My instincts are so powerful that they form a deep part of my subconsious, a subconsious that is there for the good of all our animal young. Survival of the species, survival of the fittest. Those with the most powerful instincts will save their young and bring them to adult maturity. My instincts drive me to protect, warn, hunt down, track every danger, obstacle, intrusion which may prevent me from following through on my mothering. These instincts are so powerful that I spend every night dreaming of my children. Every night in my sleep I am looking for them, tracking their movements, sniffing out danger, hunting down intruders, finding my way to them to protect them from danger, fighting anyone in my way to help them in their distress. I am mistrustful, hyper alert, viscious if they are being threatened, fearless, courageous and 100% determined that they will survive at all costs. My own life is unimportant, I would die fighting for my children with not a moment’s hesitation. Their survival and well-being is more important than my last breath.

I grieve for them daily, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. They are alive but not under my protection, I am helpless against intruders, I am unable to nourish them, to comfort them, to teach them and guide them. My life has become half shadow even in bright sunshine. They are not dead, so I am not fully grieving yet I feel like a member of a herd whose young has gone missing and crying out for them to come back to me. I feel like an animal in a cage in a zoo with her young in another compound. I feel like I am pacing, pacing, pacing in circles, with a hunger in my stomach, restless and unable to settle.

Animal children’s instincts are set to seek protection from their mother. To find nourishment and comfort from them, to follow them, to be guided and taught by them, to return to them at night for safety and protection.

How does it feel for them to return to an empty nest? Animal young often die without their mother or fail to thrive. Some literally wither and die as they lose the will to live. They lack skills to defend themselves. They cannot hunt as effectively. They don’t know where to find the best catch or how to find a mate or worse, how to mother their own children as they’ve lost their role model and teacher. Any nature programme teaches these fundamentals and we all accept them as true for animals. Why do we question it for humans?

Male animals in the majority of species are not the primary carer. They don’t chose to stay with their young and do the nurturing. Even when they choose to stick with the mother of their young, they are distant and uninvolved; their role is hunter-gatherer. THey will fight for their children, yes, and often to the death with an overriding instinct to protect mother and child. No-one doubts that the male of the species is a fundamental part of the pack.

But they are not the nurturers. They are not the one that the child seeks out for comfort, even when both parents are present. This is not the way all baby animals are wired – they are wired to be with their mothers.

We all know and accept these fundamental instincts of animal behaviour. Why do we think that homo sapiens are so fundamentally different that these animal instincts and behaviour no longer matter? We are animals to the core. Only our “sophisticated” brain tells us otherwise. Our instincts don’t listen to our brain. That’s why we have them – they are there to overide the brain, to keep us alive and protect us even when our brain misinforms us.

I won’t settle. I won’t give up. I won’t stand aside and watch another person mother my children. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO.

Dream diary:

Friday 23rd Oct: I dream that I am at a school function with some of the parents; we are waiting for the children to come in to eat lunch at the buffet. I am looking out for my son, oblivious of anything else going on around me. I say to the Chef” you see, Chef, it’s vital that my son eats before the others, he’s got diabetes, he must eat first and eat well….” I spot him and hurry him to the front of the queue and make sure that his plate is piled high with all the best of the food. I settle him down to eat with his friends whilst I go back to see what’s left of the food. Very little. The chef tells me he’s put some aside but when I uncover the plate, the food has gone. Nothing. I go hungry…..but at least I know my son is eating…

Sat 24th October: I dream that I’m skiing with the children in an unknown skiing area. There are very few people around so it gives all of us room to ski really well. We are in the midst of a strange mountainous areas of craggy rocks with deep cravaces to large, expanses of snow. We are clearly in an off-piste area with much of the snow being fresh with no ski marks on it….The sun is out and the day is beautiful…all in all fantastic conditions to ski in.

My kids and I are happily skiing along when my youngest goes to near the edge. Before I can blink, she has fallen over the edge; I hear her screams as she falls. My pounding heart has leaped into my throat, I cannot breathe through panic. I make my way to the edge and look over…My worst fears are confirmed; she is lying face down in the snow at the bottom of the crevace.

She is dead…..

I awake sobbing, shaking, terrified……Thank God…….it’s a dream…..

I had dreamt that I had become a ghost. My ghost-self was able to be anywhere that my children were – it felt wonderful. If they were asleep in their room, I could sit on the end of the bed and just watch them sleeping. If they were sitting quietly reading a book, I could sit next to them mouthing the words alongside them and watch the expressions changing on their faces when they read a funny piece or a puzzling piece or simply watch them becoming drawn into a fantasy world. A world where I was too. I could run outside and play with them, chasing after a ball or just cheering them on…

Nobody would notice, so nobody could stop me. No-one could tell me that I shouldn’t be near my children. I could spend all day and all night with them. If I was lucky, they might become aware of my presence in a positive way and just feel comforted that their mum was with them then they could sleep soundly, assured in the knowledge that my love was all around them even when I was not physically able to hold them and cuddle them.

No wonder I awoke crying…..it’s simply a dream and not a possibility…..

[Don't worry - I'm not suicidal. Far from it, I would never do that to my kids and I feel no reason to do it since making a full recovery]

I dread going to sleep nowadays. Most nights I dream about missing my children, about them being taken away, about them being in trouble and not being able to help them, about having to witness their tears and not be able to wipe them away, about them growing up without me, forgetting that they had a mum. I can only sleep with a sleeping tablet and then I still wake up fretting with a dread in my stomach and memories of the dreams I’ve had floating in and out in the early hours.

I never tell the children I have these dreams. When they tell me of their own bad nightmares, they tell of dreams of me having my head chopped off or about being eaten by a giant spider or about being kidnapped and me not coming to rescue them. My youngest wakes up scared that I really have had my head chopped off and is constantly scared that her dream will come true. She’s fretting about whether I’m safe and whether I will die. No matter how much reassurance I give her, she’s not convinced that I’m alright. She’s often telling me that she loves me “to the moon, and all the way around the universe and every atom in the universe!…..” but then goes on to ask how much I love her, seeking constant reassurance that I do.

My son is being teased at school for the fact that his mum doesn’t live with him; they tease him in front of other boys saying “your mum doesn’t live with you” in a taunt, repeating it until my son has to walk away. What does he tell them? How does he explain? He can’t; he simply has to walk away, hurting. No other boy in the whole school has a mother who doesn’t live with her son. He has to nurse that hurt on his own. Unlike other children with divorced parents who can share their hurt, he can’t; his family story is different from everyone else’s. It’s acceptable to have a father living away, but there is no other mother who is……How does he explain that even to himself, let alone to anyone else….

No wonder we are all having nightmares; it is a nightmare, whether you are awake or asleep and there is no end in sight….this is not a dream, but a harsh reality that my children and I are living in and we won’t wake up to find that it’s just a dream…..it’s horribly real.

My daughter (6) keeps having nightmares where she is being kidnapped by some stranger and I don’t come to her rescue; I am nowhere to be found even though she’s crying out for me….She dreamt that she had been thrown into an empty room and nobody came to give her food and she was in the dark not knowing where anybody was…She dreams that I have had my head chopped off. She repeatedly asks me whether anyone is going to kill me or chop my head off and is worrying about whether I am safe or not. She dreams of coffins floating down a river…she dreams of being attacked by witches, or other creatures who are nasty and scary for her.

It is clear that the children are suffering anxiety as a result of their separation from me, their mum. The children are not currently seeing a psychologist so no diagnosis has been given to them regarding any PTSD but if the symptoms are the same then I am surmising that they too are suffering with it and should be getting some help with their trauma.

Two influential psychoanalysts – John Bowlby and Donald Winnicott – have written extensively about the concept of separation and attachment. They suggested that a large proportion of anxieties and mental health problems are associated with separation between infant and mother in childhood. Their suggestion is that separation is not only distressing for a baby but can also cause anxieties in later life. They proposed that premature separation can lead to insecurity, which can lead to hostility, and that this hostility can interfere with the processes determining subsequent growth and development. All of this is said to trigger mourning at an age when a child is too young to manage such feelings, meaning that a child may be stuck in a state of despair or depression. Dreams of suffocation, separation, loss and abandonment may therefore be informative as they can tell the dreamer of an unresolved separation in their family. This is when feelings of mourning or hostility towards the parent or other family figure have not yet been explored or dealt with.

Separation anxiety occurs when we have to confront the prospect of being separated from someone who is considered essential to our physical or emotional survival. Typically, separation anxiety occurs in relation to family members or partners as these are the people with whom we normally have the closest relationships; the anxiety may often be reflected in nightmares and disturbing dreams.

Dreams of suffocation or nightmare scenarios involving the separation, death or loss of a family member or spouse are often triggered by separation anxiety and in many instances they can offer clues to help manage and resolve these feelings in waking life. [Taken from "The Element Encyclopedia of 20,000 dreams" – Theresa Cheung].

I too am having nightmares – I dream of trying to find my children, of rescuing them from danger and of being ignored or unseen by others in the dream. The children are often in great danger yet I cannot reach them in my dream. I dreamt that my son was trapped under a collapsed building which had collapsed in an earthquake. The foundations of the building are sinking on top of him and he is crying out for me in desperation. I crawl under the building, calling out to him that I’m coming to get him but I can’t quite reach him – I hear his cries and please and the fear in his voice but I can’t quite get to him.

I dream of being unseen – a ghost to all around me including the children. These are typically of me being in my ex husband’s dream new home where he lives with the dream nanny/some other woman and the children are there. When I enter the room, they don’t see me; I talk to them, walk in front of them, sit next to them but it becomes apparent to me that I am invisible to them. I wander round the house unseen and unheard trying desperately to talk to or be with the children but they can’t see me so I am ignored. When they move from one room to another, I follow them into the different room hoping that they’ll see me in the room I’ve followed them into but they still don’t so I continue to remain invisible. There are domestic scenes of the children getting dressed, playing, eating their supper, tidying away their toys, but I cannot join in. I am left feeling helpless, tremendously sad, hurt, upset and feeling so terrible that I am there with my children but completely invisible so neither they nor I can be with each other. My dream of being a ghost meant that I could spend time with them without being told that I can’t be there….

I wake from these dreams sunk into a well of despair and have often woken up crying; I have started to cry in my dream and wake with the tears still flowing. I awake in shock and disbelief that my situation isn’t a dream and that I am living in a nightmare. I wake without my children in the house, without them coming jumping into my bed in the morning and to the silence of the house. I lie in bed for a while trying to come to terms with what has happened.  This usually takes me 2-3 hours in the following morning before I can function well enough again and then it plays on my mind for weeks at a time. I cannot get the images and feelings out of my mind.

Is this evidence that I am “mad”, “unstable” etc? If so, are my children “mad” too? Or are we all just suffering from being separated from each other?

My psychiatrist says that I am suffering from PTSD (Post traumatic stress disorder) and has given me sleeping tablets at night saying that these dreams usually stop after 6-8 months. It is his view that my experience of the Children’s Act proceedings, the subsequent judgement hearing and the separation from my children have all combined to cause me significant trauma and hence the diagnosis of PTSD. The research into PTSD states that, at first the dreams are incredibly intense and disturbing, but the sufferers report that these gradually become less vivid after around 6 – 9 months.

It has now been a year exactly since the judgement was handed down by the judge and I am still having these nightmares. How long will this continue?

The dream book referred to above is very useful to help understand the meaning of many of the dreams the children have and so I involve them with this interpretation; we look up the symbols of their dreams and then we talk about what their dreams might mean. This seems to help them put the “monsters”, the “baddies” and the horrible circumstances of their dreams (eg tidal waves, cracking ice, storms, lightning etc) into a context so that they can then understand what their dream is about. This reduces their anxiety. So, for example, if they dream about being carried away to sea by a tidal wave, I can explain to them that the sea is a very powerful expression of emotions – the stronger and more turbulent the sea is in the dream, the more powerful are their emotions. Once they understand this, they can then talk about what emotions they are feeling and so the tidal wave is then understandable and not something to be frightened of. This seems to be helpful to them.

Maybe it should be part of any co-parenting plan that a child suffering with recurrent nightmares should be referred to a psychologist for help with the trauma. I certainly will be seeking one for my children.

As for me, I will continue to try to see them as much as I can to reassure them that I have not gone from their lives and will always be there for them as often as I am permitted.

Is there anyone else out there suffering with these kind of nightmares? I’d love to hear from you.

Post script: It is now September 2008 – 18 months after I was forced to leave my home and my children and I am still having these nightmares as are the children…..If this is PTSD, then it is obviously a serious case of it. I still have to take sleeping tablets at night together with a medication to stop me from experiencing REM sleep which, according to my psychiatrist, is the best way to avoid having nightmares. It’s not working…..