Please help me interpret and understand the meaning of this recurring dream.

The dream takes place in or around a house I lived in for 17 years about 20 years ago. It was our first home we bought after we were married. I am still married to the same dear man although we are in a different house now.

The dream, which occurs often, plays out in different scenarios with different people, in different areas of the house. Sometimes I know the people in real life, sometimes I know them in the dream, sometimes they are complete strangers. The one constant is that sometime during the dream I go to the front door, open it, step out on the porch and check the mailbox. Always the mailbox is full to overflowing with letters, junk mail, magazines and sometiems packages.

I do not recall ever opening any of the mail. If I could, perhaps I could figure out what this is all about. Anyway, this dream has occured several times a month for the past 10 or 15 years.

Any help would be apprecited. Thanks.

Usually a house represents you, with different rooms being different aspects of you; especially if it was the house you grew up in. In this case though you were in the house for a very long time so it will have had a similar impact on your unconscious to a house you grew up in, especially if you lived in that house longer than any other or, in this case, it was your first proper home. Another common theme in these types of dreams is the people you interact with, who can also represent different aspects of yourself, or represent a sentiment or feeling that your unconscious thinks you will understand. For instance if someone you know in waking life is very serious and level-headed, your subconscious may use that person’s image to represent that type of level-headed feeling or quality in your dream. Perhaps if you feel a lot of the mail is junk there may be lots of stuff still in your head that your subconscious thinks you need to discard and forget about, but wants you to know that there may still be valuable information in amongst all that junk somewhere if you could ignore all the irrelevant stuff in your life?

I don’t know how much sense any of that will make, not knowing much else about you and all, but I hope it may help a little?

Thank you - that is certainly food for thought and I will pay more attention in the future.

One thing I had had in mind is to wonder if it was my mother trying to get a message to me...... The dreams started after she died.

???

It sometimes happens that you see a close relative in a dream soon after they die, those types of dreams are usually very clear and unambiguous though - sort of like they're waving goodbye or something. That's my experience and others I've talked to anyway. I don't think your mother would be quite so mysterious if she really wanted to contact you, and I don't think she'd keep doing it for years and years.

That doesn't mean the dream has nothing to do with your mother though, if you have a feeling that it's connected to her it probably is in some way.
The unconscious mind makes no distinction between people who are living and people who have died, they are all in your memory and their associated feelings and emotions are available to your unconscious to use in your dreams - often to convey that particular emotion rather than signify anything to do with that particualr person. For instance your mother may give you some advice and, if it seems like a good thing in the dream, your unconscious may be suggesting that you deal with a situation in a way that you perceive your mother might have done - or, if it seemed like a negative dream, your unconscious may be suggesting that you are behaving too much like your mother, best friend, old school teacher or whoever it is in the dream.

Hope I'm not getting too far into it already?

Thanks. I have been worrying and worrying that my mother was trying to get a message to me but what you say is true, she wouldn't keep using the "mailbox" if she wasn't getting through.

I have a feeling that I need to pay closer attention to the room(s) that I dream about and also the people. you have been a great help and I do appreciate your opinion.