Physical Injury And The Dream’s Response

How the dreams can help support our journey in healing from injury

While snowboarding on Vermont’s northern most mountain, known for its harsh weather, big snow and rugged conditions, on a particularly fabulous glade run, I caught a powder-obscured stump at just the right angle and just the right spot to completely destroy my knee. When the injury happened, I screamed in pain but also in fear and anger. I knew it was bad. Our upcoming ski trip in France for the Tomorrowland Winter EDM festival was out, fat biking was out, in fact I knew my snowboarding season was ended and that I was in trouble. In that moment I knew that my life for the near future and possibly longer was significantly altered. For any athlete, it is a moment that we know is possible but we pray it doesn’t happen.

The journey off that mountain via an amazing group of ski patrollers who managed to get us out of the steepest, most remote area of the mountain (they don’t call the area Timbuktu for nothing) progressed through to the ER, meetings with orthopedic surgeons, an MRI and ultimately knee reconstruction surgery. When the MRI results came in, I waited over an hour and a half before Vince and I sat down to read it. I knew it was bad (I mean I couldn’t walk on it…when I had tried the knee has collapsed inward and would not hold my weight to walk), but at this point we didn’t know how just how bad. 

Trigger warning: skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want the gory details or if big medical terms bore you. I had torn my Medial Meniscus, the Anterior Cruciate Ligament was completely torn, the Medial Collateral Ligament was completely torn with an avulsion fracture where the ligament had torn a small piece of bone from the femur. The separated ligament had retracted and had fallen into the burst knee capsule. There was an impaction fracture on the tibia plateau. The knee was no longer a functioning joint. I cried in the moment. Again, as an athlete, I knew this meant months and months of recovery and being limited in my mobility, not being able to drive. Total loss of independence for an extended period of time.

During the period of time between when the injury occurred and when I had the surgery, I had a couple of dreams. My years of working with dreams and utilizing the Natural Dreamwork techniques has taught me to pay attention, to be curious and to trust that my highest self is engaged in a relationship with the possibility of healing all the wounds that bind me. Our physical body can hold so much and I have done a tremendous amount of work in relationship to trauma and how it’s held in my body. This injury, of course, was immediate and present in a way that was different than how the old holding patterns of conditioning affected my physical wellbeing. And of course the dreams responded.

“Originally published on In Search of Puella ( with a link to https://www.laura-smith-riva.com/blog).

Dreams pre-surgery:

Dream 1:

I dream I am trying to walk on my hurt leg, only it is the left knee not the right. I take a step very carefully and then another and I feel hopeful. It seems I can walk a little bit if I am careful. I decide I will go back on the crutches just to be safe but I feel hopeful that it seems like I am getting better.

Dream 2: 

I am in a the waiting room at the hospital with a bunch of people. Vincenzo is sitting a ways from me talking to someone else. My knee is hurting. I pull up my pant leg and my foot is mottled, purple and is slowly turning black from midway down my shin to my foot. I am upset, scared. I call to Vince but he doesn’t come. Then I am hopping, putting minimal weight on the leg to get to the receptionist. When I get there the woman starts taking info from me in a slow and seemingly un-urgent way and I am feeling desperate, terrified about my leg. I don’t know what to do. Then a man with a gurney comes and interrupts her. He says, “No, no, we need to get you into surgery right now”. He isn’t a doctor type but appears to be some kind of regular guy wearing a fisherman’s hat, practical and assured. As he takes me away, I call out one more time for Vince. I tell the man that I didn’t get to say goodbye to Vince. That I am afraid I might die and not get to say goodbye. Then we are moving extremely rapidly down a long curved, wide and sloped hallway. It’s dark. I can see the lights up head of what I assume is the OR. I am afraid I am going to lose my leg. I begin to have visions of having to wear a prosthetic and what this would mean for my life. What if I didn’t survive the surgery. I am very scared but also am grateful I am being rushed into surgery by the man. Perhaps they can save my leg.

In these pre surgery dreams, there is hope to feel into. After Dream 1, I felt hopeful. I could use the dream to feel into a place of understanding that healing was possible and the visceral feeling of hope and a visceral physicality of weight bearing on the leg, even though that was months away for me. The second dream is about my desperation and terror in losing independence and autonomy, two of my best allies. The double edged sword of how my greatest coping mechanisms can become that which cuts me off from my relational self, vulnerability and my own needs. The man who shows up and sees me, really sees what I am feeling, affirms my fear and need. He rushes me through the dark tunnel towards the light of possibility and transformation/healing. He is a being we think of as an archetype or “angel” of support. Even in the terror, vulnerability and helplessness of my blackening leg, I could trust that he was taking me where I would receive the help that I needed. I wasn’t in it alone even though I thought I was. I feel the sensual pain of gratitude for this kind of support. 

The dream also seems to be saying something about my relationship with my spouse. Vince has been my hero through these last several weeks, and has been there for me in every way. So my missed connection in the dream doesn’t match with my experience in life. Perhaps the feeling of loss I experience in the dream, both in the fear of losing my leg, my autonomy, is amplified by my inability to “say goodbye” to Vince before the man takes me away. Perhaps in truth our worldly beloveds cannot replace the internal structures of support we must build within ourselves. 

Leading up to the surgery, I listened every night before bed to a guided meditation that a dear friend had sent to me. At one point in the meditation, I was guided to see a shimmering portal. On the other side of the portal, I was guided to see a bright room where people were moving about and to know that they were the doctors and nurses and support staff all dedicated to my surgery and care. A team of beings who would take the best possible care of me.

The surgery was successful with two transplanted ligaments and 10 stitches to the meniscus. The post surgery has been difficult with pain and the loss of muscle mass and strength due to no weight bearing for many weeks, and the possibility of a second follow up surgery due to scar tissue within the knee.

Dreams post surgery:

Dream 1:

I am walking on my leg after recovery. I look down at my leg and it is quite thin but it seems strong. There are several moments where I seem to forget my crutches. I feel some tweakiness in my knee from time to time and am reminded to be cautious. At one point I am following “G” around and it seems like she is making me walk in different places that are challenging and testing my leg. 

Dream 2:

I am walking and my knee is holding. It felt good though fragile. It is pre-surgery and I wonder if maybe I have babied the knee too much.

But the dreams again offer support for this part of the journey. In the first post surgery dream, I am again offered the sense of what it is like to have made it through the initial recovery phase and to be walking again despite how fragile the leg looks and feels. There is pain, but I am learning about accepting pain as healing. Not the pain of the injury, but the pain of healing. The character “G” is taking me different places helping to push the limits of what I might think I can do (my physical therapist is a bit like this!), showing me Yes! You can! 

The second dream, which takes place post surgery but in the dream is pre-surgery, offers a bit of advice perhaps not to listen to a voice of doubt that would say I’m babying it too much, in other words, to the impatient athlete in me its ok to go slow. In truth, pre-surgery, the knee was nonfunctional. There was no question about “babying it too much” as the extent of the injury offers the truth. The two dreams seem to offer a balance, just the right amount of pushing without pushing too much!

I’ve learned to trust the messages that come through the natural dream and to accept this kind of internal support. It’s ok to be scared and vulnerable. It’s ok to ask for help. It’s ok to receive it. In the case of my injury, that healing is possible despite how bad it may seem right now. I just have to trust the process and keep doing the work, both the internal work of continuing to build upon a structure of trust and hope, and the hard physical work of learning to walk again.