Amy Newmark's Blog - Posts Tagged "dreams"

We are so excited about our new book, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Listen to Your Dreams. This is the third book we have done on dreams and their power to help you improve your life. Because here is what happens. During the day you're busy and distracted and you can't focus on your innermost thoughts and knowledge. But at night, while you are sleeping, your subconscious can get your attention, and say, "hey, here's what you need to think about or process or decide."

Here are previews of two of my favorite stories from the book that show ways you can use your dreams for personal transformation. Enjoy!

Dreams can give you courage.
In Rebecca Radicchi's story "Turned Messenger" she had a recurrent dream in which a tidal wave was roaring straight at her and she stood there frozen, watching it approach. Finally, after years of this nightmare, Rebecca decided to analyze it. She realized something very important: “Those colossal waves had never actually overtaken me. Not once.” Rebecca understood that no matter what kind of awfulness came at her, she would prevail.

She says, “From then on, I viewed those walls of water as a gift. They reminded me to balance out my feelings with facts. They encouraged me to deal with challenges by facing them. And they reassured me that no matter what comes, I’ll never be overcome.”

Dreams can save your life.
Have you ever had a premonition that something bad was about to happen? Perhaps you changed your day to avoid that bad event, or you warned someone else. In Marya Morin's story "Hush" she had so many dreams and premonitions that came true that her parents warned her not to tell anyone. Her story concerns her discovery of her gift as a young child, and her later reluctance to tell the man she was dating about it, until they were about to have a tire blow out on a mountain road. She screamed at her date to stop moments before their front tire exploded.

As they sat in the car on the shoulder of that treacherous road, trembling, she confessed that she had dreamed the night before about the tire and the ravine they would plunge into. Marya says that unlike her parents, “He expressed no fear or distaste—only relief for saving our lives and sympathy for the many omens I’d never disclosed to anyone.” They’ve been married for decades now.


Amy Newmark

I don’t know if you’ve been having more intense dreams during this pandemic, but I know I have. Every night is an adventure. I may be trying to stay home during my waking life, but in my dreams I’m all over the place.

We were lucky enough to have time to include some stories about pandemic dreams in our new collection, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Listen to Your Dreams. And you know how we always say that your dreams can reveal your truths to you? Those truths you are too busy to pay attention to during the day when you’re distracted and you can’t listen to your subconscious? Well, take that situation and compound it by the intensity of pandemic dreams and you get some pretty powerful dream guidance.

Here are previews of two of my favorite pandemic dream stories about how you can use your dreams for personal transformation:

Dreams can reunite you with your past.
During the COVID-19 lockdown in Germany, Sergio del Bianco found that he was dreaming of people he hadn’t seen in years. In his story "Just in Time" Sergio had repeated dreams about a woman named Gwen who had been kind to him at a part-time job he held in college many decades ago. He became fixated on finding her, figuring she must be in her nineties by now.

After a prolonged Google and Facebook search, he found Gwen’s daughter, who arranged a phone call for him. Sergio found himself crying tears of joy as he talked to Gwen and told her how much she had meant to him. A few days after that phone call, Gwen’s daughter called to say that her mother had quietly passed away in her sleep, and that it seemed like she had hung on just long enough to hear from Sergio.

Dreams can change your behavior.
In the story "What They'll Remember" Holly Rutchik found herself dreaming a lot during the COVID-19 lockdown. In fact, her stress dreams about the coronavirus came so early that she and her husband voluntarily self-quarantined with their five children days before their schools shut down. Holly kept dreaming that she was looking in the bathroom mirror, but the woman looking back at her was an “other me,” a slightly different version of Holly. This mirror person kept telling Holly one word: “Remember.” Holly kept noting the dreams in her journal, writing, “Remember WHAT?” She was frustrated by the dream, and by the new reality in her household as well, one in which she was trying to manage her five children’s education and her full-time job, all remotely. Her husband was frustrated, too, and they were both snapping at the children.

That’s when her husband, who didn’t know about her recurrent dream, said, “In these moments, I need to remember how trivial the things that upset me really are.” And with that, Holly knew what to do. She was making memories for her children, and she would remember that every day going forward, and also try to make this unusual time in their childhoods a good memory, with dessert every night and parents who were open to having a little fun along the way.



Amy Newmark