My dream catchers years ago~

My mother took me to a craft store over twenty years ago. I noticed a dream catcher kit while I stood around waiting for my mom to purchase yarn. I had always wanted one, and now I have the opportunity to make my own. Yippee. I took the kit home and fumbled through the first one. “Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree is what I made,” I said to myself. Weaving the web was the hardest part of making the catcher. No matter how many times I looked at the instructions and attempted to follow them, it was an exercise in frustration. It took a bit, but I eventually turned out a half decent catcher. I may have varied the decorations around the outside but always kept to the use of metal frames, suede twine to wrap the frames, and waxed linen thread for the webbing. The pattern I used for the webbing was the one from the instructions in the first kit. I never changed the pattern at all. The dream catchers I did make during this time resonated with me on a number of levels. The dream catcher became my symbol for the life I hoped to be living, and a way to give back to others. I made a number of catchers as fund raisers for a hospital transplant center at one time and another to raise money for the families of victims of September, 11, 2001.

Becoming a human tsunami~

Weaving those early catchers was the start of understanding how things were interconnected with each other. I began to look at the patterns in my life and how one life experience was directly linked to another. Synchronicity was a normal part of my life. It even appeared at times when living a so-called normal life was the oddity for me.

Life, if I compare it with a river, does not always follow what one thinks its course should be. I will put it bluntly; I did not make the right decision when I decided to become a human tsunami and reinvent my life in the space of a short six month period. In that six month period, I asked my first husband for a divorce, moved away from my hometown and met my second husband who became the source of nightmares for ten years.

I pushed the river of life in the direction I “thought” was the right course. It was not, and I ended up off course for ten years. After I had finally hit rock bottom and let the river of life move me, instead of forcing my way, things did begin to fall into a natural pattern. It was no longer about me. It was about my life and a great purpose. My ego will not get in the way again.

Fumbling and fun erring~

Healing from the emotional trauma took time. I thought I would be better overnight. That was not the case.   It took time to become a battered wife and now, like it or not it would take time to health emotionally and physically. Even at this point I still pushed to have things happen yesterday. They did not happen that way. I needed a year to regroup myself. It meant living alone for the first time in my life, hours of sitting by the pond and fishing, and re-learning whom I was in the grand course of things.

In that first year, another level of healing began when my mother came back into my life. She urged me to begin making dream catchers again. I was somewhat reluctant to do so, but she kept nagging and I listened to her. The first catcher I made was almost exactly like the kind I had made previously. There was no change in the web weaving process and the materials used. I had a lot of difficulties even focusing on what I was doing at the time. It is was in the making that first catcher I remembered the shamanic journey I took to the middle world. This journey was the one in which I saw the spider web. At this point when I closed my eyes and could almost feel Heron’s beak bumping me rather hard.

“Okay, okay! I get the hint!” I said to the big dorky blue bird in my mind’s eye. Shamanic work is not always serious, even spirit guides have a sense of humor. 

Healing from the outside- inside and inside out~

I began to reflect on the spider web I had seen in the journey, taking in mind, the not so subtle reminder from Heron. The plan for this new web pattern I wanted to duplicate required a new frame. I decided that I was going to use grapevine from the vine right outside my door and no longer use the unnatural metal hoops of my past. When the web I wanted to be placed in the frame was done I did not want to use store bought feathers as a decoration on the frame. I gathered feathers from my own backyard. I made the frame and began to work the new weaving pattern.

It took many days to duplicate the pattern used by the spider. Eventually, I did achieve it. It looked exactly like the weave used by the spider. This new web I created was a lesson in humility to me. Spiders make these webs every day. If their web is destroyed for some reason, a spider creates a new one. If an existing web requires repairs, a spider fixes it. Here, I was struggling to duplicate what they had done effortlessly.

The major difference with this new artistic work I was creating was not only in the new materials, but the mental/spiritual process I utilized during the making of each one. It was no longer about making as many different catchers as I could make. Every catcher was its own work that had a theme and intention behind it.

Each catcher was a prayer to Weykan Tonka (Great Spirit). Each catcher spoke of a different lesson, animal medicine teaching, and shadow work. Some of them were visceral and very dark in their nature. I explored shamanic death and sexuality. This was not a bad thing, however. These themes are a part of human nature and have their place. In shamanic work, all of these parts must be honored and acknowledged.

Life is not always pretty and accepting that is an important part of healing one’s inner self. There needs to be a balance in all things. Life and death, sex and creation, dark and light, this duality is what allows us to make decisions and exercise our free will. We are the sum of all of our parts.

We are also connected to those things of the past. Our ancestors and history culminated in our own creation and birth. I try now to use ritual and catcher making to honor my ancestors and guardian spirits, as well.

 

Working with dream catchers has changed my life by allowing me to find a balance between positive and negative emotions, relating to the world around me, and accepting that change in life is inevitable. But being able to make that change with the right life choices has made all the difference in the world.

 

Changing patterns in order to heal~

Why did changing dream catcher patterns help me? In anyone’s life, we may find ourselves stuck in a rut. My rut was dealing with the voice in my head that I was no good and worthless. I was fat, lazy, and stupid. By forcing myself to learn new patterns, I was manifesting change that was working from the outside to the inside. Each new pattern took days to master. In that time as I was like a little kid learning to ride a bicycle. The change was painful, not easy to master. The day I learned to master it, I felt as if I were flying. I still fell back into the old design at times and mixed up the patterns back and forth, but this is like anything a person does when thinking things through to facilitate the development. It is not easy to think outside the box. Staying with the old is more comfortable.

The explosion of creativity that occurred for me after I mastered the new patterns of weaving resulted in a release and gave birth to new ideas. Once I forced myself to think outside of the box, new thinking patterns emerged because I was outside of my comfort zone and able to reach new ideas and new goals. It made the world around me new, as well. I proved to myself, “yes,” I can. This gave me new self-confidence to try new things and make healthy decisions in the way I want to lead my life going forward.

An added benefit to making dream catchers~

Crafting catchers is a form of art therapy and an exercise in mindfulness. I learned to focus my attention only on making the catcher and nothing else. I was able to filter out all of my head-noise and fully participate in only that one task. The process of making the frame and the weaving inside was the only focus. Create the frame and weave the web. Use intention to direct what I visualized in my mind.

The skill I developed here allowed me to do the same thing with my thoughts and feelings. I focus on the issue and then frame it. After I do this, I look at the possibilities and weave the best one in the new frame. I must remember be flexible enough to change the weave if the frame dictates it.

I will admit the work has an awesome kind of distraction. It kept me from fretting about court dates and other unpleasant things I had to deal with in the aftermath of leaving the situation I had been in previously.

At one time, my Mom and I had a conversation about my catcher making and her knitting. She told me her knitting was her way of being creative and forgetting about things for a bit. She called it her “Zen” time. That is why she nagged me to begin making dream catchers again. Wow, Mom, maybe I should introduce you to this big blue bird I know.

Since dream catchers have had such a profound effect on both my spiritual life and everyday existence, I wanted to learn as much as I could find out about their origins. Over the course of time, I have read many dream catcher origin myths. Here is my favorite. This dream catcher origin myth was passed down through generations by the Lakota Indian tribe.

Dream Catcher ~ Lakota legend

It is said that a great Lakota elder had a vision on the mountain. Iktomi a great trickster and searcher of wisdom came to the leader in the form of a spider. Iktomi took a great circle and began to weave a web within the circle. As he spun a web, he told the Lakota elder that the dream catcher is a symbol of the cycles of our lives. We begin as infants, move through childhood, and onto adulthood. Finally, we come to old age where we must be taken care of again as infants. This completes the cycle.

In each cycle, there are many, forces, some good and some bad. If you listen to the good forces, you will be steered in the right direction. If you listen to bad, you may find yourself in a situation that may hurt you. Iktomi completed his spinning. A dream catcher is a perfect circle with a hole in the center. The good will be captured in the web and carried with you, but the bad will fall through the hole and no longer be part of their lives. He gave the completed dream catcher to the elder. Use the dream catcher as a symbol to help your people reach their goals. Help them to make good use of their dreams and visions. 1

Resources

Erdoes, R. & Ortiz A. (1984). American Indian myths and legends. New York: Random House