It’s true what us dreamworkers say: dreams can sometimes predict the future.

Two different dreams that I had at the beginning of 2010 told me that I was headed toward divorce. Three months after having the dreams, my ex-husband and I split. I wrote about this in more detail in this DreamTribe article.

The first dream was pretty obvious: my ex tells me he’s moving out and moving on. And when I freak out, he tells me, “Haven’t you always wanted to visit exotic locales?” Funny enough, it was only a year after we split that I embarked on my ancestral journey.

In the second dream, I go through a gate, try to get on a train, and realize I don’t have my ID. I had left my husband and cat behind. It doesn’t take much dream interpretation to see that the dream was saying I didn’t have an identity, I was leaving important people behind, and I was going through a change, going on a journey.

Both dreams were incredibly right-on. And I can see that so clearly now, three years later. Hindsight really is 20/20.

So why don’t we pay more attention to dreams like these? Why don’t we all know what’s coming around the corner if our dreams are telling us every night?

Honestly, I think it’s a mixture of denial and wishful thinking in some cases.

In my case, two things are true.

1) I wrote down those dreams and wished like hell they weren’t going to come true. I probably thought something like this, “This dream is probably more metaphoric than literal. It likely means that I want a change, that I want a different relationship with myself.” And of course, that was true too. It’s just that the dream was definitely predicting what was literally going to happen, and I didn’t want to accept that was true.

2) I have to admit it wasn’t the biggest shock I’ve ever had when my ex told me he wanted a divorce. My gut knew something was coming at least a year or two before it happened. And I chose to ignore that message too.

So, the moral of this story: take your dreams (and your intuitive gut pulls) seriously. As painful as it may be at the time, the dreams are coming to tell you something important. Always do a reality check: could the dream be telling you something literal? If the answer is yes, try to sit with that. It may mean a difficult confrontation or facing up to something you fear. But that is the point of working with dreams, isn’t it?

And remember that dreamwork is inherently in a gray area. Some people have dreamed of divorced and years later are still happily married. Others have dreamed of divorce and then later gotten a divorce. This work is not cut-and-dried. The best we can do is take all possibilities seriously and move from that place.