THE DREAM The dream starts out with me in my parents home (although it doesn't actually look like their home). My parents are renewing there wedding vows and I am supposed to be wearing a brides maid dress and helping my mother at the chapel. The dream goes on for a long time of me doing my hair and then looking in the mirror and it's a disaster. Or trying to get dressed, but wandering around in my underpants for hours. My cousins (one of whom is in jail and I haven't seen in years) are both in the home and see me naked and comment on how gross I look. My husband agrees (in real life he would never behave like this). I feel stuck and agitated during this phase of the dream. The rest of my family are all at the chapel and I watch the time pass until it is almost 8pm. Finally my mom comes to get me and next thing I know we (my parents and I) are walking through a parking lot towards an old mall. It vaguely resembles a mall from my childhood.

As we approach the mall together a man is dragging a woman out of the front doors. He is wearing a suit and she is dressed up nicely in a dress and heels. She is crying and saying, "no, I don't want to go with you". He grabs her hard by the wrist and she falls on the ground over the curb. She is on the ground and he is dragging her as she fights and screams. There are about 10 people watching and doing nothing. My dad approaches the man and says, "Darryl, what are you doing" (Darryl is my parents neighbour in real life and would never do anything like this. The man in the dream didn't look like him either). Darryl says, "stay out of this. It's none of your fucking business". He begins to beat the screaming woman. I am still not dressed and only wearing a t-shirt and panties so I have no cell phone on me. I yell, "somebody call 911", but no one even acknowledges me. I run in the mall in hopes of finding a pay phone. I can still see him beating her through the glass front doors of the mall. There is a tall man with curly hair on the payphone. He sounds like he is a homosexual person and he tells me, "I called 911". I hear him say to the 911 operator, "Oh yeah, there's just some guy peeing on his girl friend outside". I feel angry that he is minimizing the assault. I turn around from facing him and look back out. The attacker is peeing on her and holding her by the hair. She is still on the ground. Then his nose opens and thousands of bees start swarming out of it. It's the most disgusting thing I've ever seen and I am retching as the bees swarm out of him and all over her. They are covered in mucus. He yanks her head back hard by her hair until I can hear her neck snap. She is still screaming. Her neck snaps again. He shoves a stick down her throat and is ramming it further and further into her body. She is still screaming and there is a horrible stench. Someone in the mall jokes, "I don't know if she's gonna live after breaking her neck twice, look at how flexible she looks, her head is flat against her back". I am vomiting a little by this point. The screaming grows so much louder. I cover my ears and shut my eyes. He continues to assault her. I can still hear her screaming and still see the horrible bees swarming and smell the stench. I turn and run and run and run. My eyes closed and my hands clasped over my ears. I feel like I am running up hill. The screaming following me.

GUESSWORK The dreamer works in the area of family violence and in the previous two weeks their had been two domestic violence related homicides in the city where she lives. Both of the women murdered were past clients of the organization she works with. As the police and media had reported and responded to these homicides, it became increasingly obvious that the system is flawed and that the police are lying to protect their own (one of the murders was done by a police member). The dreamer felt a broad range of emotions such as anger, sadness, confusion, hopelessness about the situation. When the dreamer woke up she felt nauseous. Her whole body was shaking. All she could say to her husband was "no body cares about these murders, because it was only women. Nobody cares about women".

The "Guesswork" stage of interpreting a dream involves spotting issues likely to cause dreams. For help with this click here

ASSOCIATIONS AND SYMBOLIC MEANINGS
1. If you wake up and feel very strong emotions then its often very simple to understand a dream. Some dreams just capture new emotions and that is their meaning. In this case the dreamer woke up and started telling her husband "no body cares about these murders, because it was only women. Nobody cares about women". The dream is about those emotions.
2. The dreamer works in the area of violence against women. So if she dreams about this her dream maybe about her work in some way. If she has strong views about something at work then that's the likely meaning. In this case the dreamer had strong feelings about her work because two murders had recently taken place against women who had been through the system. The dream captured her current feelings about the system such as "anger, sadness, confusion and hopelessness."
3. The dreamer phones 911 and the man dealing with the call minimizes the assault by saying "Oh yeah, there's just some guy peeing on his girl friend outside". That again captures a core emotion regards this subject. Its very much a literal symbol.

DREAM ANALYSIS In guesswork the dream was linked to the dreamers work and recent murders. The dream deals with the following themes
- The dreamers lack of faith in the system that she works in designed to protect women against violence.
- strong emotions about the recent murders against women

If you weave together the different themes you find that they could capture these thoughts -"I work in the area of family violence and these recent murders in my city have left me feeling anxious for my clients. I feel that there is a lack of an appropriate response to family violence in North America."