The Dreamer's Pen

I have always believed in signs. Some people dismiss them as coincidences, but I know better. I’ve felt them too many times, in too many ways, to ignore them. Angels don’t always speak in words. Sometimes, they speak in symbols, in nudges, in quiet whispers only the soul can hear.

And for the past two years, I have been hearing one message over and over again.

I kept having the same dream. My mother would appear, luminous and peaceful, standing before me with a look of knowing in her eyes. She never spoke out loud, but she didn’t have to. She would simply point at my stomach, and in that strange, telepathic way that only happens in dreams, I would hear her say one word:

“Emma.”

I would look down, and suddenly, my belly was full and round, unmistakably pregnant. A deep warmth would spread through me, an unexplainable sense of inevitability. My mom’s presence felt comforting, but the dream always left me unsettled. Was it a prophecy? A message? A sign?

I never knew.

But I couldn’t forget it.

Then, life carried on. In the past several months, I started experiencing persistent urinary issues. Discomfort. A feeling that something wasn’t quite right. I assumed it was a kidney stone, something small, temporary, inconvenient, but harmless.

I was sent to a urologist who, like me, suspected a stone. He wanted to run several tests, to check my kidneys, my bladder, to find the root of the issue. But first, he ordered a pelvic CT scan.

That scan changed everything.

When the results came back, there was no stone. Instead, they found something unexpected, something I hadn’t even considered.

An ovarian dermoid cyst.

A large 8 inch mass inside me. A collection of cells that had been forming quietly, unnoticed, for who knows how long. Not something passing through. Not something that could be flushed out or dissolved. Something growing. Something that had been waiting.

And the moment I heard the words, my mom’s dream message rushed back into my mind.

“Emma.”

What had she been trying to tell me? That something was inside me? That something was forming? That this cyst, this mass I had no idea existed, was something I needed to pay attention to?

I don’t believe in accidents.

I don’t believe that my mother visited me in my dreams for no reason. I don’t believe she pointed to my stomach and gave me a name, “Emma,” without purpose. And I don’t believe that after two years of this dream, I just happened to find out about this cyst in the exact part of my body where she said something was growing.

I don’t know what this means yet. Maybe Emma was never meant to be a baby but a message. Maybe my mom was trying to prepare me for this moment, to let me know I was not alone in it. Maybe she was guiding me to this discovery before it became something worse.

Or maybe the meaning is still unfolding. Maybe Emma is still waiting to reveal herself to me in a way I can’t yet see.

But I do know this. my mom spoke to me before the doctors did. Her message reached me before the scan ever happened.

Some people would call that coincidence.

I call it a message from an angel.

And I am listening.