Me Too

I woke up early this morning in the middle of the strangest dream.  I was either a detective or a CSI, working a serial killer case and we were trying to figure out if we'd be able to get a finger print off a plastic bag.  One of the detectives said they were looking at a potential accomplice but they were having trouble tracking him down. They wanted to know if I had been in touch with him because they knew he was someone I used to work with.  When they told me his name, he truly WAS someone I used to work with and he was the man who sexually harassed me at my first job out of college.  I told the detective I hadn't spoken to him since he left the company many decades ago and he said something about how karma had already come back around for him.  And then I woke up.

I laid there processing the dream for a while, wondering why he had shown up in my dream. Was the Universe letting me know that karma really had come back around for him?  Or was there some other message?

Unlike others in the MeToo Movement, I had been given the opportunity to speak up, my situation had been addressed and he was let go from the company.  I didn't have any more triggers around him or the situation. Since it had all been resolved, there wasn't a lingering feeling of injustice.

At the time there was, because his peers and the executives in our division ignored all the signs that he was harassing women . . . that is until they wanted to get rid of him for different reasons and then suddenly they all seemed to recall that maybe there had been harassment issues they should look into. They immediately called me into HR - not because they really cared about what they suspected I had been through - but because they knew it would help build a case against him.  And yet even though I was upset about that at the time, I had worked through all those emotions and had made my peace with how it had all unfolded.

So why was this coming up in my dreams?  Was there something else for me to see?

Thinking back to that time when I was an insecure 23 or 24 year old, I remembered how he laughed at me when I tried to stand up for myself.  I told him that if he didn't stop all the inappropriate behavior, I was going to report him to HR and he said "Go right ahead, who do you think they'll believe?  Someone like me with decades of professional experience? or some blonde bimbo fresh out of college?"

It definitely shut me down at the time, but in the years since then I had found my voice and my self esteem. Recalling his words no longer cause any emotional triggers in me so what else was I being shown?

As I continued to let my thoughts drift, I thought about the term "serial" in my dream and I remembered getting a look at his resume after he was let go.  I recall how stunned I was to see that in his 25 year career, he had already worked at about 13 companies.  My gut said that he was a serial harasser and I wondered why no one ever stopped him.  Further still, I remember how disappointed I was when I went to HR to speak to them about it and was told that HR laws prohibited them from telling a potential employer why he had left the company. That meant that the laws protected him and he could continue to go from one company to the next, harassing women again and again.

But why was this coming up now?

Then the next piece clicked into place.  Less than 24 hours earlier, I had received an email from the President of the college I went to all those years ago. It was a letter to all students and alumni apologizing for the fact that it had now come to light that the Jesuit retirement center on our campus had been housing priests that were on "supervised safety plans."  These priests that had been credibly accused of abuse towards men, women and children had been quietly moved from location to location, where they were credibly accused again . . . ultimately "retiring" on our campus. I felt nauseous while I was reading the email. There was my trigger.

The piece that still has a charge for me is the fact that church laws and corporate HR laws protect the abusers.  A person can go from company to company or from parish to parish and never have to reveal why they were asked to leave and therefore the abuse cycle continues.  No one is required to tell the truth but they are complicit in their silence. There is so much damage that is done through the "silence" that is supported by their internal "law."

Now I understood what the dream was about and I could see that I was being nudged to heal this last piece . . . the injustice I still feel over the protection the abusers get instead of protecting the abused.

I realize at first glance, this may not appear to have anything to do with animal communication or Reiki so you may wonder why I am writing about this in my blog.  I am sharing this because I have learned that the things that come up for us, in our dreams, in our seemingly unimportant interactions and in our random thoughts come up for a reason.  We are always being shown where our thoughts, beliefs and experiences are holding us back.  If we are willing to look at them, they can be a roadmap for us . . . to show us something that needs to be healed and released or to show us a next step in our journey.

The key is to slow down enough to notice these nudges.  I didn't slow down enough yesterday to notice my reaction when I read the email from my old college.  I just forwarded it on to my best friend from college with a note that said "Can you believe this?" but I didn't stop to think about the fact that I really had been triggered by it.  Fortunately I got another nudge during my dream state.  Sometimes I don't notice these nudges until I get the third piece of the puzzle or the fourth.  It honestly doesn't matter how long it takes us to notice these nudges and put the puzzle pieces together, as long as we eventually do.