Dream lands Shannon in the soup bowl
The dreams that fetch up unexpectedly in our sleep at night are like shadows on a wall.
We know they’re not real yet it’s hard to avoid the feeling they’re trying to tell us something, that their shapes correspond to something palpable just beyond our present senses, promising or threatening to materialize at any moment.
That’s how Shannon MacKinnon reacted when she dreamt, in 2012, about her very close friend Pitrice Powell, who died tragically in 2011 of a brain aneurysm, age 19.
“It was strange to wake up from it,” says Shannon, who’s always had vivid, colourful dreams. “I was confused and a little scared.”
In the dream Pitrice basically scolded Shannon for stalling along the road of life, for succumbing to defeatism and self-pity.
“I wrestled with it for two years,” says Shannon, an aspiring writer and actress living in Mount Hope.
Then she turned the dream into soup. Chicken soup. She worked it up as a written reflection; shortly after she did, she serendipitously noticed a call for submissions from a huge publishing franchise. The theme: Dreams and premonitions.
She sent in the piece, called “Her Final Lesson.” It was selected, from among 5,000 candidates, and this winter it appears in “Chicken Soup for the Soul: Dreams and Premonitions.” The book is already a bestseller.
Shannon tells me the dream happened during a low point for her. She’d graduated top of her class in the acting program at Seneca College in Toronto. She had high hopes, but the acting life is brutal and her auditions failed to produce roles. She moved back in with her parents in Mount Hope. There was a failed romance as well.
“I had a 4.0 grade point average and was thinking this is going to be great, and the ego gets in the way. Then I was in shock. This is harder than I thought. What do I do?
“It was a big adjustment, missing my friends from college. And I’d gotten dumped.”
Here’s how she puts it in her story in “Chicken Soup For The Soul.”
“I avoided seeing my friends … my life was going downhill and I had no energy to do anything. Then one night, after spending another day feeling sorry for myself, I went to bed and fell asleep. I awoke in a room that was completely white. There was no furni- ture. In the corner of the room, Pitrice stood quietly, staring at me.”
In the dream, Shannon vents about how hard her life is, when Pitrice explodes with disbelief. “YOU ARE STILL HERE! Move forward.”
Shannon, who works as an environmental aid at Juravinski Hospital, says the dream affected her. She writes: “… I’ve been appreciating my life more … Simple things like the taste of food and the feeling of the sun on my skin became special as I realized I was still here to appreciate them.”
She’s pushing herself more, taking acting workshops, writing in various forms, including children’s stories.
When she feels frustrated, she thinks of the dream.
“In high school, when I first started writing, Pitrice was the only one I’d show it to. She was good at giving feedback … without destroying you.”
(Ironically, when she later showed some work to another friend, he called it a little too “chicken-soup-for-the-soul.”)
Shannon says that Pitrice, whom she’d known since Grade 6, was full of wisdom and intelligence.
Shannon was one of three friends, along with Gwen Gordon and Kaitlin O’Shea, who spoke at Pitrice’s funeral.
She didn’t tell Pitrice’s mom, Liz Powell, about the piece.
“I didn’t know how to bring it up.” But when the book appeared she showed it to Liz, and the tears poured.
Shannon’s been getting lots of feedback on the piece on Facebook and Twitter and has had responses from as far away as Dubai.
With dreams, it seems, you just never know.
I avoided seeing my friends … my life was going downhill and I had no energy to do anything.
SHANNON MACKINNON