Nightmares and Dreams

I will post my book reviews in a little while but I wanted to get this off my mind. Our grandchildren have very active imaginations. Several are plagued with bad nightmares that start from an early age. I wonder if that is hereditary? My whole life I have had dreams and nightmares. 95% of the time the dreams are about my day or what I have been reading. On occasion I have what I fondly started calling my De'ja' Vu dreams. These dreams will always come true but usually many years later. These are infrequent but do have a pattern. I almost always know that I dreamt one when I remember it the morning after.

I have to be extremely careful about what I read and watch because of my dreams. I was reading "Suite Francaise" about WWII. In and of itself it is not graphic but I have read too many books that are. After two nights of horrible dreams of war and violence, I decided that I had to quit reading the book when two days in a row I woke up with migraines. Yesterday I read "The Cat Who Talked Turkey" and started "The Girl With the Pearl Earring". Last night my dreams were calming and even bordered on the silly (because of the "Cat who... book"). It is obvious to me that I am much too sensitive. It is also obvious to me that I am old enough that even if a book is for book group, I don't have to follow the crowd. If my gut tells me I cannot handle it, I a not going to indulge. A good nights sleep is more important than being a participant. There is too much violence in the world - I don't need to re-live or fantasize about more! I choose to read about the things I want to read about.