our personal horcrux...

When Voldemort struck a death blow to baby Harry Potter, Harry didn’t die but he did have embedded within him a piece of Voldemort, a horcrux, which afflicted him and caused him great confusion and pain. As we would say in Natural Dreamwork…it conditioned him to be in the world in a way he would not have naturally been otherwise…and so he lost connection to his true self.When we are wounded, especially when young, by meanness, abuse and trauma, we, too, carry a horcrux, a piece of the cruel shrapnel within us. We learn to accommodate it, move and behave in certain ways so as to not feel its sharp pain.In a place of great vulnerability we were hurt and we learn that to feel or express our desires can be a dangerous thing…and so we protect ourselves…and our unique way of being in the world, the uniqueness that only we can bring…can be lost.We spend our lives in a form of amnesia not remembering who we were before the wound…not believing any other way is even possible…only knowing ourselves through the wound. We even carry and hear the harsh inner voice that only knows criticism and judgment.Each night our dreams bring a medicine…a medicine that does not judge, shame or blame but helps us understand that something happened to us…that changed us. Our dreams know exactly what happened and our dreams know exactly what medicine…what feelings…will help heal our wound.And if it can be broken, it can be repaired and our dreams help us to understand the way we’ve learned to accommodate the shrapnel…how it has conditioned us…how it has distanced us from our true self…our soul. Maybe we have learned to numb ourselves so as to not feel the pain of the wound. Maybe we behave in ways that don’t nurture relationship and we wish we could stop but we don’t know how…we are afraid. The dreams know how…Dream by dream…as we take the medicine in the dream…feel our feelings…we begin to heal and the connection to soul is repaired…the thing that wounded us…that we have been carrying around for a lifetime…the horcrux…begins to dissolve and we recover that which we thought was lost forever…our aliveness, our creativity, our passion, our joy and our capacity to be in our soul and from that place be in meaningful relationships with ourselves, with others and with the numinous.Mary Jo Heyen is a certified Natural Dreamwork Practitioner working with clients in person, phone or video conference. Learn more about her work with dreams at www.maryjoheyen.com.