Honoring the Dream: Social Dreaming During Black History Month
A collective space for reflection, listening, and shared meaning.
February invites reflection—not only on history, but on how we are living, leading, and relating to one another now. In this time of transition, many people are experiencing a growing sense that humanity—care, compassion, and dignity—feels increasingly absent from public life, including within our families, our workplaces, and the communities we serve and belong to.
This Social Dreaming series draws on a long tradition of dreaming as a collective act—one that has sustained communities through change, struggle, and transformation. The Social Dreaming Matrix offers a space where dreams are shared not for interpretation, but as a communal resource for reflection and connection.
In the matrix, dreams are shared, and we listen together—allowing images, memories, and associations to weave and create new meaning across the group. Dream sharing in this setting can make room for what is often difficult to say directly — feelings, histories, and tensions that live beneath everyday conversation. By staying with images rather than explanations, the group can reflect together without rushing to conclusions or solutions. This creates a rare kind of shared space: one where difference can be held, complexity honored, and meaning allowed to emerge over time rather than being imposed. This shared practice honors both personal experience and collective history, offering a quiet but powerful way to recenter humanity in how we gather, lead, and care.
Each Social Dreaming Matrix is 90 minutes in duration and includes:
A brief introduction to social dreaming (5 minutes)
Social Dreaming Matrix (50 minutes)
Small-group dialogue and reflection (20 minutes)
A closing return to the matrix (15 minutes)
This is a free virtual event, held on Zoom. Two sessions will be offered:
Saturday, February 14, 5pm EST
Saturday, February 28, 5pm EST
Why This Moment
We are living in a moment shaped by rapid change, uncertainty, and questions about how we move forward—individually and together. This series offers a gentle, collective space to pause, reflect, and dream with others, allowing new meaning to emerge through shared presence and listening.
In times like these, it can be hard to find spaces that allow us to slow down, listen beneath the surface, and make meaning together. Social dreaming offers a way to pause—to connect inner experience with the world around us, and to remember that understanding does not always come through explanation, but through shared presence and reflection.
What Is Social Dreaming?
Social Dreaming is a collective reflective practice in which participants come together to share night dreams and associate freely to one another’s dreams within a facilitated matrix.
Dreams are not analyzed or interpreted. There is no fixing, problem-solving, or advice-giving.
Instead, the group listens—allowing images, thoughts, memories, and associations to arise. Over time, meaning emerges collectively, helping participants connect their inner lives with the outer world they are navigating together.
Social dreaming treats dreams as a social resource—a way to explore shared experience, unconscious knowing, and collective wisdom that often cannot be accessed through conversation alone.
You do not need to remember a dream to participate. However, it is suggested to write down your dreams in the morning when you wake up. You can also share a fragment of a dream, or a dream that was shared with you.
You do not need to speak if you prefer to listen.
You are welcome exactly as you are.