Dear Miss Tick...as to your story

Dear Miss Tick

I am beginning to get the picture here.   You are tangled up in rather a lot things.

No wonder you are feeling somewhat tick bitten and frantic.  

It seems to me that you have managed to recreate the very turmoil that you had hoped to escape from!

How are you handling this so far? 

Miss Tick replies...

"Well, Deb,  I have been journaling...a lot…letting all my anger and frustration flow onto paper! And I did get away on a family get together, which was wonderfully refreshing! I think I have mostly recovered from the trip.  

With the time change, intensity of family, & over indulgence in too much rich food and alcohol, it has taken me a bit of time to get back to my normal self.  

We had waaay too much fun! I must admit that I made the "top 3" disaster stories of the weekend... for drinking way more than I ever have (and ever should) and throwing up all over my sister, husband and my dad's rental car. Lordy!!  

It perhaps should be embarrassing, but I don't remember a thing…

and all at a FAMILY reunion.  They will be telling that story for decades. 

Did I mention that we also have 2 new housemates... and that has added a bit of chaos to my world and house.  M’s new boyfriend, J, moved in the day that we left. And currently P’s  new girlfriend, K, is here and trying to figure out if she can stay for the duration of our lease.  

It feels like a pretty huge adjustment... I hope it ends up being good for all parties involved.  I still cannot tell if it will be or not.

Now that I am home, I feel a bit lost as far as what I should be doing, both with my work and  my book binding charity….Bound for Freedom."

Dear Miss Tick,

Well!  I wonder what was behind that big blowout, throw-up, etc? 

Out with the old…violently, if need be?   And in with the new, I see…

What did your poor (very Christian) mom think of all that?!

Seeing as you managed to drink enough to obliterate (or at least try to) all your unpleasant memories of late and since you are about to tackle the problems connected to your charity and your work, my first advice to you would be to say that there is no further befuddlement allowed!  The medicine I would apply right now is to find your sneakers and pound pavement until you sweat out the rest of the alcohol and get your mind and body put back together…

You will need some clarity for what lies ahead.  

Give yourself some discipline…just to regain your balance…not to punish.  
No whining, please...

As for your new housemates…it would be better if you didn't enmesh yourself further.  

It is a waste of your energy, especially as you might prefer this new distraction 

to doing your own work of waking up!  

Let their chaos be their chaos. 

It is time to find some healthy boundaries, miss bound for freedom.   

Hmmm….another message lies in there, perhaps.

No befuddlement,

Deb

Miss Tick ..her story

Our Miss Tick was freshly hatched from her university studies when we met some years ago.

She was newly married to a monkish young fellow student.  They were part 

of a group of young idealists who were embarking on an experimental lifestyle comprised of such things as living sustainably, communal living, shared economies, and recycling everything from water to compost to dumpster food. 

As she tells it,  "We were doing our best to educate (and un-educate) each other and ourselves as to the most manageable ways to navigate our lives as 'adults', and were finding it hard to apply the academic concepts, church-fed dogma, and all of the other information we had spent the last 4 years gobbling up, into the reality of post-college life."

They moved into an old rundown farmhouse, where they quickly procured roommates, chickens, a rooster,  2 big dogs, barn cats and the like.  

In their enthusiasm, a creepy landlord, dilapidated  heating and other items 

were overlooked.

And so began the big adventure of creating  intentional community, living off the land, eating locally, organically and all the rest.  

In addition, Miss Tick was providing hospice care to a dying woman, mothering her brood of chickens, as well as stray friends, cats and anyone else who might need her care.  She also headed up a co op of gals crafting books to save poor Indian women. She studied midwifery, herbalism, and religions.  Oh my!

  

Now what she had intended to accomplish can be summed up in her words, 

"I was grateful to be so far out in the country because it took me away from so many of my friends and gave me the most alone time I had ever experienced.  That is not much considering  I was living and spending most of my waking time with other people, but it still felt liberating to be so far away from the people who I had seen almost every single day for the last 5+ years."

"At the farm, breakfasts were usually eaten together and we had mandatory communal meals and 'family time' every night that had to be home-cooked and made with food that was found or grown…or at least local, organic and cruelty-free." 

Miss Tick seemed to have put herself in charge of managing these arrangements and holding everything together. 

As time went on various frictions emerged. Their relations became increasingly strained and unhappy.  Affections waned among housemates, and soon, new love interests were added to the already cramped space. To make matters worse, they had not signed up for intentional community and were simply there to freeload and live with their prospective partners.  Things were getting increasingly out of hand.

Miss Tick was becoming exceedingly irritated with this state of things.  
In fact, others would attest that she stayed pretty irritated for the better part of that year.  

She was blazing on the inside and trying to be 'oh so nice and reasonable' on the outside.

Things deteriorated rather speedily on all fronts. Their happy family was coming unglued, disputes ensued and no amount of communal negotiations brought them any closer to their dream of peace and tranquility and the inspired life.

As Miss Tick sardonically concluded  ..

"One big happy family, in the middle of nowhere, with a log burning stove and a dozen angry chickens."

 So, dear Deb.  There is a peek into the setting in which that dream came into my life. 

Love, --The Ticked One

ticked off Miss Tick

Dear Miss Tick,

Have you given any thought to the possibility that this dream might be a pun on being "ticked off"?

Are you letting annoyances and irritations build up unawares? 

emotions....what emotions?

Our earnest miss tick had told me precious little about her emotions,
preferring, as was her inclination, to hit the books. 

I would think that such a dream would evoke all kinds of startling emotions!

An army of assailants slipping up on her unawares, sucking blood, no less!

And the work that we had done...was it the catalyst?  

What kind of power animal was this?

I would press her further...perhaps invite ticks into my own dreams
to share their wisdom...

Tick Bites

I proceeded to ask miss tick a little more about her dream.  
What were the emotions?

Emotions are often the most important indicator in dreams. 
This is not a time to pin down facts, though they may be helpful later. 
Dream information is very specific even at its most surreal...
and especially at its most unsettling...

Here is what she shared:

As far as the nervous system dream... I just keep remembering how sensitive I was.

Everything hurt.  Well...it did not hurt like falling off of a bike, or stubbing a toe..

It was more of an OVERWHELMING feeling...like my whole body was

being shocked every time I moved. 

I have no solid "this means this".  

But it was phenomenal, and connected to the work that you did...the day after I saw you. 

I had a dream full of ticks. They were everywhere!

  

I woke up feeling a little sorry for myself, that instead of a mighty wolf,

or majestic hawk, the animal-totem visiting me was a TICK!  AH!

Of course, the Internet had no helpful interpretation....

but I came up with a list of attributes of a tick and have been

allowing that to be an available symbol, both light and dark.

It makes me feel like there is an ornery presence at work on me.  

In a good way, a god way. 

Dear Miss Tick,

I have given some thought to your recent dream.  
I do find the subject matter fascinating.... 

Ticks... of all things! 

You seem to be assailed by them to the exclusion of everything else...

(now privately, dear reader, I had to chuckle rather a lot at the thought of our
excitable miss tick flailing helplessly and haplessly at her little message bearers. 

I had no idea that she had pursued this particular line of inquiry. 
She is is an earnest sort and I am not surprised that Spirit took her up
on her request. 

Of course, one must be careful what one pleads for...

Imagine her embarrassment at the lowly tick!  As she quite properly acknowledged,
she would not easily be rid of them.    Now what has the dear girl gotten us into?)

Ticks! Ticks! Ticks! - the dream...

I was in the front year of our old house, that falling down farm in Danville. 
The yard was tall grass, un-mowed and unkempt as it often was,while we lived there
 without a proper mower, or the care to upkeep. 

We were walking out the front door and into the yard.  Maybe it was just me walking,
but I feel like someone was out just ahead of me to the left just a few yards away. 
Was I going out to get the laundry off the line?
Some surely unimportant important task had me hurrying about in my old usual way. 

Then, suddenly... there were ticks everywhere.  They appeared in an instant. 
Every single piece of grass had one or two climbing up it.  I looked down in horror to realize
that they were already all over me as well, starting up my shoes and socks, my pant legs.
Soon I was as covered as the grass and the trees. 

It was like a temporary plague, struck down on my dreaming self.

I had been asking for a dream with my animal totem in it after our recent work.
I had of course been reading and researching about all of the majestic and respectable ones,
the noble and noteworthy kind. 
"Give me a tiger, a red-tailed hawk, a bear or an owl," I thought. 
"Well... give me whatever my totem is!  Just please make it one of these..."

Then, they came. The ticks. I got ticks! 

The message was clear: Ticks.  Ticks.  Ticks. 

There was not just one tick, as one could easily be brushed aside by my ego and conscious
mind as an anomaly, something that somehow snuck into my dreaming life. 

No, this was blatant, unmistakable and too loud and blood-hungry a mass to ignore.

Dear Miss Tick

Congratulations on your recent discovery.  Finding one's totem animal is a thrilling part of the journey...

I can imagine that you were somewhat dismayed and confused by what has come
to you in your dream, but I have no doubt that we will tease out its
meaning in your life.

As you say, you had a dream in which you were fairly covered with these troublesome creatures.

I, too, was a bit surprised at your report, although I will confess that my own
totem animal was also quite a shocker!
More about that later...

I can only imagine your distress as they pounced from all directions....

Please do you make yourself a cup of nice hot tea....  I will do the same.
And then we will see what can be learned...

Until then, with a little smile, I now dub thee  'Miss Tick'.....