What is my Sacred Dream, Dr. Trent? To be the one who opens the door.
In “Matches,” my post the week before last, I examined a question posed to me by Dr. Tererai Trent, author of The Awakened Woman. What, she asked, is my Sacred Dream? What longing lies deep in my psyche, dormant as a seed in winter? The answer that came to me as I wrestled with the question was, unsurprisingly for me, rather cryptic. What exactly does it mean to be the one who opens the door? I let the answer and the question simmer as I read on.
Dr. Trent first voiced her dream aloud to a well educated woman from America named Jo Luck who was the director of international programs with Heifer International. Ms. Luck visited Dr. Trent’s village and talked to the women about the change in fortunes that she had witnessed among people just like young Tererai through her work. She had watched women educating themselves and their children, breaking the cycle just like Tererai wanted to do. She gave the young doctor-to-be hope. After this encounter, Dr. Trent went home and told her mother about her audacity. Many mothers might have dismissed her dreams as too lofty and likely to end in disappointment, or worse, laughed, but Dr. Trent’s mother did not. “‘If you believe in this dream of education and you achieve it, you are not only defining your future, but that of every life coming out of your womb, as well as those for generations to come,’” her mother replied. “‘What you want to become will change how you see the world around you.’” Then she gave her daughter advice that would change the course of Dr. Trent’s life forever: “she told me to write down my dreams and bury them in the ground.”
She told me that Mother Earth would nourish them beneath the soil and help them to grow. To ease my doubts, she added: “Vimba naNyadenga, nevadzimu vedu, zvaunoshuvira zvinobudirira” —"Trust the universe to honor your dreams.”
Dr. Trent heeded her mother’s advice.
On a bright sunny morning, with a timeworn garden hoe in hand, I headed to a place where I spent hours practicing my vowels and doing my brother’s homework as a hopeful little girl. I remember vivid details from this day. In the background, two doves cooed and the savanna grass and the tree leaves rustled. I remember the feeling of the wind on my skin. I lifted the rock, dug a hole, and…buried my dreams. Before leaving, I found a small, smooth, round rock to take with me as a keepsake.
As my mother would later explain, this act was more than just a symbol of respect to an ancient sacred practice of planting and harvesting. I had weaved the threads of my hurting soul, spirit, and mind together, enabling me to trust that I was more than my circumstances. Something bigger was taking place. No matter the forces that silenced my true potential, no matter my low self-esteem, the burying of my dreams reminded me that my desires now have a sacred connection to the earth below my feet. They had taken up space in the world.
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