Gentle Nudges

Never stop dreaming.

Wake up and chase your dreams.

~Gift Gugu Mona

Two years ago, my husband took a new job, requiring us to move from our home in Texas to Washington, D.C. It wasn’t an easy move, and that’s saying a lot since we are a retired military family and used to moving often.

The family part was the problem. No one would be moving with us. All our children were grown and on their own. This move would be different, just the two of us, my husband and me.

We left behind our grown children, beautiful granddaughters, and aging parents. It felt worse than being an empty nester because I believed my husband and I had flown the coop and abandoned everyone! When we sat down for dinner in our new home, just my husband and me in our big, empty house, I thought the quiet was going to swallow me whole. I didn’t know how to navigate and survive this transition.

Then the dreams began.

At first, I tried ignoring them. After all, how many times can a person be accepted to graduate school, run away from the opportunity, and hope to knock on the door again?

I had discovered my passion for writing thirty years ago while working on my English undergrad degree. I fell in love with children’s literature and knew that’s what I wanted to do with my life: write for children. But life kept me busy, and my dream was shoved to the back burner.

Two decades later, I thought working toward my MFA would jumpstart my writing or at least hold me accountable and make me sit down and write. So I applied and was accepted into a low-residency program. The workload, however, seemed daunting in light of our constant moves and busy family life, so I declined.

Then I spent years vacillating, looking at and applying to MFA programs. Twice, I even began programs and went to first residencies. The second time, I hightailed it home after only a few days and knew I would never apply to school again. I had closed that door.

So why, just months later, shortly after we’d moved to D.C., was I dreaming of school again? Was I losing my mind?

The dreams persisted. One morning, I awakened from dreaming that I had contacted the last university’s writing department, asked to rejoin, and was reinstated. The dream had shaken me. It was too vivid to ignore. So, before I even crawled out of bed or could change my mind, I reached for my cell phone and dashed off an e-mail asking what I would need to do to reapply, certain they’d scornfully laugh at me for even contacting them again. Hours passed. No reply, as I expected.

Later that afternoon, my husband and I went to the grocery store. In the produce aisle, I admitted I had looked into re-applying to school. He wasn’t angry — that isn’t our relationship at all — but normally we talk over such big decisions beforehand. He went one way to think. I went the other.

Minutes later, in the dairy section, my cell phone rang. Hamline University. I answered, expecting the program’s administrative assistant I’d e-mailed to be on the other end of the line. Instead, it was the program director. By the end of our five-minute conversation, after I explained the turn of events in my life, the dreams, and how I needed the program, she invited me back. I would begin coursework in January, exactly as my dream foretold.

It’s funny how life works when we keep moving forward, listening to and honoring our dreams — those from our sleep and those we aspire to in our waking hours. My husband and I are a little more settled in our new home and, at least for a while, have family to share it with, too! Our son is redirecting career paths and is temporarily living at home. One of our daughters has recently moved much closer as she embarks on a career, thanks in part to a leadership program with her dad’s employer.

Although we see our other daughter and the rest of our family a little less frequently than when we all lived in Texas, we still get together often and keep in touch via phone, e-mail and texting. And my husband has been my greatest supporter as I have worked toward my goal. I am in the last semester of earning my MFA in Writing for Children, working on my creative thesis. The program has helped me grow in ways I never realized I needed to grow and has allowed me to work under many wonderful mentors and make lifelong friends in the process.

Has the road been easy? Not at all! The work has been every bit as challenging as I expected it would be. Plus, first semester, I cracked a tooth munching on popcorn while studying and had to have it pulled. Second semester, I contended with a bout of kidney stones. Third semester, our son had back surgery, and I developed clots in my legs from all the hours I spend sitting and writing. And last summer, as I was preparing my critical thesis lecture to present during residency, our younger daughter ended up in the hospital. I flew to Texas, brought my work with me, and completed it while sitting at her side, all the while not knowing if she would be well enough for me to attend residency and present my lecture.

I was able to attend residency and presented on my topic of Hope in Children’s Literature. From this study, I learned about the importance of setting goals and achieving them through pathways (the actions and roads we take to reach our goals) and agency (the willpower to keep going despite tough times), and how we have to be proactive and take charge of and responsibility for our own lives and happiness.

I’ve also learned that not everything we view as setbacks are setbacks. Sometimes, they are opportunities in disguise, like the move with my husband to Washington, D.C., the catalyst that sent me back to school and allowed me to finally realize a lifelong dream. Life is not meant to be stagnant. Life is meant to be lived, for us to keep learning and growing.

And dreams? I don’t know from where our dreams come, especially those that guide and direct us. Maybe they’re from our Creator. Or, perhaps, from angels or our ancestors keeping watch over us. Maybe it’s just our own soul whispering what it already knows. But I do know that dreams can be gifts, gentle nudges that keep us moving forward.

— Tracey Sherman —