Hey, everyone! I'm new...obviously. New to the site and new to lucid dreaming, but not new to the dreaming world in general. Recently I've been reflecting on some of the things I've experienced, and decided it was time to do a little exploration. Lucid dreaming seems like the next logical step in my adventure...

Starting from late childhood, I frequently had extremely vivid (and often very telling) dreams. I never had any problem remembering them. When I became a teenager, my dreaming intensified, so I started studying the dream world--checking out books, buying a dream dictionary, practicing recall and suggestion. I quickly found that I could often find strong and sometimes predictive messages in my dreams. When my friends found out about this newfound talent, they started asking me to interpret their dreams, which I was able to do with astounding accuracy, but which took a horrible toll on me. Because dream interp. is such a personal experience, I almost had to crawl into their heads to fish out what was going on, and I soon found that their dreams (and nightmares) were becoming mine. It was frightening and emotionally draining, so I relinquished my recalling and taught myself how to block out my dreams, and did pretty well for years...

Until I got pregnant. At 6 months pregnant, my ex-fiance had long since taken off and I was involved with someone who has some interesting abilities of his own I won't get into right now. Unable to control my dreaming anymore, I started to embrace it again. It was two things that happened during this unique time that has set me on a quest to delve into dreaming.

One night I had a dream that I will never, ever forget--it was that real. I dreamed that I saw my daughter (this was before I knew it was a girl), and she was laying on a pillow in the floor, and I called the man I was involved with at the time. Ten seconds later, the dream had switched, and I was looking down at my little girl at about 2-years-old. I saw EVERY DETAIL of her face--big eyes that alternated between dark brown like mine, and a very intense, almost gold color I had never seen before, puffy pink cheeks, and lips that looked like little ribbons. And the most intense part of the dream--I FELT her say "Mommy," and I felt more loved than I ever had or have since. When I told the guy I was seeing, he flipped out. When I finally calmed him down, he told me he had the exact same dream...when Jaime was born, the first thing I noticed was her little, ribbon-like mouth--exactly the way I had pictured her.

About a week or so after that, this same guy (who, interestingly enough, has left me for someone else), appeared to me in my dreams. I'd tell you that it was just my imagination, but I somehow know it wasn't. In the middle of the night, I was in my bed in my bedroom (I'm honestly not sure whether I was awake or asleep, to tell you the truth). He appeared as a manifestation of himself--I could tell it was him, and the form was loosely in his shape, but it glowed yellow and light green, was floating about 3 inches off the floor, and was transparent--he kind of looked like mello yello, if you want to imagine it that way. I can't remember everything he said to me, but we conversed, and then he stayed with me until I was asleep. The weirdest part? I'm almost sure this somehow really happened, but he doesn't remember it at all.

Anyway, I know that was long, and I apologize. But that's where I'm coming from--and hopefully I'll begin to understand more as I gain lucid experience. I've only had one or two lucid experiences that I recall, and in both of them the realization that I was in a dream came not long before I was jerked awake by one thing or another.

Nice to meet you all, and if you have any questions about me, feel free to ask! I'm an open book.