Just Fine in a Tsunami

Originally published on April 12, 2021

I had a dream a couple of days ago and then received a reminder last night, on the new moon, that it was essential for me to share this dream not just with my closest friend and daughter, which I had done, but with you all, my readers and friends. While I do consider dreams to be very private, on this one, the message was clear. So here we go:

I am on a boat in calm waters in a beautiful and peaceful bay, something like a whale watching vessel, with a bunch of friends and colleagues, and, of course, my beloved daughter. It feels like a sunny afternoon outing, perhaps against the backdrop of the Rothenburg Acupuncture Congress. I am standing at the front of the boat with my dear soul sister and wise woman Lillian Bridges, looking at the water, when all of a sudden the earth shakes and the water turns angry and starts churning. We all stumble and hold on to things or each other to keep our balance. We know instantly that something really bad is happening, the plates of the continents are shifting, the earth has fallen off its axis, something is seriously wrong.

The water is being weirdly sucked away from the boat, I look up in front of the boat, and there is an enormous wall of water coming straight at us, so tall that I cannot see the sky above it. My first instinct is to yell for my daughter and feel immense relief when I have her hand in mine, knowing I will not let go no matter what happens. My daughter on one side and Lillian on the other. As we are about to be swallowed by this giant tsunami wave, we know this will destroy life as we know it on the land behind us, turning our little boat full of friends into a Noah’s ark.

In this moment when time slows to a crawl as this towering wave is about to swallow us, I turn to Lillian and say, with perfect calmness:

“Don’t worry! I knew this was coming. It is exactly what is meant to happen. And we shall be just fine.”

I know that this wave will come crashing down on all of us on this little boat but that the boat will emerge from underneath the wave with all my tribe there with me, unscathed, and we truly shall be “just fine.” We shall start something new that we have no idea what it will look like or feel like, but we shall have each other.

There’s my dream, which I am supposed to share with you all. May it give you the solace that it has given me these past few days as I have been sitting with it. And may you have a Lillian of your own in one hand and a Momo in the other, and a boatload of friends all around, as you encounter your own tsunami.