Sometime last summer I admitted out loud what had been a secret wish for a long time: I want to hike.

I’ve always felt like a hiker, despite my near complete lack of practice at it, but decided it was time to actually live into myself (so to speak :).

So I bought a pair of hiking shoes. And the thrill of it! They could have been the wrong size, for all I cared, as I walked on clouds from the store to my car. I was pursuing a dream! (The sketch from this post came straight from this experience.)

I bought a little book of local trail descriptions, too, and embarked the very next weekend on our family’s first hike.

And it was fantastic! I smiled the whole time. Even as I noticed my knees aching by the time we returned to our car, I felt that delicious YES of taking action on something I KNEW I loved to do.

My knees felt worse the next day, though, and it became clear that I couldn’t run OR walk for exercise that week.

By the second hike, I quietly admitted that steep declines aren’t things my knees handle very well.

By the third, that carrying kids makes everything worse.

By the fourth, that even a light backpack isn’t a good idea to carry, so far as my knees are concerned.

And as time has marched on, and my knees have made their presence known increasingly – with and without hikes – I’ve had to admit to myself that this dream I have of being a hiker can’t pan out according to plan. The full-length dream includes backpacking some day, which I know is completely out. But even the shorter version, where I’m on first-name basis with the staff at REI, am familiar with all the trails within a 2-hour radius of home, and have friends whom I’ve met hiking, too: not going to happen.

I can walk gentle slopes, holding a water bottle and a granola bar.

And while I know this is FAR more than some can do, I feel grief in it. Grief in a dream that felt so long in coming true, and then so HERE, so NOW already, and then so quickly out of reach.

I wonder whether you have experiences like this, too, tucked into the edges or smack at the center of your life. Moments where the soft filter of a dream gets pulled away and you find yourself squinting at a much starker view of what can, or more truly cannot happen with your body – not now, not ever.

Can trust find a place alongside of us there? – right there where light glints off impossibility? Where the bodies we have and the bodies we hoped to have diverge in our minds for good?

I think it can.

This ritual holds space for that possibility.

Part 1: Putting a Dream to Rest

Dreams that can’t be fulfilled are painful enough as it is, but when we carry them around with us ongoingly, treating them as though they’re still alive – or should be – the pain they cause us stays fresh, the wounds they create in us open. This first part of the ritual is designed to honor the real death that occurs when a dream can’t be fulfilled and hold space for grieving it.

1. Clarify the dream that cannot be fulfilled. This may be a no-brainer in your situation, but it may not be readily understood (I hadn’t realized, for example, that my dream of hiking actually involved an increasingly rigorous regimen, culminating in backpacking and friendship circles connected with the sport). Take some time to get clear about what it is you had hoped could happen, and write this down. Make edits until you feel a sense of completion about what you’ve named. Copy your final phrase or paragraph onto a strip of paper.
2. Name your feelings around the death of this dream. These can be feelings you felt weeks or months or years ago when you first realized this dream couldn’t be fulfilled, or feelings you feel today, or both. Apathy and numbness count as feelings, too! Write these down on a strip of paper, too – or an entire page or more, if it takes that much space.
3. Honor your feelings around the death of this dream. Find some way to communicate to yourself and your feelings that you see them, and respect them. Find a little bowl to put your description of them into and light a candle reverently next to it. Float a flower for each one in a bowl of water. Collect pebbles to represent each of them and keep a little jar for them on your window sill. Whatever works as a mean for you to say and see visually, “I feel these things. I grieve.” If your feelings are primarily numbness, this deserves honor, too. Your psyche is protecting you against pain.
4. Find an object to represent your dream. This needs to be something you can literally bury in the ground. A rock will do. Or a leaf. A flower. Or it could be some human-made thing. If you’re a person who really likes metaphors, make sure your object connects meaningfully with your dream, such as the particular shape or color of a flower or stone.
5. Identify a plot of earth where you can put your dream to rest. Ideally, this will be a location you can return to if/when needed, and out of reach of pets or children’s digging plans. If you live in a high rise or a complex without a suitable spot, find a special place at a park or even the yard of an understanding friend. Somewhere away from the city or at a vacation spot works, too. Close to home is not essential.
6. Lovingly put your dream to rest. Dig a hole big enough to hold your symbolic object and your written description of your dream. If you want, wrap your symbolic object in your dream’s description before placing it in the hole. Cover them up, letting yourself feel whatever you feel. If you feel nothing much at all, that’s fine, too. If you come from a religious tradition with clear rites or rituals around death, consider whether some or all of these might work right here, as you put your dream to rest.
7. Honor whatever feelings arise, over time, in relation to your dream. This might mean repeating step three above, and/or returning literally or in your mind’s eye to the place of your dream’s burial. Sit at the site and cry if you need to, even months or years later. Place flowers of remembrance there – again, literally or only in your imagination. Or even as a center piece on your own dining table! Done with true intention, these moves of honoring this death and the feelings it evokes can be powerful and healing, no matter how literal the action taken.

Part 2: Welcoming Rebirth

In the very same world where death and loss and disappointment abound, metaphors and experiences of life and rebirth do, too. I think of the mythical Pheonix, of the cross and resurrection, of night turning to day, winter to spring, seeds losing their lives in order to sprout and grow a hundred new ones. The second part of this ritual is designed to hold space for new dreams to get born out of the grief and “ashes” of the one you put to rest. It’s not about replacing your old dream, as that one can’t ever be replaced and needs to be honored in its own right.

1. Get more deeply curious about the dream you already put to rest and identify the values at the heart of it. My dream of hiking involved a number of values: nature, and my wish to not only see and appreciate more of it, but to actually move through and past my fears of it and the discomforts that often accompany it; community; and physical fitness. Write down the value or values you see at the heart of your old dream.
2. Consider this value or these values to be like seeds. And take one of two actions with them:
   • If you’re ready, be an active “gardener” with them, consciously cultivating a new dream (or dreams) that incorporates one or more of these values. For me, this might mean identifying all of the local trails that are designated flat or easy, and getting to know every one of them personally. And inviting friends along! It could mean joining some sort of nature club in my area, or hanging out at REI more often, making a point of asking questions of the staff and learning anecdotal things from them about bugs, snakes, or trails in my area. Maybe there’s a nature photographer whose work I could fall in love with. Or ten! Maybe there’s a poet whose nature-inspired work I could use for meditation – or better yet, could sit in nature somewhere to read!

     The point here is not to try to grow a dream that looks almost like the old one (though this could potentially work, too), but rather to cultivate dreams that allow the values at the heart of my old dream to be expressed.

     If your values include things like youth, strength, beauty, and parenthood, you may need to explore some redefinitions at this point. Strength doesn’t always have to be physical. Youth can be a frame of mind. Beauty can come in so many forms that have nothing to do with the way Hollywood defines it. Mothering and fathering can happen with people that are not your parents or children by blood.

   • If you’re not ready to do something so active about growing a new dream, consider writing your values down – the ones you identified at the heart of your old dream – and placing this list somewhere where you’ll see it from time to time. Seeds don’t always need active work to start to grow, and you may discover a new dream sprouting in you, with time, where you least expected one to grow.

3. Regardless of the active or passive approach you take to cultivating your “seeds”, take some moments each day, or even once each week, to open your heart to a new dream’s rising. Out loud, or just inside yourself, say something like, “I open my heart to a new dream and to the joy of its fulfillment.”

   If your grief about the old dream is still too great to say something like this honestly, you may have more grieving you need to do before anything else. Grief is important, transformational work, so consider space for it every bit as essential to your future joy as any kind of positive thinking could be. Maybe your repeated line could be something like, “I honor my grief.”

In my mind, and in my heart, the two parts of this ritual seem like they need each other. Like even if they don’t happen in quick or close succession, each alone isn’t fully complete.

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I’d love to know your thoughts on this – regarding this ritual, but anything beyond it, too. Have you had experience with the grief of unfulfilled dreams? Have you discovered helpful…or not-so-helpful…ways of responding to it? I’d really love to hear.

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