Delusional Dreams

Magic and community care to help the medicine go down

This is a reader-supported publication. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! If you’d like to become a paid subscriber and support this work financially, I’d really appreciate it!

The awaiting stage and packed audience of my most recent show. Nelson knows how to have a good time!

I’m a big fan of delusional dreams. 

Wild fantasies about what could be. Unrealistic imaginings. Turnabouts that compost the it-must-be-like-this in favour of liberating possibilities. 

I’ve always played in fields of wild dreaming. I blame my healthy childhood and hippie parents. The ol’ “you can be anything you want to be” fanfare. 

Sprinkle in a hero’s dose of privilege… being in that sandwich generation between GenX and Millennials, where we’re hella special, graced with gritty work ethic AND participation ribbons… an ethos of the American Dream meets New-Age-Bliss-Following… with an innovative personality that experiences greater security in freedom than stability and you’ve got yourself a gal set right up to pursue the unreasonable. 

I’m not mad about it.

Dreaming big is my soul language. Until it seeds feelings of disappointment and roots into identities of failure. Gotta be careful with those edges. But it’s the delusional, the magical, the unreasonable…they reveal paths and doors beyond the density and noise of what’s so.  

I’ve failed a lot. I’ve smashed about when the gap between vision and reality was just too far to travel, having to admit my eyes were hungry beasts, or worse, that I’d been compelled by hungry ghosts. More painful have been the tender and humble reckonings that I simply lacked the capacity to carry certain dreams through to the end.

One of the gifts of youth is time stretches in front of you with such volume it seems to dilute risk. Promises of recovery from mistakes and the ability to course correct are inherent with believing we have time, so much unlived life left to make something of ourselves and our visions. 

I lived with more time scarcity in my twenties than I do now, but I also lived with far wider possibilities of what could be. This is an important distinction that comes with wisdom, both dangerous and liberating. No time to mess around with shadow priorities, but also there’s a seductive voice that can say it’s too late for delusional dreams, gotta be all practical and shizz.

There’s a different texture to middle age, a growing intimacy with mortality. At times I feel excruciating grief about all the visions, dreams, experiences and possibilities that will never come to pass. For a few years there, I just felt too damn tired to dream. The imagination carried with it the reality of what it takes to get things done. Lead weights and who the heck has the energy for that? 

And yet, delusional, audacious dreams are portals to aliveness, to time bending. Being a bit delulu has unfolded into wild, wonderful, creative and unexpected opportunities, connections and successes throughout my adult life and I’m in a delusional comeback these days. 

I dig it. 

My grandmother was loud and ferocious and seemed to have spent so much of her lifeforce trying to be appropriate and smaller. Her kids always say she was ahead of her time. God, what would her life have been if she had been allowed to go on birth control? I mean, no one is complaining about the 8 kids she had, because that crew is rad and I’m so lucky to have a big beautiful family full of aunts, uncles and cousins, but goodness she had an edge she was always smoothing out and I bet she had dreams no one knew about. 

When I was little people told me I was just like her, which always had a hint of ‘tone it down, you’re too much’.  But I knew. She had power. She passed it on. I don’t want to waste it on trying to be smaller. 

Before I get out on stage to talk about eating disorders and burnout and love and the relentless pursuit of self-improvement and the state of my post-birth vaginal wall and make all the damn dick-jokes I please, I call her in. “Jesus H Christ, Grandma, help me cast a spell! Let’s do it for all the women who couldn’t say what they wanted or share about what it was really like.” 

I’m still working on uncensoring. Writing and performing this show is like an ongoing practice of that very edge. It’s a process that’s really helped me care less about other people’s judgements. In part, because I belong to myself in a way I never have. But also because I’ve grown a trusted community near and far to whom I belong. People I can make mistakes with, can let my guard down with, ask for help and deeply receive from. People I can champion, show up for, cheer on and take care of. Community care matters. I become more of who I am as an individual the deeper I belong to the collective. 

This past spring, when I was just getting my show on her feet, I participated in my friend Rachael’s Business Witchery. The next round is open for enrollment. I’m an affiliate (which means if you register, I get thank-you-witch money) and I highly recommend it. 

The first thing I loved about it is that it’s not a course or program. I told Rachael I did not want to learn anything, I just wanted to dig into the depths of intention and magic and call in seen and unseen support. I wanted to feed my aliveness through ritual. 

In a world that insists our value is tied to productivity (it’s not), showing up ON A MONDAY to do rituals and not all that other stuff on my to-do list felt SUBVERSIVE. That alone burned some tentacles in my psyche. 

One of my favourite moments was during a ritual when we seeded dreams. And I seeded one that felt like a DELUSIONAL dream. So delusional I didn’t want to tell anyone, obvi, because I am a rational, professional and reasonable person who has dependants. And sharing delusional dreams is supposed to be embarrassing because who do you think you are and all that poison. Don’t say it out loud because everyone already knows that obviously I’m too old and too fat and too amateur to be able to go big with a new craft. 

But I can tell you. 

The little torn and scrumpled paper said “soft seat theatres and network specials”. I could keep it in my cringing embarrassed little heart. Until Rachael put us IN BREAKOUT ROOMS.

And you know what happened? I said it out loud. And people responded with “Oh I can totally see that for you. Why not?” You know what happens to delusional dreams in the listening of trusted others? They start to take shape. People organize around them. You start honing your radar for encouragement and burning doubt in the flames of the cauldron. 

This show I wrote was born out of a period of deep burnout and a groan of a gasp seeking creative recovery. It was a tether. Never something I thought I’d finish or perform. Now it animates my most delusional dreams. And I’m surrounded by covens and communities holding and fanning that dream.

This past Friday was my biggest show yet, about 200 people. Small to some. But to me, in this whole new thing I’ve never done before, it was a new level of energy. Not only could I meet and work with the energy in the room, I could feel, in an embodied way, how much bigger a room I could easily hold. I’ve spoken to far larger crowds, but not like this. This was an interchange that felt so wildly pleasurable, I entered a state of interconnected love I’ve rarely experienced.

Getting to make art where I say what I want to say and play with language, craft, energy, and the relational field in new and enlivening ways is the best medicine. And then getting to witness people laughing and crying, then huddling in circles to process what the hell they just heard. Getting to dance with them and chat with them and hear about their pains and gains and relatable life paths and how they cried in the forest afterwards or started therapy or went back to work or extended their mat leave, or feel like they actually like themselves and have permission to be who they fully are for the first time in their lives. Holy shit. That wasn’t even part of the delusional dream, but it trumps everything. 

When I turned 40 and was very tired I wondered if I had any more delusional dreams to pursue. I’m glad I went for one and gathered the witches to help me stick with it. 

Magic, delusion and a deep dedication to showing up and doing the work, that’s what I’m celebrating. And all the people around me mustering the courage, over and over, to dream, to share, to build, to cheer each other on. That’s how we’re going to build new worlds. Together. 

Do you have a delusional dream? Tell me about it. Tell me in the comments or if you’ve never said it out loud and want someone to hold it with reverence, send me a private message. Seeds start underground and in the dark. 

Love,

Chela

PS - If you think you might like to coven up, witch out, uncensor, seed visions get hella brave about what you want to make in the world, go check out Business Witchery 

PPS - if you’re in or near Vancouver BC and want to catch my show, A Little Bit Much, I perform Saturday October 26. The evening show is sold out, but there are 13 tickets left for the 4pm.

PPPS - Time Sensitive - My friend Jen is conducting research interviews today/tomorrow with a very specific type of dreamer. You an idea person / creative entrepreneur with a lot going on who needs some help with execution? If your big dreams could use some non-punitive structure, take this pre-interview survey — it takes 60 seconds.