I am writing this daily blog about mine and my family’s homelessness as a means of processing my emotions about it and learning the lessons from the experience. And if I help someone along the way, that will make me very happy.
Over the past few days, I have had some extraordinary dreams and some immense synchronicities. I’m talking synchronicities that you cannot explain in any way other than a form of divine intervention. Let me start with the major one yesterday that blew me away.
My next book has a working title of ‘Ambridge’ which is the name of the fictional market town I am writing about. In my head, this place is in a Cotswolds-esque area. By Cotswolds-esque, I mean rolling hills and greenery not necessarily the distinctive stone buildings. I also mean heritage, affluence, and tourism. It isn’t anywhere specific in my writing because it’s fictional, but I have an image in my head. I came up with the name because as I was thinking about it, I kept hearing Abridge in my head, a place in Essex that I have always liked. But, I wanted to keep it fictional, so I added an ‘m’. I know, not especially original. So, colour me surprised when I saw a photo yesterday on one of the heritage Facebook pages I follow, of a market town in Somerset called Axbridge. It looked eerily similar to the Ambridge that lives in my head. I told a friend about this who then told me when she visits Glastonbury, she always stays in…Axbridge. A place I had no idea even existed started to take on a real meaning for me. I’ve felt a pull to Glastonbury for quite some time, at the start of this year I kept on seeing the festival in my mind’s eye. I’ve been to Glastonbury festival once, and that was enough for me – I’m not someone who enjoys camping or crowds or a lack of facilities so festivals are not my idea of fun. And I couldn’t afford to go VIP at the time. But I’ve never been to Glastonbury itself.
I love the South West, and nearly moved to Bath almost 20 years ago for a job. That’s probably why I have based my book notionally on the South West. It’s somewhere I have toyed with the idea of moving to many times. I have also become really fascinated by the idea of walking the St Michael’s Sword pilgrimage route which goes from Mount St Michael in Cornwall to Haifa in Israel, following locations where there were sightings of the Archangel Michael who instructed them to build a place of worship. I am equally fascinated by the ley line that runs from Mount St Michael up to Norfolk, through Glastonbury and up via Cambridge and Bury St Edmunds. It feels to me like a link between the ley line and the Holy Land, and I was inspired a couple of months ago to really immerse myself into this route and the story behind it. As I was journaling about these synchronicities yesterday, I got the strong sense that this has something to do with my new book, a part of the story I need to weave in. It felt like I was coming full circle and the wondering I’d had at the importance of this inspiration had made itself clear finally.
The dreams I have had have been all about releasing the past. Over the course of the past four nights, I’ve had extremely vivid dreams about a single particular issue each night for releasing it. The first night, I dreamt first of all that I was at a party with my ancestors. It was a beautiful party, on a lovely lawn where we were celebrating something and I was told it was that my work had released ancestral karma. I’ve not necessarily believed in ancestral karma before, but it was made very clear to me that that was what the party was about. Bizarrely I had this sense of knowing that I had been a bridesmaid for my grandparents at their 1944 wedding (I’m not sure she had any, all her wartime clothes coupons went on her dress) and she gave me a gift for being a bridesmaid. It was lovely. The same night, I dreamt about my son’s old school and some of the people associated with it as though I was connected to it, but not. Coming away from the school has been much harder for me to deal with than it has been for my son. There was a sense about being a part of the community there that I had enjoyed, but it was not the right place for my son in terms of his education. He made some great friendships there, and he is maintaining them through today’s technology which is brilliant. But for me, there has been a residual grief almost, connected really to my sense of pride that he attended a prestigious school.
The next night I dreamt about our old house, though as in the way of dreams of course it wasn’t our old house. In the dream, my beloved late dog Lady was scampering around the front lawn and I had my darling Oakley with me. But I got a strong sense of Tess of the d’Urbervilles about the whole vibe with the countryside which wasn’t the same countryside our old home had been set in. As I walked the dog, with my son as well, I entered an area that I just loved. It was full of historic buildings and as I entered one, my mum was there working as a volunteer (not something she would do). As we walked out of the shop, it began to rain and while my mum and Henry both had a raincoat with a hood, I didn’t and got wet. But I didn’t care because I just loved the place, and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it and wanting to be there ever since.
The following night, I dreamt that I was in a meeting where I was leading a discussion about an economic development strategy to extract the benefit of a major project in the area. In my dream, I went through all the major aspects of such a strategy as I would have done regularly in my previous work. I was standing in a lovely office that I had (obviously) never been in before. The work I was doing felt easy, that I was operating on autopilot yet I was still checking with a politician I used to work with for approval. I’m not saying I wasn’t interested in what I was doing, there was a sense of being able to help people to maximise the benefits of a major project, that we were able to give back to the local area. And in some ways it was fulfilling, but it wasn’t challenging me. It wasn’t inspiring me. I also dreamt that I was going out for the evening and was feeling entirely self-conscious about doing so because of my appearance.
I wondered why I was having such dreams while I was still asleep, what it was all about. I got the answer – it was about releasing my past. The first dream was representing my pride which was associated with the school I had sent my son to, and not the good sort of pride. The kind of pride that pushed me to keep up with the Jones’s and helped me financially ruin myself. And I needed to release that. The second dream was about releasing fear because the dream had been associated with a lot of the fears I had, the anxieties it had caused all focused on my old house. The third dream was about releasing limiting beliefs and self-doubt. Basically, they were about letting my past go entirely and move into the new ‘me’.
Finally, last night I had a dream again about our old house. In the dream, we were told we could move back in. I was excited because it was familiar and we would be surrounded by all our ‘stuff’. Then I heard the message that I was at a crossroads in my life – I could choose to go back to the past and everything I knew, back to my old life in effect; or, I could choose to take the leap and walk into my new life, the new me, the one who has left everything attached to the past behind and is having a brand new start. It was my choice which way I went. And I chose the new life, so in my dream I imagined wrapping the house and everything in it up in a large cloth, tied a knot on it and threw it away. Over.
So, in the spirit of a new life, I have decided to stop writing a blog about homelessness. Despite it being my current reality, it is attached to my past and that is now dead and gone. I have released my past and let it all go. Instead, I am going to write a blog about my future, about my goals and achieving them. Because I have learned the lessons from the past, I have released it, and it is time to step into my new life.
Because I am soaring. I am thriving. I am successful. And I am eternally grateful.
Louisa Simpson 