I wanted to share a page in my art journal today that can also be used by you as a dreamcatcher coloring page. Many people are fascinated by dreamcatchers. They are beautiful and seem to have an interesting history behind them, which I will talk a little more about below.
The reason I found myself drawing a dream catcher in my art journal one day is because I have a lot of sleep issues that are the result of grief. I want to make a separate article that goes more extensively into the ways that grief can affect our sleep but for now, I just wanted to share that I do have sleep problems because of it and it’s very possible someone visiting this site also has them. Naturally, if you do, you should go talk to your doctor, especially if they’re really bad and don’t seem to be getting any better. There’s nothing wrong with you, it’s just that grief has probably rewired your brain and this can be one of the side effects of that trauma.
I have a lot of nightmares that still haven’t let up since I lost my spouse in 2016. After putting it off for years, thinking that I had to give it time and eventually it would get better, I finally went to my own doctor to get some help.
My Dreamcatcher in My Art Journal
As part of my own personal self care, I keep an art journal and I like to share some of the pages here on this site from time to time. As I mentioned above, I drew a dreamcatcher design in here one day because I have so many sleep issues. I have never been the greatest sleeper anyway because I’m super sensitive to light and sound. I need it to be pitch black and completely silent in order to sleep. But after grief trauma occurred for me, I got a lot more anxiety and tons of nightmares. So, just to express my feelings over all of that, I found myself drawing a dream catcher in my art journal.
I picked purple, black, gold and silver because those colors resonated within me for sleeping, dreaming and also, the darkness that I was feeling. Since the idea of dream catchers is to snare bad dreams, I wrote down all of the feelings that show up in my nightmares then wrote the words within the web of my dream catcher design. You can click on it to see them up close if you’d like but here’s the list also:
- Unsettled
- Emptiness
- Despair
- Anger
- Grief
- Agony
- Home
- Sadness
- Rage
- Lonely
- Fear
I just enjoyed the idea of making something that was supposed to be symbolic of taking nightmares away. I liked the thought of all of those haunting emotions leaving me and getting caught in a web that was outside of my head and heart forever.
History
I realized that I don’t really know all that much about the history of dream catchers. So, I decided to do a little research and see what I could find. According to the New World Encyclopedia, the history surrounding dreamcatchers is kind of shrouded because of how much of Native American life was damaged by European colonization. But it appears that dream catchers may have originated in the Ojibwe Nation. They were constructed using red willow, dogwood and completed with feathers. And the idea was to promote good dreams, especially for babies, who have no defenses against them just yet. So, all the bad dreams are meant to become snared in the dream catcher web, while good ones are filtered through the hole in the center and drift down to the sleeper below through the feathers.
Actually, something interesting that I read on this page and did not know talks about how dream catchers were typically made with organic materials and were meant to disintegrate, not last forever, as kids reach adulthood. But dream catchers were not only for children. Families, in general, used them, which included the adults.
Dream catchers, over time, have increased quite a bit in popularity, since they became more widely accepted in the 60’s and 70’s but much of Native American culture now finds the idea to be lost in the over commercialization of them.
Dreamcatcher Legends
There are also two particular legends that are supposed to explain
the dream catcher history, another thing I did not know about them.
Ojibwe Legend: A grandmother finds that her grandson is about to kill a spider that is weaving its web and she stops him from doing so. In return for her kindness, the spider makes the grandmother a magic web that promises to keep all bad thoughts from entering her dreams at night.
Lakota Legend: A Lakota leader meets Iktomi, a teacher of great wisdom and also, a trickster, while having a spiritual vision on top of a high mountain. Iktomi appears to him in the form of a spider and while weaving a web, explains the cycle of life and how there are both good and bad forces that must be filtered through the web he was weaving. He instructed the Lakota leader to make these webs in order to do this for his people. But in this legend, it is the good dreams that are supposed to get caught in the web while the bad ones are filtered through the hole in the center.
Dreamcatcher. Visit the main page. (n.d.). https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Dreamcatcher
Color Your Own Dreamcatcher
Dreamcatcher Coloring Page Template
I am going to include the template that I drew myself for you to use if you’d like make one yourself. You can click the link above to print out a copy. This is a simple art activity that anyone can use. It is a good activity for children. Two of my children suffered from occasional nightmares surrounding the death of their father so using this coloring page can label that with some precision for kids suffering from grief while simultaneously letting adults know what it is. Kids sometimes have a lot of trouble explaining exactly what they’re feeling, which is why this can help with that.
I colored my own dreamcatcher to symbolically catch all of my bad dreams. If you are having any troubled dreams as well, write what you’d like to be free of within the web.
But if you’d like to follow the Lakota legend above, which does the opposite, you are welcome to list what good dreams you’d like to have in the web, if that appeals to you more instead.
Benefits
I wish I could tell you that by having a dreamcatcher or just by drawing and coloring one in an art journal magically took all of my nightmares away. It did not. But it allowed me some peaceful and relaxed expression in the moment to pinpoint what it was that I was experiencing during sleep and wished would at least give me a break.
If you have an art journal, too, this is a great activity to devote a page to. But otherwise, just doing it on its own separate piece of paper and then having something to share with your grief support group or therapist, or family or friends, can help them understand some of the emotions that may be troubling you during the present moment. Especially, if they’re entering your sleep.
As someone who has suffered from ongoing sleep issues surrounding grief, let me remind you, again, to follow up with a medical professional if you are also suffering from this problem. Because, as I will say over and over, there is nothing wrong with you. You’ve just got grief.
If you did color a dreamcatcher and would like to share it with me, send it on over to nikki@grievingarts.com. Or, if you’d like to share the dreams you’d like to go away or the good ones you’d like to stay, you can leave those in the comments below. I’m always happy to support you in your journey.
As always, take care of yourself,
Nikki