journey to my childhood, crossing the shakey bridge to my field of dreams

Part of my journey to recovery was huge amount of inner child healing.  Yesterday I went with my own daughter to the site of a place that I still have nightmares about.  I have a reoccurring dream of crossing a bridge which gradually gets smaller and higher and as I am just about to fall off the end I wake up.  Yesterday I discovered the location of the bridge.  We went for a walk in the park that my father used to take us to as children.  I decided to finally take my daughter across the Shaky Bridge.  I hated crossing this so much as a child.  My father could not understand why I was so scared of it and finally forced me to cross it when I was around 7.  I went across one way but when faced with the return trip screamed and screamed so much that he had to walk the very long way around back to the car on the other side of the river.  Yesterday I made it very successfully one way but when I turned around to return it was as if I was 7 again and I felt the first stages of panic rise.  I had shown my daughter how to make the bridge shake by showing her the best spot to jump on.  I had forgotten that I never ventured further than the middle even when we used to go there as teenagers to enjoy the sensation of making it shake.  Wow it was amazing to make the connection between that memory and my ongoing nightmare.   Awareness is a wonderful thing.  

Just had to add this when I came across it.  It gives a flavour of the wonderful Cork accent.  Mine is largely gone but does return when I get to speak to my fellow Corkonians.

I listened to one of the presidential candidates speak of the need for us to be in touch with our 5 senses as children and what a senses of wonder it gives.  Now that I have released the bad feelings about my childhood I can finally reconnect with the happy and scary memories.  I had a very horrifying revelation about my family when i was in my early twenties which made me think that all my life up to then had been a lie.  But now that I can put all that in context I realised that my experiences were happy.  I really did have the most wonderful childhood.  It is time perhaps to remember the good bits.  I met up with old friends from my twenties over the weekend one of whom was very shocked that I had scrummed to depression.  We used to have great fun in those days and I loved life with a great passion.  I now live life with great passion again and would say to anyone reading this its important to have dreams and aspirations and if they don't work out just find new ones. 

So I am off to build a new field of dreams and fill it with all the dreams I had all my life.  I was able to tell my little seven year old self that her dream of living by the sea and going to the beach almost every day came true.  I look forward to remembering all the dreams I had, the good and the bad.  The return of my memory is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me.  It is even better than winning the lottery.  It is even better than when I learned how to express my feelings.