Last night 12 dreamers gathered in the name of the Lorde, in the pull of the blue blood supermoon eclipse. We were guided by Audre Lorde’s lifelong engagement with her own dreams and the dreams of her children. With rigor, vulnerability and generosity we shared about the intersections between our dreaming and waking lives, our definitions of daughtering (daughter as a verb) and the resistance and tension that exists for us as we work at the nexus of what is expected of us and what we are called to create. We opened ourselves up to the stretching work of facing what is and dreaming the possible at the same time. This was the first night of our 3 day Daughter Dreams Intensive.So…we were not watching the state of the union address. But we know that the media discourse last night was also part nightmare, part longing for the creation of something new, part bizarre fantasy, and for sure, a whole lot of tension with our lives in the balance. Our offering for you today is the group poem we created last night prompted by a concept Audre Lorde used in her dream analysis. What if we are all the characters in our dreams? What if we are everyone even in this nightmare moment ( ahem: ongoing system) of white supremacist politics? Our dreams allow us to connect to more than our ego, or our narrow sense of self and position. What could we learn by understanding the connections between who we think we are, the greatest dangers we face, and the context holding all of it together? We offer this poem as a ceremony towards that inquiry and maybe towards a necessary and higher form of union in our lifetimes. I recommend that you read this aloud.
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
by the participants in the Daughter Dreams Intensive
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“It’s very exciting to think of me being all the people in this dream.” -Audre Lorde
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the enemy
the ally
the hero
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the sun
the moon
the stars
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the daughter
the father
the sea
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the victim
the oppressor
the liberator
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the whale
the water
the woman in white
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
tilling the soil
naming the plots,
planting the seeds
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
I am the grizzly bear
the loyal dog
the child
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the warrior
the lover
the killer robot
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What if I am everyone in this dream about a 38 year old woman returning to high school because she has some unfinished business:
the returning student
the teacher offering gentle guidance
the young peers watching with curiousity
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the doorway
the window
the floor
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the fearful
the brave
the relief
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the child
the silent one
the home
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the monster
the seeker
the companion
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
I am the eagle
the mother
the daughter
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the priestess
the flowers
the light
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the doula
the daughter
wanda
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the Embracing Universe in which it All happens,
The Higher Self whose fingers are splashing around in this world as…
ME, recently awakened to being lovingly, compassionately everyone else – so as to Learn.
To learn to Love,
To love and Grow,
To grow and Expand,
To expand and Joyfully remember that I am
Everyone in this Dream…
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the brave
the scared
the satisfied
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the intruder
the safe room
the resident
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the silent brother
the seeking sister
the unanswered phone
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the patriarch
the visionary
the masses
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the water
the echo
the voice
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the student
the playwright
the play
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the peace
the fight
the fear
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the land
the keepers
the prospectors
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the car
the accident
the aftermath
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the betrayed
the betrayer
the lover
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the lazy
the over-achiever
the just-to-get-by
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
seed
sun
soil
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the narcissist
the doubter
the believer
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the grief
the ghost
the left behind
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
a deep dark hole in the earth
an endless tunnel
an unlit match
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the pain
the blood
the tears
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the giver of no dams
of all the “dams”
and the oblivious
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the depressed
the joyful
the healer
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the cause
the effect
the idea
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
babba
the waiting room chair
the disappeared
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the ship
the captives
the sharks
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
my mother tongue
the listener
the speaker
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the destruction
the salvation
the remains
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
The Darcell
The Ethel Ray
The me
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the angry
the wounded
the writer
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the sister who lives
the sister who dies
the landing
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the Indigenous mother
the colonizer father
the Metis
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the escape
the runner
the chaser
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the good intent
the bad choice
the dream
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
the flight
the clouds
gravity
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What if I am everyone in this dream?
you
Audre
me.
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The Daughter Dreams Intensive is part of the M is for M/otherourselves webinar series leading into the March 9th release of M Archive: After the End of the World. All of the webinars in the series will be grounded in the work of Audre Lorde with a focus on mothering and daughtering.
To be sure to know when sign up opens for the next intensive (the M/otherlands intensive) add your email address to our list.