I have noticed a phenomenon over the past decade or so of my life. It’s a strange feeling of growing backwards – or possibly realigning with a past version of myself in a new and more empowered way. It’s as if my life experience scooped out or buried part of who I am and I have since been in the process of filling that back up or uncovering it (choose your metaphor preference).
Wisdom I Wasn’t Ready For (Yet)
It brings to mind an experience I had during my early twenties. One of my professors recommended that I read “Siddhartha” by Herman Hesse. I did, expecting a great expansion of mind and consciousness. Instead, I was annoyed. Siddhartha had all the knowledge at his fingertips, but he left and did a bunch of stuff that seemed not useful to me. In the end, he found enlightenment but I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just learn it from his teachers and not have to go through a bunch of muck. (I know, I know. I was young and I liked to experience life from the safety of stories.)
In my early thirties, I finally understood the importance of actual experience in the world. I had a major shift in my life around that time. I ended a marriage with the only man I had ever dated (an eleven-year relationship). I sold nearly everything I had except what I could cram into my Honda Fit and I moved from South Carolina to North Carolina where I knew a handful of people I met in some self-development programs.
It has been quite a journey.
Expansion in the Spin
The few years I spent sort of free-falling and spinning my wheels were a time of incredible learning. It was often stressful because even though my natural inclination is to go with the flow and trust in myself and abilities, I didn’t have enough confidence to continue to follow that. I allowed myself to bend under what I thought was the knowledge of others. Their certainty made me doubt myself. In the end, I chose the safety of returning to “normal.”
It may not sound sexy, but going back to being normal (this basically boils down to taking on a steady job in my case) was a great choice for me. It allowed me to take full control of my life. That was around 2012 and since then I have gained the confidence in myself that I felt was missing before. And my life has gotten steadily better. Not perfect, but I fully know that I am capable. I know that if I fail at something, I can just reassess and keep moving.
Reclaiming My Younger Self
So what does all of this have to do with evolving backwards?
What I’ve noticed is that part of the expansion of my life is in letting go of past angers, it is putting back into place habits that served me so well in the past that it is mind-boggling that I ever stopped them. It is getting back to that place of joy and curiosity that fed my creativity as a younger Sheila. It is spending time with my family and loved ones without worrying about what needs to get done. It is about living into each moment as best I can and loving it.
In a lot of ways, it is like becoming a child again. Or, at least childlike.
I recently moved back to South Carolina. After the move, I’ve been going through old journals, old files, seeing what I’ve accumulated over the past fourteen years. I’m often astounded at how much smarter I was in my teen years and early twenties. I knew so much, but I didn’t have the experience yet to really understand it. I was also kinda naïve and silly as well.
The cool thing is that here I am feeling my soul vibrating back in resonance with the Sheila that thought her life would look a lot different than it has. It is as if this pulsing of energy is shaking off all the blockages that separated us from what we dreamed could be. We can be the best of both of us.
I’m sure many of us have thought about our younger selves, “If I knew then, what I know now…” The thing is we know it now and what are we doing with it? What will I do with it?
It’s not always easy to see the opportunity or good in each situation. I have been practicing the art of seeing everything that happens as something intended to help me. Even if it doesn’t appear to be the best thing ever, there is likely something for me to learn.
This little toon I drew several years ago is a fun reminder. If I remember correctly, I was drawing the baby with the mouth wide open and I got curious about what all you could identify in a mouth that wide. I did some quick research and this is the result.
For your amusement…
(and I feel the need to say that no babies cried this hard or were in this much distress in the making of this drawing). 🙂
I’ve had a lot of zombie dreams over the years. And yes, I’ve watched more than my fair share of zombie shows and movies—so I’m sure that’s partly to blame. For most of my adult life, anytime I walked into a new space, I’d instinctively scan for the best exit route in case of a sudden zombie invasion.
I can’t be the only one who does this, right?
A Dream That Became a Story
One particular dream stuck with me and eventually became the seed of my book The Resurrection Incident. At the time, I still called the creatures in my dream “zombies,” even though that label didn’t quite fit.
In the dream, I was on a spaceship, walking through dim hallways with a group of people. We all had a shared sense of urgency—something was coming. We didn’t know what, just that we had to hide. We found a mechanical room and ducked inside.
Then they appeared.
The Floating Undead (But Not Really)
They didn’t look like traditional zombies. They floated about a foot off the ground, their eyes glowing blood-red, bobbing eerily as they moved. When they entered the room, the people around me began to explode into parts—and then rise again as creatures like the ones who’d just entered.
I knew I was next. I could feel something stirring inside me, about to shift.
Then I had a moment of lucidity. I became aware that I was dreaming—and I realized I was in control. In that surreal moment, I could see my vast, energetic body stretched across space. It turned, slowly, like a cosmic being waking up. And then it opened its eyes…
I stood up in the dream and faced the creatures. I pulled the plug on whatever power was animating them—and they dropped to the ground in piles.
From “Space Zombies” to “Resurrects”
When I woke up, I remembered every detail. That dream became one of those stories I circled for years—freewrites, chapter starts, rewrites, new outlines. At one point, I called it Zelwa and the Space Zombies. Later, it became Jarem and the Space Zombies. But as the world deepened, I realized “zombie” didn’t quite fit.
They weren’t undead—they were something else. Something tied to energy, resurrection, and transformation. So I renamed them: resurrects.
I thought “The Resurrection Incident” might be a single novel, but I later had a few people ask me if there would be more and, what do you know, I had an idea for a sequel. I just have to clear out a few more books before I get to it. 😊
Ready to Explore The Resurrection Incident?
If you’re into:
Sci-fi with a spiritual/metaphysical twist
Floating red-eyed beings that may or may not be zombies
Dreams that rewrite the rules of reality
And characters who wake up to more than just danger…
At various times in my life, I’ve written them down—sometimes just to remember them, sometimes to try to understand them. A few were so vivid they’ve stayed with me like memories, even ones I had as a teenager (or younger). They shaped how I viewed myself and the world. I used to wonder what it meant to have the same dream over and over again. Why that image? That story?
When I got my driver’s license as a teen, one of the first things I was excited to do was drive myself to the public library. Up until then, I’d only had access to school libraries—but this was a new world.
I would leave with a backpack so stuffed with books, it bulged at the seams. I kind of miss those days.
Strange Shelves and Quiet Spark
In the little rural town I grew up in, there was one narrow aisle in the library with a small cluster of books on dream interpretation, reincarnation, ghosts, psychology, and religion. I devoured everything I could find.
That’s where I discovered the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson, Edgar Cayce, and likely Joseph Campbell. A memoir called Welcome, Silence—about one woman’s experience with schizophrenia—also made a deep impression on me.
All of that fueled my curiosity about things that can’t be easily explained. And, as you might expect, my writing took some unusual turns during that time (and let’s be honest—it still does).
A Psychic, a Folded Dollar, and “The Work”
In college, a friend of mine visited a psychic. I was intrigued. I knew the house—just off the highway I drove past every day to get to class. So I made an appointment.
Honestly? It was a bit underwhelming. It felt like the woman was just trying to upsell me. My friend had told me her reading, and strangely, I was told nearly the same thing—though I hadn’t mentioned anything in advance.
The woman gave me a folded dollar bill and said I’d either see that its face had changed and return, or I wouldn’t—and I’d never come back.
(Spoiler: I never went back.)
But she did say something that stuck with me.
She described using her intuition as “going into the work.”
That phrase sparked my imagination. I began picturing the universe as an enormous, steampunk-like energetic machine, and sleep as a way we plug into it—accidentally or intuitively. Maybe we all go into the work when we dream.
The poem below came out of that idea. I think I was 18 or 19 when I wrote it. It’s simple, but still resonates.
The Work (by Sheila Lee Brown circa 1996-7)
At night one goes unknowingly into the work – – eyes closed, breathing rhythmic. The body continues with minimal effort as the mind-spirit-soul merges more completely with the mechanics of consciousness. No self, yet all self. It moves – – Bolted in mortality, fueled by blood, edging towards something greater and surreal. Visions come that baffle the optic nerves and intimate God, the unliving present; and one awakes, calling it a dream.
One More Story (for Another Time)
Later in life, I visited a hypnotherapist and went through a past-life regression—which was a very different kind of experience.
But that’s a story for another post. 😊
Where Do Your Dreams Go?
Over the years, writing down my dreams has helped me track patterns, explore symbols, and spark story ideas I never would have uncovered otherwise.
If you’d like a space for your own dreamwork, I’ve created a Dream Journal that you can find in my shop. It’s simple, magical, and made for nights just like the ones we talked about above.
