What's in a name?

So, dear reader, I realised that I never shared with you how I got my name. Dreaming Aloud, I mean! Like all good names, there's a story to it.

When I started to write a column for JUNO magazine, I needed a name. A name which summed up my way of writing, my fluid prose style, my meandering living philosophy, my desire to ponder... and to inspire.

A few months earlier when I was pregnant with my second child,  I was training with Pam England, founder of Birthing from Within, on one of her rare trips to London. She told a story which stayed with me.

She said that a certain tribe of Native American people used to ask each other "what are you dreaming?" Meaning what is going on in your life, your thoughts, your head. She said that we all take our lives so seriously and believe in the reality of them. But actually we are all just dreaming our dreams. What we think is reality is just our own dream. The reason we often do not see eye to eye with another is that we are each dreaming the meaning of the situation, dreaming our relationship differently. And once we can see that we are dreaming, once we can acknowledge this, then we can begin to awaken ourselves to reality as it is. And we begin to take ourselves a little less seriously, and understand others a little more, when we have the compassion of the dreamer.

We can begin to dream lucidly, to dream bigger and brighter, to dream in technicolour, to change the channel, to choose another dream.

And so Dreaming Aloud was born. A place for dreaming better visions of the world. A place to dream my own dreams out loud. The column has existed in JUNO since Spring 2009 and on line for a year this Saturday.

Dream on!