The best gift to give a dreamer...

The best gift you can give a dreamer is to listen to his/her dream without judgment or criticism.

I have declared that my message to the world is "I believe in your dream". I have learned it is also part of my job to honor each dream as if they were my own.  

Some of the people I am singing for are just at the beginning of their dream's journey, and it is my opportunity to celebrate these sprouting conversations like a one-woman cheerleading squad.  Here are some of the dreamers of America I have met so far... I am awed by the variety!

• A self-employed grandma who bought a building with a vision to hold a beautiful space for the work of a community of healers and light workers

• A farmer in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) with a vision of global change utilizing an economic gift currency

• A stay-at-home mom of four with a vision of better serving the deaf/hard of healing population in her city by replacing her own personal barriers of "scarcity" and "lack" with allowing herself to do the work and get the training in becoming a millionaire

• A city employee with a vision of spicing up the kink community in her town, expressing herself as a creator by gathering the original work of cartoon artists and publishing an adult coloring book

• A devote Christian woman in a tiny farm town, who is passionate about Judaism and studying the Kabbalah.  She dreams of one day traveling to Israel and knocking on the door of a specific rabbi who she met in an online study group, and learning from him personally

• A mother who wants to raise money in behalf of a woman from Sierra Leone, living in America, who had her children cruelly taken away from her.  This woman needs money to get DNA tested to prove they are her children.

You are not personally affected by what it will take to have these dreams come true. So let's get personal about a dreamer in your life... 

Why is listening to a dreamer dream sometimes so difficult?

Let's see if any of these feel familiar:

1. You don't believe in their dream
2. You feel your security may be threatened
3. You look at the ways someone's dream will affect your life or your family's life
4. The dreamer has been dreaming this same dream for decades and still hasn't made action happen
5. You can easily give a list of reasons why the dream is impossible, and you're right
6. Your dreamer can't satisfactorily answer your realistic questions
7. The dreamer's dream is ridiculous, so you nod to their face and roll your eyes later
8. You worry for them because of past failures

The dreamers in your life are giving you the honor of witnessing the whispers of their heart. I know relationships get complicated and dreams overlap one another. Money gets tight, choices must be made about which dreams come first, which ones must be traded in, and which ones have to die. We have to choose what gets to be sacrificed in order for other dreams to become reality. 

The dreamer's journey may be a montage of scenes with the soft voice of Jiminy Cricket singing "when you wish upon the star", but only if you also include in that same scene Tom Cruise and his sword fight as the samurai warrior and Tom Hanks as a shipwrecked castaway. Following your dreams is no cake walk, and the dreamers who really go for it need support. You can give your dreamer the sweetest gift. Dreams, like the people who embody them, need enlivening fresh air so the heavy details of dense "reality" do not entangle and disillusion. Look around...anywhere you can throw a rock you can find an entangled, disillusioned dreamer.

Create your own rules around it so it feels good to give this gift, and then breathe. Give the dreamers in your life fresh air.

Just....listen.