On the Gentle Art of Nurturing Dreams

Asking powerful questions and making space for exploration

It’s been a challenging couple of weeks for our family. My husband’s mother Lila passed away on Sept 15th, and though she was receiving treatment for a second occurrence of cancer, none of us expected this to happen so suddenly.

Fortunately my husband was able to spend time with her on the 14th and the weekend before she transitioned to the next realm. We briefly celebrated our 6 year wedding anniversary on the 17th but with the wake and funeral on the 18th & 19th, there was a busy blur of family activity.

It’s been nice to realize that my every-other-week writing intention made room for less stress around publishing. If you’re here, I celebrate you and thank you for being part of this somatic wisdom journey. 

During our ceremonies last week I kept marveling at the traditions of the Ojibwe when it comes to honoring death in a very embodied way. Each evening as we gathered by the fire outside to have dinner, we offered food and tobacco in Lila’s honor, helping fuel her journey. In their tradition, the time between death and the final ceremony are an opportunity for the spirit to travel before moving on. 

My husband, his brother, and my brother in law built the cedar casket where she was laid to rest, and my sister and I drove to Duluth to receive the Mocassins that had been crafted with her symbol on them. Misko Binessi, Red Thunderbird.

Hand crafted mocassins for Misko binessi’s final journey

My sister in law worked with a traditional advisor to honor the details that she knew her mother had wanted to observe. Huge shout out to Melissa for honoring her intuition by telling Clem to pack a bag on the 14th in order to see Lila again while he could.

All of this is still tender for us, but I wanted to honor Misko Binessi, or Lila’s spirit here by thanking her for all our shared conversations, about everything from politics to our favorite books. From the time we first met, I felt a kinship with her that surprised me.

We didn’t agree on everything, but I deeply admired her commitment to helping children and families during her career as a social worker and professor. In fact, the recent Supreme Court decision on the Indian Child Welfare Act back in June of this year cited a published paper that she had authored, related to her research. 

So much gratitude also for raising Clem, one of the most honorable and hard-working men I know. Both of Lila’s sisters, Linda, and Lani, told me to take good care of Clem. I promise to do my best. He’s taken such wonderful care of me in recent years in the 13 years since we met.

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The main topic for this essay arose while I offered practice coaching sessions for training with CTI, the Co-Active training institute. Huge thanks to Sarah Young of Zing Collaborative, where I work as an associate coach, for encouraging me and providing shared funding to continue to up-level my coaching. 

During training, we had many opportunities to practice with our cohort. We were also asked to find a practice client, so we could continue to use the skills outside the classroom. Despite a few initial challenges, and one prospect that fell through, I had four clients within a span of 2 days who agreed to practice with me. 

It was amazing how much easier it was to coach with the Co-Active framework in mind. Deep listening is always beneficial to anyone in our lives, of course. 

But one question helped me “see through” the limiting beliefs (that we all have, but that coaches are especially tuned to see). 

“What is your dream around this?” 

Just watch someone’s demeanor and body language change when they get to talk about this question. 

Maybe someone is looking for a new job or career. The practical aspects of this question often get us to look (quite logically) into next steps based on their CV and experience.

That can be a good thing. But sometimes we need to get to the heart of our dream, in order to have a compass for where we want to go next. Yet some of us find that our dreaming capacity can be somewhat limited if we have gone through a hard time or sense we need a bigger change than just the next logical step.

When we are young, people often ask about our dreams:

What do we want to do with our limited and precious lives? 

As we get older, this happens less often. Pathways close off that we thought were open to us when we had our whole life ahead of us. Or it seems that they do. Melani Dizon of an accidental sabbatical has a beautiful piece on this that I encourage you to read. Her brilliant Substack is speaking to me these days.

When I ask “What is your dream around this topic?” to my practice clients, it elicits a longer pause than for most questions. 

When I’ve been asked this question, depending on how much I trust a person, I may or may not confess my dreams.

I have wanted to write since I was about eight. I love books, though I wasn’t certain if I could write them.

In high school I attended a summer writing camp at Carleton College. And during the summer after my sophomore year, I earned the college writing requirement during that month-long experience. 

Then something happened. 

I confessed this dream to someone who was not kind.

I can’t even remember who it was now, probably a high school friend but it seems like it was an adult. They told me writing was good. I should write, but I should have a day job too, because you can’t make money that way.

They were wrong, of course, but it stuck in my head. You can’t make enough money writing to live on. 

Is that true? Well, actually no. I’ve now met authors, journalists, and others making money through writing that love what they do.

Do all of them make 100% of their money through writing? 

No. Many of them have portfolios of activities: writing, editing, teaching, coaching, speaking, to name a few of the typical side-practices.

I have shelves full of books. And I know from my research about self-publishing that it often takes about 20 books to make 50k a year at writing. But that’s a general guideline and it’s not true for everyone. 

Actually when I learned that stat, I felt strangely encouraged. I don’t know if I’ll write 20 books in my lifetime. But it didn’t take me that long to write my first one in 2021, shorter than the time it took me to write a 40-page master’s thesis! 

Pile of journals from 2013-2016. Writing = oxygen for my busy brain.

Now, confessing our dreams to a stranger?

In some ways, telling your dream to someone you don’t know very well is easier than telling your friends. So many people seem to want to save you from yourself, by making your dreams smaller.

As a coach, and someone who advocates moving in the direction of our dreams, I must tell you: it is a deep honor when someone is vulnerable enough to tell you what they dream about doing. 

Dreams can be fragile in their early stages, susceptible to easy breakage by people who feel frustrated that they didn’t pursue their own. When you share your dreams, find someone who can see that spark in you, and gently fan it into bigger flames. 

I’m still deeply grateful to Stephanie Lindloff who you heard from in season 2 of somatic wisdom. When I told her my dream of writing, she didn’t laugh. She asked how I could do more of it. And she gave me a generative question to sit with: How is it that my writing that brings me such joy also brings me such financial abundance? 

And there are many ways it has come about, in the ways I’ve attracted new clients, who read something I wrote and felt inspired. Or in the podcast episodes I’ve written that have gotten people to reach out to me to learn more or have an engaging conversation about a topic of mutual interest. 

Often the dreams that really light us up aren’t things we can achieve in a month, a year, or even a decade. The juiciest ones may take us 15-25 years to learn the skills we need to make a significant contribution. 

These are the dreams buried deep in our hearts, the ones that motivate us to skip the t.v. watching ones in a while so we can create. Or the ones that we journal about but won’t tell our spouses. 

These are the dreams that need our attention. The ones that we aren’t terribly confident we can achieve, but they make us nervously excited? 

Those especially! 

Maybe not every dream is realistic. Your inner voices will tell you that. 

“Be realistic!” my inner drill sergeant likes to tell me. “People can’t just go around doing what they love. That would be irresponsible!”

Oh yeah? 

My higher self imagines a world where more people could do work they love, work that lights them up. Maybe for 25-30 hours a week, to give them time for friends, family, community, and hobbies. 

I truly believe that when we do work that lights us up, the whole world benefits.

Yeah, yeah, I can hear you saying. What if my art doesn’t pay enough to keep a roof over my head? What if I can’t sell enough of what I love to do to pay the rent? 

You’re right. Capitalism is a greedy bastard. And we are in a period of transformation where structural inequalities make goals and dreams not equally accessible to everyone. (Check out the podcast with Dana Miranda of Health Rich if you want more on that.)

This is why coaching is so necessary at this time. Our dreams are fragile beings, like tiny birds in the nest, not yet able to fly. They needing sufficient nourishment to grow up to be healthy and strong. 

Having someone to hold these dreams gently, to provide warmth and love to them with you is an act of service. Often in the process of pursuing these dreams, we will face disappointment and set backs. This can test our faith that we still want to go in this direction. Celebrating your small wins is a must. 

Even if you don’t work with a coach, please find a friend, mentor, or friendtor (thank you again Jenny Blake for that term) who can gently hold those dreams and intentions with you. Someone who provides oxygen when these dreams sometimes flicker and risk getting doused with the negativity of the cynics of the world. 

Dear cynics, we love you too.

We are sorry that you’ve given up on your dreams. It’s unfortunate that you may have been surrounded by people who tried to suffocate them. It’s not too late to find a champion to support your work too.

But we aren’t going to take advice or feedback from you anymore. It’s time to nurture communities of people who build others’ up rather than tearing them down. 

For the love of all that is good and pure in this world, even if you have a secret dream you’re not willing to share with many people, find at least one confidante that can hold this dream with you. Maybe someone else who also has a vulnerable dream, a person who can help you hold a vision that may be clear or cloudy.

Or if you’re in a coaching relationship with someone who cannot give you the space to explore this space, please find someone different. The majority of people do not have the skill to gently hold this dream with you, to allow it to emerge, step by step, and the confidence in you to make it real.

To those coaches out there who are holding dreams with their clients, thank you for the service you provide. Thank you for being a beacon and a person who can advocate for the dreams and goals your clients vulnerably share with you.

Many thanks to the cohort of people I had the privilege to learn with at CTI and to Anne Grete and Janneke and all the course assistants and volunteers, deep gratitude also. You inspire me to keep learning, practicing, and up-leveling my skills, so I can nurture even more dreams in my clients.

The Somatic Wisdom podcast was a dream I had in 2018, after posting for 356 days one year on my blog, prior to leaving a leadership role in the medical device industry.

Grateful that the dream became real in 2022 when I joined Jenny Blake’s BFF group and connected with others who could hold this dream with me. I couldn’t have continued for 68 episodes in these 15 months without you. 

Be well, everyone.