Mountain Lions - Again, Still...

I have had recurring mountain lion dreams for years.  Like well over a decade.  I remember the first one, and although the details are a little hazy now, I do remember the first one I had was when I was going through this terrible heartbreak, and I had this weird dream about the guy and this mountain lion.  The mountain lion was injured in that dream and I was trying to help it while also not getting killed in the process.  Not really hard to interpret that one!

I have had mountain lions in my dreams over the past 10 or so years but they have increased exponentially over the last year and only seem to be increasing with intensity and frequency.  I have also had a few sightings of actual mountain lions in the intervening years.  One ran in from of my car in Oak View about a decade ago and come to think of it, that was when all this mountain lion stuff started.  I was driving into Ojai about 2 am.  I was tired and had just flown in from the East Coast.  I was driving up the hill into Oak View and a huge cat came down a very steep embankment and ran across the road in front of me.  Thankfully, he was far enough in front I wasn’t close to hitting him.  I got a full view as he ran across the road...he was stunning.  Such a powerful force.  When I recall this moment, time slows and I see it all in slow motion.  He didn’t break stride but did turn and look at me.  Our eyes locked and it was, well, I don’t know what the fuck that was.  It was powerful.  That is all I can say.

He crossed the road and disappeared down someone’s driveway.  I said a prayer for that person and their animals, and for the lion and continued my journey.  So this is what kicked off my subconscious obsessions with mountain lions, I don’t ever recall dreaming about them, or really thinking about them before this time ten years ago...

Then a couple of weeks ago, I was driving with a friend northbound on the 101 freeway. All of a sudden a mountain lion almost ran Into us running across the highway. I mean what the acutal fuck??? It made It across the highway with cars swerving all over the place. Again, huge cat, powerful and graceful and fucking dangerous as hell.

I am now dreaming about mountain lions on a weekly basis. I think I have had three this week alone.  The dreams are never overtly threatening...one was there were two mountain lions stuck in a large ravine and they couldn’t get out. My daughter and I just happened to be hiking by, I put a log down into the ravine so the lions could get out, not really thinking that through...that once they were able to get out, we would still be standing right there with them, but in the dream, it was too late, they quickly ran up the log and then we were just standing there looking at each other.  Me worried they were going to kill us, and them not sure what to do with the likes of us.  Then I woke up.

Last night’s dream was my friend Elizabeth was dropping me off. In the dream we lived next to each other but instead of living in the house just next door as we actually do, we lived on two parcels of mountainous land with a couple acres between us.  She was dropping me off at the end of my driveway and I was getting out of the car, and there was this mountain lion peering around the front of the car at me.  I froze.  Unsure of whether I should just stand still or get back in the car.  Then I woke up.

I looked up what  mountain lions tend to represent and I got:

Fierce

Solitary

Protective

Dangerous

Independent

Territorial

Graceful

Powerful

But then I put it into Chatgpt and the results from that were far more interesting:

I was asked which one of the above qualities do I most associate with a mountain lion?  I said all of them because I do...I can’t think of a mountain lion and not think of all of those qualities.

Chatgpt said:

“What's interesting is that some of those qualities are socially rewarded in women, and some are not.

People are generally comfortable with women being:

Graceful

Protective

Nurturing

They're often less comfortable with women being:

Dangerous

Territorial

Fierce

Fully independent

Many women spend decades learning how to soften those qualities, explain them, apologize for them, or hide them.

Looking at what you've shared over time—your work helping people through divorce, the boundaries you've had to consider with family members, the questions you've asked about autonomy and women's rights—I'm struck by the possibility that the mountain lion represents a version of yourself that is becoming harder to keep in the ravine.

The first dream is especially compelling in that regard.

You are the one who puts down the log.

You are the one who frees the lions.

The dream isn't that the lions escape.

You release them.

Then you're surprised to find yourself face-to-face with what you've released.

That's a powerful image.

Another possibility

Recurring animal dreams sometimes occur when we're changing our relationship to a quality rather than acquiring it.

In other words, maybe the dream isn't saying:

"You need to become powerful."

Maybe it's saying:

"You already are. Now what are you going to do with that?"

The tension in both dreams isn't whether the lion exists.

The lion is already there.

The tension is how close you're willing to get to it.

Something else I noticed

Neither dream ends with a resolution.

You wake up at the moment of uncertainty.

The lions get out.

The mountain lion appears by the car.

You freeze.

Then you wake up.

It's as if your mind keeps bringing you to the same threshold but hasn't yet written the next scene.”

And that all landed with a thud in my chest.  I have always been trying to fit into this woman’s role in life.  Always too much of this and not enough of that.  I am fiercely independent, territorial, graceful, protective, fierce, solitary, dangerous and powerful.  I may not have always been this way, but certainly over the last decade, I have really come into my stride in all of the above areas.

The last decade has forced changes on me and grown me out and up in ways that I was never capable of before.  It started with me leaving my marriage, then a job, then a friend group, then a man, then another job, then setting and holding very hard boundaries with my kids.  It was been a wild, painful and interesting road to trudge.  And it has felt quite lonely a great deal of the time.  But not the kind of loneliness that requires a solution, just like life is affirming a more solitary path for me, and I will admit, I have struggled against it with a great deal of vigor.

I think the hardest part for me about being in a relationship is all the things women are asked and required to give up in order to be in one.  I look around at my girlfriends and their relationships and they are in the one down position.  They are the ones that take the middle seat on the plane, they are the ones that make the most concessions, they are the ones who seem to have to pull themselves back from their fullest glory in order to remain peaceful and contented in their relationships.  I mean, I don’t think they know what would happen if they said all the things they think, but I know there is a certain level of fear that requires them to approach their discontent very carefully or not at all...

I say this with no judgment, because I too did the same thing when I was in a long term committed relationship.  I checked parts of myself that didn’t fit in at the door and then tried to live as that smaller version of myself.  And, for me, I couldn’t sustain the shrinkage.  I could not remain that smaller version of me.  I just couldn’t live that way.

And so the last couple of years have been about how could I possibly not shrink, not reduce me and still be wanted in a relationship with a man?  So far, I have not resolved that puzzle.  And so I have remained solitary, protective and fully independent.

I feel like I am on the precipice of change.  I can feel it and I have for some time now.  I know that even though I have not been dating much or relationshiping at all, I have been at war with myself over my ability to really allow myself to take full possession over my life.  I have been distracting myself with the minutia of daily living.    Avoiding really taking the reins and driving my life forward.  There are lots of reasons for that: grief being the chief one.  Grief over my physical limitation, the loss of my father, the empty nest, the loss of a career path that I followed for more than three decades.  I can feel myself being pushed in a direction but I am afraid.  I am cautious.  I am worried about how and who I am on the other side...

And all this mountain lion shit seems to be affirming that I am at a crossroads.  All the dreams never have resolution.  I wake up at the moment of uncertainty:  the lions get out, the lion appears next to the car, I freeze.  I keep arriving at the very same scene, but the next scene isn’t written yet...What will I do next?  

Stand my ground?  

Walk past the lion? 

Talk to the lion?  

Follow the lion?  

Watch the lion leave? 

The dreams seem to be asking this question:

If a mountain lion represented the strongest, most instinctive, least apologetic version of me, what would I do differently over the next year?   What would happen if I stopped being afraid of my own strength?

And that resonates in way that is hard to put into words, or even really, describe.  I do feel afraid of my own strength. Like if I round this particular corner, I will render myself absolutely unable to partner with a man.  I feel like that is the question of my life, that is the whole crux of my relational issues in life...how can I be me, really, and also be a loving partner?  They feel so incongruent.  And I think, fuck, I know, that there is a very large part of me that is terrified if I really allow the true me to come out, the likely result is that I am alone forever. If I stop being apologetic and nurturing and concerned with how much others are off put by how I am, if I embrace all the more masculine qualities I possess and not reject so much the more feminine qualities, but not play them up, what will happen?

I do not know, but I can tell you I have been afraid of it for the whole of my life...

I guess the image of me and a mountain lion standing there looking at each other, not as predator and prey, but in recognition, feels pretty fucking powerful...and life altering.  And that altering feels incredibly terrifying.

And there is this other part of me that is just a little afraid that a mountain lion is going to be the actual end of me...and I feel a level of powerlessness about that I cannot describe.

Again, still...