Episode Details

What if dreams aren’t just personal—but meant for the community?

In this episode of The Dream Journal, host Katherine Bell speaks with writer, healer, and Earth activist Deena Metzger about sacred dreaming, Indigenous wisdom, and what it means to live by dream in dark and uncertain times. Together they explore dreams as spiritual messages, ethical guidance, and acts of resistance—and listeners share powerful dreams of sanctuary, community, joy, and not dying alone.

This conversation invites us to imagine a world where dreams teach us how to live, care for one another, and remain in relationship with the Earth.

✨ Featuring live listener dreams ✨ Indigenous and collective dream perspectives ✨ Community, joy, and shelter at the end of the world

Chapters

• Welcome to The Dream Journal
• Anaïs Nin and the Beginning of a Life with Dream
• Dreams Against the State and Underground Dreaming
• Do Dreams Come from the Psyche—or from Spirit?
• How to Recognize the Dreams That Matter
• Fear, ICE, and Remembering Joy Through Dream
• Listener Dream: Sanctuary at the End of the World
• Listener Dream: Brotherhood, Death, and Not Dying Alone
• Final Reflections on Living by Dream

BIO: Deena Metzger is a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright and storyteller. She is an Earth activist with over a dozen published books and a multitude of essays, articles, poems, and stories. Her play, Dreams Against the State, was produced in a variety of venues. She has tried to be faithful to the calling of healer and medicine woman and has taught and counseled for over fifty years.  Deena lives at the edge of a wild park with Mountain Lion and others as companions. Her newest offering is a novella called The Story that must not be told, which she describes as a fiction that is not a fiction.

Contact our guest: DeenaMetzger.net

The IASD conference is June 13-17 in Ashland Oregon. Find out more at IASDconferences.org/2026/

SHARE A DREAM FOR THE SHOW or a question or enquire about being a guest on the podcast by emailing Katherine Bell at katherine@ksqd.org. Follow on LI, IG, YT, FB, & LT @ExperientialDreamwork #thedreamjournal. To learn more or to inquire about exploring your own dreams go to ExperientialDreamwork.com.

This show, episode number 358, was recorded during a live broadcast on April 11, 2026 at KSQD.org, community radio of Santa Cruz.

Videos available on YouTube at youtube.com/@experientialdreamwork. Popular playlists: “Dream Journal shorts” and “FULL LENGTH VIDEOS”.

Here are links to some other Dream Journal episodes you might be interested in:

Spiritual Elderhood with Illana Berger, PhD