Tag: Grief

Dream Diaries

🌍The World Ended, and I Survived

TeaLeave a comment

Last night, my subconscious handed me the kind of dream you wake from in tears—the kind that isn’t just a dream, but a reckoning. I’m still holding pieces of it in my chest, so I’m writing it down before it slips through the cracks. I think it wants to be remembered.

It began with the end of the world.
Something had struck the Earth—an impact so massive it fractured the surface and awakened creatures from beneath. These weren’t metaphors pretending to be monsters—they were towering humanoid beings who plucked humans from the earth like weeds and devoured them. It felt like the future, but everyone I knew was their current age. Myself included.

Oddly, there wasn’t much on the Earth’s surface anymore—just vast tunnel systems carved into the ground like ant colonies. These subterranean mazes became the last refuge of humanity. But the giants? They had no trouble pulling apart the walls of our safe havens to reach in and feast.

Dustin (my boyfriend) was there. He told me I wasn’t taking it seriously enough, that we needed to move deeper underground. Before descending, we dropped our car keys into mounted tackle-box-like containers near empty parking lots—communal stashes for anyone who survived. A last act of sacrifice for strangers we’d never meet.

We went down.

The tunnels were strange and alive. Elevators opened at intervals to reveal chaotic scenes—people drunk, stripped of inhibition, clinging to pleasure in the face of doom. Dustin grabbed some alcohol and offered me a can. I declined.

“I don’t drink anymore,” I said. “I don’t want to numb myself.”

We kept going. Ross, one of Dustin’s friends, met us there, dragging a wagon full of booze. Then my girls arrived—light in the middle of darkness. They ran to me joyfully and wrapped me in hugs. I asked how they were. They said they were just fine and weren’t scared. They were going with their dad somewhere. They had each other.

They offered me their birthday money “in case I survived.” And just like that, my heart caved in. They didn’t know money wouldn’t mean much anymore, but they knew they loved me and that they wanted me to be taken care of if I lived. They seemed to fully understand that it was unlikely that any of us would live, and yet, they were mature, balanced, and light hearted. In that moment I was aware that I had never felt so simultaneously proud and devastated. I kissed their heads and watched them run off, small beams of light glowing in the dark. I held on to the moment, gazing down the corridor they ran down long after they disappeared around the corner.

Then—time skipped, or perhaps I just forgot what happened in between.

The event had already happened. Earth had been hit again. We had survived.

I tore off desperately navigating through rubble and ruin to the place where the girls said they’d be. The tunnels were collapsed. Everything was eerily quiet. Nothing was left but dust and ruin. I was panicked, but still held a thread of hope.

I stood in the place they should have been, but it seemed impossible that anyone could survive the scene I took in. I didn’t even know where to begin, but I was fully prepared to dig through the rubble with my bare hands until I found them. I got on my knees and began digging. I had barely begun when I heard a voice. A narrator. Calm, cruel, and kind all at once:

“Aliza was badly wounded from the first impact, but had not told her mother or complained. Both girls were very brave and supported one another. They were afraid but filled with love and died in one another’s arms.”

I was shattered shattered. I crumpled into the fetal position and sobbed.

That’s where he found me—Dustin and Duane, both are my boyfriends’, as one. They were the same person now, morphing in and out of each other. Two sides of the same steady hand. He/they scooped me up like a child and carried me to the surface.

Together, we walked to the key boxes. I didn’t know where we were going—I only knew we had to go.

Dustin/Duane dug through the boxes full of keys while I sat on the curb near the box and whimpered. Something prompted me to look up. I could barely see through my tears and swollen eyes. The box of keys seemed to be glowing in a spotlight, and a flash of yellow between the pole and the box caught my eye. I stood on weak legs and pulled it out.

It was the birthday card my mom sent Aliza. As I opened it, money gracefully floated around my legs and settled at my feet. Hastily scribbled around my mom’s message, the girls had written me a note. I had never seen something as beautiful as their wobbly little misshapen letters and their little names. Their message read:

We love you mom. Yore the best mom in the hole world. We want you to have this and have fun if you live. We hope you live. We hope we get to see you agen.
Love Zarah and Aliza

I sunk to my knees, my children’s money still scattered around me, and sobbed so hard my spirit broke open. I adored every misspelled word. The card I held in my hand was the greatest expression of love I had every received. I no longer had any possessions, but even if I did, this card would remain my most cherished.

Questions raced through my mind. How did they do it? How did they know where Dustin/Duane and I had parked the car and stashed our keys? Did they do it after they had offered me the money and I refused? Did they return to the surface after that? If so, did they get caught to close to the surface? Was that the reason they died? Clearly, they left it here with complete faith that if I lived I would find it. Again, I was gripped with deep pride and suffocating grief.

Once again I was absolutely inconsolable, so Dustin/Duane scooped me up and put me in the passenger seat of whatever vehicle they had managed to secure. They began driving. As we drove my perspective suddenly changed. I saw myself then, from Dustin/Duane’s eyes. I could feel their helplessness, their heartbreak, their quiet desperation to comfort me.

And then I woke up.

💛 Dream Afterword: Surviving the Unspeakable

This didn’t feel like a dream. It felt like being stripped down to my core. This dream excavated the deepest caverns of my soul. I experienced a level of rawness I can’t face in the daylight, so my subconscious dressed it up in monsters, tunnels, and birthday cards.

This dream was about grief, surrender, and unshakable, enduring love. I got up close and personal with what it means to live through devastation and still keep going. About how tightly I hold my children. About how I fear losing them even though I know I can’t control everything. About how much love I still carry from all the versions of myself who were “hit” and had to rebuild from rubble.

The car keys? Letting go of control. Sacrifice.

The tunnels? The inner labyrinth of fear, love, and responsibility.

The giants? My own monsters, awake and hungry.

And my girls? My heart. My light. The innocence and trust I am sometimes too scared to lean into.

That card—bright yellow against the wreckage—was the moment grace reached through the ruins. They were gone, and somehow still with me. They were saying:

“It’s okay to live.
It’s okay to feel joy again.
Honor us by truly living.
We never really left you.”

My children gifted me their innocence, trust, and belief in me and the universe. It was the greatest gift I have ever received. They may have even sacrificed themselves to deliver it. Despite my fierce love, I could not protect them from life’s larger forces. They clearly had no expectation that I or anyone else could save them, and they demonstrated a level of surrender, trust, and love that cracked me wide open.

🌊 Epilogue: Aliza, Alive and Glowing

As I finished writing this entry—still wrapped in the ache of that dream, still wiping tears—Aliza walked into the living room.

She stretched, sleepy-eyed, like nothing in the world had shifted, and said,

“Can I watch Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken?”

And I just sat there.
Heart split. Spirit stunned.

Because of all the movies in the world, she chose one about a girl who discovers she’s part of something deep, ancient, and misunderstood. A girl who has power inside her she doesn’t yet understand. A girl from the sea, learning how to swim in her truth.

It didn’t feel like coincidence.
It felt like confirmation.

That she is here.
That she is okay.
That I can let go of the fear just a little.
That love echoes back to us—sometimes in tentacles and plot twists and animated metaphors.

So, yeah.
I let her watch it.
And I cried through the whole thing.

🐾❤️‍🩹How My Dog Taught Me to Stay With Pain
Inner Alchemy

🐾❤️‍🩹How My Dog Taught Me to Stay With Pain

TeaLeave a comment

Fred: My First Love

I grew up with a black lab mix that was the love of my life. His name was Fred—and he liked me best. He slept with me, followed dutifully by my side, and when I left for college, he became depressed. I missed him dearly.

Fred had epilepsy and had to take several pills every day. I often woke up to him seizing in my bed—his grand mal seizures would move my bed back and forth, bouncing it off the wall. It was hard to see him like that. But we all loved him deeply. He taught me what love without conditions looks like.

✨ Enzo Found Me

Just after I accepted my job as a teacher, I began talking to my now ex-husband about getting a dog. I wanted a black lab like Fred, and I wanted to name him Enzo. I had no idea where that name came from—it just arrived, like a whisper. Maybe it was the “ends in O” theme since our cats were named Pedro and Diego. Maybe it was divine channeling before I had any idea what that was.

My husband didn’t grow up with many pets and wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but he agreed. I got to work looking for puppies and quickly found an organization in Minnesota that housed pets with temporary adoptive families before finding them permanent homes.

On New Year’s Day, I drove two hours to meet a litter of eight mixed-breed puppies that looked like black labs. One of them was already named Enzo—but I didn’t assume he was “the one.” I trusted the right dog would choose me.

As I watched the puppies, not knowing which was Enzo, I noticed one that calmly played alone while the rest wrestled and tumbled around him. The others kept trying to engage him—biting his ears and tail, stealing his toys—but he just wandered off and found something else to quietly enjoy. I asked about him, and sure enough, that was Enzo.

The temporary owner admitted that if he wasn’t adopted soon, she was planning to keep him. She told me that all the puppies had been abandoned in a box on the side of the road on Christmas Day. They were sick with kennel cough and recovering. I asked about his breed and got the run-around. I assumed he was part bully breed, but I didn’t care. I wanted him.

I adopted him on the spot.

🌀 The Wild Years

For the first two weeks, he mostly slept and coughed. He was very sick. But once he was well… he was a bit of a terror.

He was impossible to walk on a leash. If someone came over, he’d get so excited he’d pee all over himself—and them. We tried to socialize him, but we weren’t great at dog training. He was intense. Insecure. Reactive. A full-blown lunatic around some other dogs. Embarrassing, honestly.

A trainer once told us he was dangerous and we shouldn’t keep him. I was heartbroken. We tried everything—harnesses, muzzles, the gentle leader, prong collars, treat bribes. Nothing worked. And I hated the idea of hurting him. That wasn’t the relationship I wanted. I loved him, even when I didn’t understand him.

He hurt me often—not on purpose. He’d bolt after a squirrel or bird and yank me so hard I’d fall face-first into a neighbor’s yard. It happened while I was pregnant more than once. Eventually, I had to stop walking him for my own safety.

Still, I loved him. I did my best. He mellowed out as he aged. He was always kind—just excitable in unpredictable ways. We didn’t kennel him during the day, but we worked a lot. He spent too many hours alone, and I know that was hard for him. He just wanted to be part of our world. Always.

🕯️ Letting Go Differently This Time

When we moved into our new house in November 2023, Enzo was 12. His energy declined. He was losing weight. By spring, I knew in my gut he had cancer. He stopped finishing his food, and that was the clearest sign—he was always food-motivated.

At first, I resolved not to intervene. I felt in my soul that he wouldn’t want me to.

But then I panicked. What if it was treatable? I took him in. The labs confirmed what I feared—his body wasn’t making new blood cells. Blood cancer. Again, I resolved to let him go in his own time, in his own way—at home, not in a cold exam room.

That’s not how I’d handled Pedro and Diego.

🐈 Pedro & Diego

Diego had wasted away to a skeleton. I drove him to the vet alone. Just before we walked in, he shakily climbed onto my lap, then up my chest, putting a paw on each side of my neck—like a hug. Like he was comforting me.
Fifteen minutes later, I was driving home with my dead friend in a box.

Pedro stopped eating. Stopped grooming. The vet examined him, used a light to look down his throat, and I watched the vet’s energy change. I watched his heart break on my behalf. I didn’t need him to tell me Pedro was dying- I felt it at that exact moment. His eyes connected with mine and I asked, “how long does he have?” “Two weeks at most,” he said. “He has a rare and aggressive cancer. He isn’t eating or grooming because he has tumors growing in his throat. Soon they will be visible in his mouth and he won’t be able to shut his mouth.”

Pedro lived for three weeks. He withered. I cleaned him, cuddled him with my breath held- he smelled of rot. He could barely open or close his mouth. I piled soft food into tall skinny mountains so he could take one small bite from the top, then I would pile it up again. I did this for hours, desperately trying to extend his life. He was in terrible pain but resisted pain meds.
One morning I woke to blood splattered across my bedroom. It looked like a crime scene with Pedro sitting in the middle of the mess soaked in his own blood.
That was the last straw.
We put him down that day.

I’ve questioned myself ever since. Did I euthanize them because I couldn’t handle my discomfort watching them suffer? Did I rob them of a natural death surrounded by love, in favor of what was easier for me?

I didn’t want that for Enzo. But letting him die on his own terms nearly broke me.

⏳ 11:11

As Enzo declined, we gave him pain meds and appetite stimulants to prolong what time we had. Then, the stimulant ran out. Every vet in town was either out or refused to prescribe it. When I finally found more, it was too late. He refused to take it.

I prayed endlessly. Drew tarot cards. Begged the universe for clarity.

And I had a strong, unshakable feeling:
He would have a seizure—and then die.

The night he passed, I went to bed with a heavy heart. I was still wrestling with the idea of euthanasia. Was it more or less cruel than allowing him to slowly starve to death? I didn’t want him to suffer, and I didn’t want to rob him of a natural death at home with the people who love him. It was an impossible choice.

Around 11 p.m., I woke to a familiar sound overhead. Years of Fred’s seizures had prepared me for this and I would know that sound anywhere.

I leapt out of bed and bounded up the stairs two at a time. I passed the clock in the dining room on the way to the living room where I left him.
The clock read 11:11. Alignment. Divine timing.

I raced to Enzo. Pet his head. Whispered in his ear that I loved him. That it would be okay. His frail body convulsed. He exhaled one final time. I felt his heart beating steady in his frail chest long after he stopped breathing. My heart was beating so hard it was hard that for a moment I got lost in the sensation of both of our hearts beating.

The room filled with the scent of feces as his body let go.

I prayed over him before walking, slowly, back downstairs.

As I entered the bedroom Dustin said, “Baby?” “Enzo is dead,” I said, flatly.

He and Duane sprang from bed, disbelieving. We held each other and walked upstairs together. Stared at his body in shock. We wrapped him in a green bath towel and buried him behind the shed. We prayed over him. Sat at the kitchen table, stunned, and talked about him for an hour.

💔 What He Taught Me

Enzo taught me that love doesn’t have to be easy to be everything.

That devotion can look chaotic. Imperfect. Embarrassing.
That sometimes, the ones who are hardest to hold are the ones who need holding most.
That I don’t have to fix pain—I just have to stay with it.

He taught me to let go when it’s time, and to trust timing I can’t understand in the moment.

He taught me to appreciate EVERYTHING, even the things that irritate me.
He died starving. And the irony of that didn’t escape me.
My boy, who used to steal entire loaves of bread off the counter and gobble them down like a gremlin in the night. Who would beg so relentlessly it bordered on harassment. Who’d dig through backpacks and knock over the trash can at the slightest whiff of food.
It drove me crazy! It made me MAD.
But near the end, I would have traded anything to clean up the mess of a tipped over trash can.
The things that used to frustrate me became the things I missed most.
Funny how grief makes a sacred altar out of everything we once took for granted.

He didn’t die in a sterile room.
He died at home.
At 11:11.
Surrounded by love.
And I stayed.

I didn’t get everything “right.”
But I loved him the whole way through.
And maybe—just maybe—that was enough.