Dreams help me understand myself

The great Taoist master Chuang Tzu once dreamt that he was a butterfly fluttering here and there. In the dream he had no awareness of his individuality as a person. He was only a butterfly. Suddenly, he awoke and found himself laying there, a person once again. But then he thought to himself, "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"

Rarely do dreams mean literally what they convey. Recently I have been having dreams…and it has me pondering what they mean.

In these last years, I have had to adjust myself to my adult daughters' independence from me. It is hard for parents to realize that we have to let our children leave the nest and make their own decisions. I remember all 3 of our little girls as being very compliant and very easy to love.... always trying to make us happy and they each had a good conscience.  Then, (insert Theme to Jaws music here)….they became a teenagers. For those few years in high school, I became the “worst mother” because I wouldn’t allow them to do everything some of her friend’s parents would allow.  For one whole year, one of our daughters and I communicated via letters and notes, because we could not communicate face to face without one of us breaking down into tears.  She felt I didn’t understand her, and I felt like she didn’t understand me. Thank God for her father, who was the one she would run to and cry on his shoulder during this time.  When they went to college, my daughters began to like me again.  I began to like them too.  They turned to me for advice.  I respected their choices, because they were able to explain to me why they had chosen certain things for themselves. I learned to hold my tongue, and understand that each one needed time to figure out who she was without my judgments. It’s hard to be a mom and not judge. All their growing up years that was my “job”; to decide for her what was right, this involved constantly making judgments.  I didn’t realize that that was what I was still doing as they grew up and needed more independence. I was doing it in less overt ways. (Moms can be sneaky like that!) Let me say, that thankfully those years are way past us now.  For a while last year, my oldest daughter and I would meet regularly for a walk around Al Lopez park, and it was during one of those walks that I realized how far she and I had come.  We enjoy doing things together again; I  now can confide in her, she  has confided in me.   Each one of my daughters is not like me at all, and I am happy about that, because it is in how each one is different that  I have found our friendship.  I am interested in their goals, in their relationships, in their humor, in their viewpoints….and I am happy that they gave me the time I needed to be able to love them  for who they are still becoming.
I need to let each of my daughters come into being; to be reborn; and my dreams have  possibly been nudging me,  that in letting them arrive at their place in life without my constant interference, I am able to appreciate their uniqueness and thier preciousness.