What does it mean?
Do you believe in signs? I consider myself a fairly “in tune” person. I’m always on the lookout for signs and tend to find symbolism and connections in things that others may not. Sometimes the sign is so blatant that it feels as though I’ve been smacked in the face. Other times, though, not so much…
I’ve lived in this apartment for 2 years. I’m used to the sights and sounds, flora and fauna and whatnot that I experience daily. A few weeks ago, I was woken up by a very strange sound. At first I thought one of the cats was just meowing for breakfast, but the longer I sat and listened (and the more I woke up), I realized it was a bird. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what that sound was, so getting up and peering out the window (through very sleepy eyes) I saw a large bird. The best I could assume was that it was a hawk of some kind. As soon as I opened the curtain, he flew away… but not before looking at me first.
Now people are going to read this and say, “Well of course he looked at you and flew away… he’s a bird!” And while that’s true, in the 2 years that I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen or heard a hawk by my apartment. Pigeons? Yes. Smaller birds? Absolutely. But a hawk just hanging out in the neighborhood is very rare and while he flew away, I continued to hear him for a good 2 hours after the fact. It was like he wanted me to know he was out there. The whole thing got my Spidey sense tingling.
Of course I immediately looked up what the symbolism of the hawk could mean and, while a found a lot of nothing, I did see that hawks are supposedly messengers. I always figure that someone is trying to send me a message so this didn’t seem that odd. The last few weeks since the hawk incident there have been a lot of signs pointing towards the same thing. I’ve been having a lot of very vivid dreams, some that are clear-cut in their meaning and others not so much. Some that are clearly nothing more than my anxiety manifesting in my subconscious and others that, well, definitely mean something more.
Last night I had one so bizarre that I actually wrote it down when I woke up and then pulled an oracle card from my deck to try to figure out what it meant. The dream went like this:
I was in my mother’s house, the house I grew up in, and there was a bird loose flying around. I kept trying to catch it so that Magnus wouldn’t kill it, but I couldn’t manage to. At one point I ended up downstairs and heard a baby screaming, “MAMA!” so I ran upstairs and said, “I’m coming!” When I got up there, I went into my mother’s bedroom and saw a crib, but there wasn’t a baby inside. Instead the bird and Magnus were in there. The room was dark and I couldn’t see very well, so I reached my hands in still trying to find the phantom baby and heard, “I’m over here…”
… and then I woke up.
The symbolism here wasn’t lost on me. We’re about a month away from what was to be Alexander’s birthday so this is usually the time of year that I tend to get a little sad and go through the “he would be this old now” thoughts. It’s always tough and, honestly, I don’t think it’ll ever get any easier. That part of the dream made sense to me. What was confusing was the bird. Why another bird?! This one was more of a blue jay, but still... what’s with the birds?! So I hopped online and came to find that birds in a dream symbolize your goals and hopes. After everything I’ve been going through the last few weeks and months with book stuff, I needed to turn to the oracle deck to see what else I could find out, and this was the card I pulled…
The message I got from that? Keep telling my story! I’ve been struggling with a lot of anxiety lately and just feeling like no one is ever going to hear what I have to say, but everything from the hawk to the dream bird to the phantom baby crying… it’s all connected. Everything is telling me to just keep going and keeping trying to reach people.
I have a necklace I bought in August to replace one that had gotten a little tarnished. It has a tiny foot and the birthstone for March. It’s special and typically only worn on days when I’m really missing him. After that dream and this card, today is one of those days. I don’t think the grief will every go away but maybe his spirit is the one reaching out to me telling me to tell his story as well as mine.
So… do you believe in signs?
- Danielle
