“It’s not down on any map, true places never are. ”

— Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Trauma affects everything. Even your dreams. In fact, nightmares are one of the hallmarks of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and are often one of the symptoms that troubles people the most. If you experience trauma as an adult, the nightmares will stand out—mostly because you know the difference between good dreams and nightmares. In many ways, I think it is much harder for people who experience trauma for the first time in adulthood because there is such a sense of loss of the safety that one once knew—and such a stark experience of the nightmares. If you grow up with trauma, you don't know anything else. You only know nightmares and you think that nightmares and dreams are the same thing. You are entirely used to them.

The very first dream that I had that wasn't a nightmare was when I was 32. I dreamt that I was standing high on a cliff in California or Oregon. From this cliff I could see a whale below—breaching and swimming. The whale had come up to the surface and as I watched it the sight of it swimming made me unbelievably happy. I could feel joy in my whole body. It rolled and waved its big flipper and I was so filled with happiness that I passed out—and fell off the cliff and landed, unharmed, on the sandy beach. And when I awoke in the dream, I sat up and could still feel that joy. I And when I woke up for real, I also could feel that joy. And I carried that feeling and the awe of this wild creature with me for the rest of the day. That feeling in the dream gave me hope. That dreams could be like that. And that I had the possibility that this kind of happiness could and would surface in real life.

Over the years the image stayed with me. Healing stirs up longing. Longing for connection, longing to connect parts of yourself back together, longing to inhabit a different state of being. The image stayed with me long enough to write the following poem—what if Moby Dick were understood from the whale’s perspective? So much of healing is about a desire for connection and an ambivalence about safety in connection.

The Finder and the Found

The assumption is that he

didn’t want to get caught.

That the entire epic struggle

was one of escape. They assumed

that his desire was for freedom.

But perhaps the great white whale

was just ambivalent about closeness.

Was afraid that Ahab would

hurt him, as the others had before.

Unsure of whether to stay below

or surface, not wanting to give

signals of his whereabouts to those

who would wish to find him.

Perhaps, he was secretly hoping

to be pulled in on a great line.

Welcomed aboard with shouts

of homecoming and reunion.

Maybe Ahab’s longing

mirrored his own desire:

The finder and the found

joined by the ends of a line.