways to begin is to make some notes first thing each morning about anything you recall from your dreams of the previous night, even if it’s only a person, a place, a word, an image, a feeling, whatever it may be. Over time, you’ll come to remember more information and more details, which will in turn give you more material to explore.

Patience is important, as is a willingness to allow yourself to be confused and mystified when you receive information that doesn’t make sense immediately (or sometimes ever). Dream language is largely symbolic and metaphorical, with layers of multiple meaning that express and expose your inner mythology, some of which is personal and unique to you, and some of which is shared and ancient. Your dreams will often seem strange and impenetrable, but in my experience, the effort to build a collaborative relationship with that part of yourself, the “dream-maker”, is well worth it.

I don’t have a warm hug and loving words substitute from my father or mother. But I remember with my maternal grandmother, it was a stick of Juicy Fruit gum.

Today is Father’s Day. I chose this piece for the June Carnival because it expresses and illustrates the tender, tentative beginnings of a fragile rapprochement between a father who’s been abusive and the son he abused, now grown to be a man. There is bravery and vulnerability on both sides, but the distance between the two remains great, and the gap may never be closed. It is, after all, just one step in the direction of healing … a significant step, but only one. Will they continue in that direction? The dream leaves the question open. It would be nearly twenty more years before I finally knew the answer.