Inspiration comes from all sides including the inside - The Dream Catcher

Looking to the past to create a more peaceful future.

Recently I have found myself confronted by life. Lots of life. Some scary. Some beautiful. Some peaceful. Some like knots tying themselves up inside.

A quick background.

In the past I have suffered from depression and anxiety. It was surprising and terrifying. I was lucky to find the help I needed and a few amazing counselors along the way. But on occasion and generally as the seasons transition from summer in to fall and winter I feel the anxiety come back. For someone that has never experienced it, it is hard to explain. For me it feels like a wind-up toy running at full speed inside my chest. It comes in waves. Like sitting at the ocean watching and you turn your back for a split second and get doused by the water. It catches you off guard and it sets your heart racing.  

What this teaches me.

I am not alone and I am not the only one. 

I seek to find ways to bring natural peace into our house. I am becoming familiar with the use of essential oils and the many ways to use them to help me. Exercise often helps me remove some of my anxiety...running and lifting help me get the good juju flowing. I also try to surround out house with happiness...pictures of our adventures, people we love, art I have created. I have also begun to look to the past. A talisman. An inspiring word or phrase. My arrows that give me a sense of direction.

In times of disruption what can I do to help myself? What can I do to help create the sense of peace I am looking for?

The people native to this land I call home had some ideas about finding peace and creating that peace while you sleep.
There are several versions of the origins of the dream catcher this one come from Dancing to the Eagle Spirit Society and here is a piece of that tradition, 

Natives believed the night air was filled with good and bad dreams. The legend of the Dream Catcher is that it captures the bad Spirits and filters them. Protecting us from evil and letting through only the good dreams.   It is believed that each carefully woven web will catch bad spirit dreams in the web and disappear by perishing with the first light of the morning sun.

The good spirit dreams will find their way to the center and float down the sacred feather.

Dream Catchers are believed to bless the "sleeping ones" with pleasant dreams, good luck, and harmony throughout their lives. It is how many people remember lessons in our community and get their visions.

 It is said that when you get a good night sleep you can remember when the spirit has talked to you. 

The dream catcher is traditionally made from grapevine or willow branches wrapped into what I will loosely call a circular shape.

We have a small grapevine in our backyard that I pruned and used for my first two attempts. 

Attempt one is much larger than the traditional which is the size of an adult hand, but I scaled back on version #2.

The picture on the left was from this summer and the one on the right I took today (November 1, 2016).

I soaked the grapevines in the sink overnight and then wound them into the roundest kinda shape I could make without breaking them.

Here is version number one. I didn't take pictures doing the second one, but followed the same procedure.

Next I started weaving a jute twine around the grapevine with a super simple loop pattern moving in with each turn around the vine.On or about the third go around you add a bead that symbolizes the spider that spun the web.

Here is the vine finished with weaving and the bead.

Next I added a few feather. I got these feathers from my parents neighbor that have quite a wide variety of fowl. At any given moment you can stroll through his yard and collect enough feather to make a mess of dream catchers. I have also started collecting feathers I see in my yard (we have several feeders) and when I am out and about. There is something magical about finding a feather and to me even more amazing when I can identify what bird it came from.

I tied the feathers on from the center of the web and added a few beads for decoration.

I hung the first on Mark's side of the bed and made a second one for me which a hung the next night. The cat tried to help with the feather attachment, but he is not - not helpful.

Here is BooBoo at some ridiculous hour of the morning trying to slay the bird that is on the wall. If you know BooBoo, the only thing he can slay is cat food and cat nip. He was made for domestication. 

Other than the cat I must say I slept well. Thank you dream catcher for helping keep my nights less stressful and my morning (other than the cat) restful.

Plus I am loving the look and adding art to the wall that is other than pictures...

What is next? Who knows...now to go breathe and find my zen.