What do you do when sleep betrays you? When the one place where you’re meant to feel the safest is no longer safe? When your mind toys with the fear that you’re living every day inside your own personal hell? I don’t know. Because that is what I have been living, until recently.

They after I returned home from the land in the midnight sun in July of 2024, when the abuse had escalated while I was overseas.

I dreamed that I was in a marketplace…I was gathering items I would need for a journey. Thick sturdy sheepskins and soft supple rabbit pelts…the creamiest sheepskins…the most milky white rabbit pelts. In the marketplace an angry black wolf keeps taking my rabbit pelts..tired of the wolf taking my pelts I manage to pull the last one from his teeth as he snarls and growls…eventually I refuse him any more…I gather the rest of my things with a wary eye for the wolf who is always watching me.

Little did I know that the wolf would change into a man after I finally left the house that he stole my safety inside of.

The dreams are always the same…he is chasing me, he is holding me down, he is assaulting me, he is screaming at me. Sometimes I am running. Sometimes I am struggling to break free. Sometimes I am trying to call for help but I can’t. Sometimes I manage to flee but my feet drag. Every time I wake up panicking, heart racing, not knowing where I am for a minute until I get my bearings. I tell myself that it’s not real. Logically I know that I am now safe. That he won’t come here (my new apartment). That it’s not him I hear at the bottom of the stairs when an early delivery is happening downstairs in the cafe below me. That he won’t day come here. But my body doesn’t know that yet. My body still holds all the fear, all the trauma, all the angst of not knowing when his mood would shift and I’d have to pivot to maintain peace.

I know what these dreams are about. I know what purpose they serve. They are a reminder to never lose myself again. To never again ignore the red flags. They remind me of the hardest truth inside of grieving the man whom I thought was my soulmate; that the man he was at the end is the man he truly is. A monster. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. Not Dr Jekyll, rather Mr Hyde himself.

From then until now, autumn has softened into winter. I am skiing. I am embracing life in a new way. I am now able to move forward with new relationships in ways that I am just now embracing in my mid forties.

With the seasons changing has come a shift in my dreams. Sleep begins to feel safer bit by bit. For months the only dreams I remembered were the ones where I was being abused. I am beginning to remember. I am slowly reclaiming myself and my sovereignty as I walk out of the hell that I was in for so long.

Recently a new dream emerged from the depths of my psyche…I am riding on the back of a chestnut brown mare with a black mane. I hear the clopping of her shod hooves as she canters across stones next to a yellow house…I look down to see her back beneath me…I feel her body between my legs as my stirruped feet guide her…my hands gently grip the reins as we move together in the warmth of the summer sun.

I woke from my dream with the rune for horse, Ehwaz, at the forefront of my mind. When I looked up its deeper meaning I read the words trust & partnership. I also had the rune Raido, the journey, at the front of my mind.

I am on a journey of learning to trust again.