What if you don't remember ?

What happens when a dream gets erased instead of postponed.

She Doesn’t Remember Her Dreams. And That Made Me Furious.

Something happened during a live conversation on Substack that stopped everything cold.

A woman said she doesn’t remember her dreams.

Not that she gave them up. Not that life got in the way. Not that they changed shape over time or quietly evolved into something else.

She doesn’t remember them at all.

As if they never existed.

That’s fury, plain and simple.

Not at her. Never at her.

At the system that buried them so completely she forgot they were ever there.

Here’s what gets believed, wholly and holy, without hesitation or apology.

Every single one of us is born with something uniquely ours. Something wired in. Something meant to be offered, built, tended, created, explored, or contributed during this time here.

It does not have to be impressive. It does not have to make money. It does not have to be visible or marketable or worthy of applause. It does not have to save the world or justify its existence to anyone.

It could be inventing something. Writing. Teaching. Gardening. Driving a school bus. Fixing engines. Holding steady when other people fall apart. Making broken things work again.

It does not matter what the thing is.

What matters is that it exists.

And for women especially, life has been remarkably efficient at covering it up.

Here’s how it happens.

Dreams show up young. Maybe sketched out on napkins or scribbled in notebooks. Maybe told to a best friend. Maybe kept secret, tucked away like a private promise.

Then life starts asking for things.

A career. A partner. Children. A house. Aging parents. Someone else’s emergency. Someone else’s needs. Someone else’s timeline that somehow becomes yours.

And competence sets in. Spectacular competence.

Middle management of other people’s lives becomes the job. Children, homes, schedules, emotions, logistics, relationships, all of it running so smoothly nobody even notices it’s a machine.

The plan is always to come back to yourself later. When things settle down. When the kids are older. When there’s time.

But time is a liar.

Because one day, it stops.

The kids are grown. The marriage may or may not still be there. Travel doesn’t light things up the way expected. Shopping feels hollow. Even volunteering feels like more management.

And in the quiet, the question finally arrives.

Now what?

Let’s be very clear about something.

Now what is not “find a hobby.”

Now what is not “stay busy.”

Now what is not “be grateful for what you have and stop wanting more.”

Now what is this.

Where did you go?

Because that dream did not disappear.

It was buried.

Time does not close the door to our dreams. We do that ourselves. Under obligation. Under expectation. Under decades of being told, explicitly or implicitly, that our desires were selfish, our ambitions impractical, our hunger for something of our own somehow wrong.

So the feeding stopped.

And eventually, remembering it was ever there stopped too.

But here’s what else gets believed.

It can be found again.

Not by forcing. Not by manifesting. Not by turning into someone shiny and unrecognizable.

But by remembering.

By listening.

By allowing enough stillness for what was always there to tap you on the shoulder again.

Here’s what that looked like firsthand.

Sixty-six years old. Flat on the back. Three months of COVID. Savings gone. Life stripped down to nothing.

And in that stillness — not the peaceful kind, the desperate kind — something started getting heard that hadn’t been heard in decades.

A soul.

Not with words. With nudges.

Paint. Write. Stop managing this life like it’s someone else’s emergency.

No way to know if any of it would earn a living. No way to know if anyone would care. No way to know if it was too late.

Just the growing certainty that ignoring it wasn’t possible anymore.

So it started small. Two minutes sitting in a chair. No agenda. Just sitting.

Then painting. Then writing. Then offering it all without apology.

7,000 subscribers — not because of a plan.

Because the thing that was always mine stopped getting buried.

We are living longer than our mothers and grandmothers ever did. Which means this chapter, this second half, this now-what season, is not an afterthought.

It’s a reckoning.

A chance to reclaim what was buried. To remember what got forgotten. To give yourself permission to want something again.

And yes, talking about how to find a dream you don’t remember having matters.

Because the idea that a woman could live an entire life managing everyone else’s needs and never reclaim her own is enough to make anyone furious.

That conversation isn’t finished.

So here’s where it starts.

For the woman who doesn’t remember her dreams: sit for two minutes this week. Alone. Quiet.

Don’t meditate. Don’t journal. Don’t do anything.

Just sit.

Notice what whispers show up when productivity, management, or guilt aren’t drowning them out.

And most importantly: don’t give a fig about what anyone else thinks in this moment.

Conditioning runs deep on that one — the what will they think reflex gets trained into most of us early, and it doesn’t serve anyone well.

Here’s an image that helps, at least in quiet moments like these: picture the queen of a castle, watching an enemy approach in the distance. The guards pull up the drawbridge. The enemy can’t cross the moat.

That’s the move. Whatever the enemy is this week — judgment, comparison, the internal committee of everyone else’s opinions — the drawbridge goes up before it gets anywhere near the moment.

Feel free to build a different image entirely. This one just happens to work, every single time.

Then proceed to sit with yourself.

Maybe it’s something loved at twelve. Maybe it’s a career walked away from. Maybe it’s something never said out loud.

Whatever it is, don’t judge it. Don’t dismiss it. Don’t ask if it’s practical.

Just say hello.

That’s step one.

And there’s company for the rest of the steps, right here.

Seventy years old. Living proof it’s not too late.

It never was.

If any of this stirred something loose — anger, relief, recognition, or that quiet maybe I’m not done feeling — there’s a next step waiting, not a program, not a performance.

Two resources live on the perks page for exactly this moment: Building Trust With Yourself, for learning to sit with what gets whispered once the drawbridge goes up. And Reclaiming Your Dreams, for the woman ready to go looking for what got buried. No urgency drama here, just an open door.

Perks are offered to all paid members. If you haven’t snagged your copies yet, they are they for you. If you decided you want to join today, you’ll get at 20% disount on your annual subscription as well as acess to the perks.

If you decided you want to join today, you’ll get at 20% disount on your annual subscription as well as acess to the perks.

And if something in this piece made you pause, nod, or feel a little less alone — please give it a heart before you go. That one small tap tells the algorithm this conversation matters. It puts these words in front of another woman who needs to hear them today. She's out there. Help me find her.