He explained that he had a really bad nightmare. In this nightmare, someone was slicing his (Gavin’s) hands open with the a large knife. That was creepy enough but it’s who did the cutting that was the most concerning. 

Gavin explained that the person who was slicing his (Gavin’s) hands open was his biological father. He even referred to him by his first name, which I won’t repeat. 

Without going into to great detail, Gavin’s biological father was very abusive, as was the his paternal grandparents.  

I’ve raised Gavin since he was about fifteen months old and he’s not had contact with his biological father in almost a decade. He wanted nothing to do with Gavin but the paternal grandparents forced him to fight, so they could see Gavin. It was absolutely messed up, unhealthy and well documented. 

The fact that Gavin had this dream out of nowhere is concerning because this guy hasn’t been talked about in so long. 

We know Gavin and Lizze were both abused. Gavin would come home from forced visitations with injuries that were beyond those of a typical toddler.  

Both of those things are documented as well. He never came home with cuts on his hands or anything like that but he did have cuts on his feet once. 

Does this nightmare mean anything? Is he remembering something from his past, just not exactly the way it happened?

Gavin was never able to talk about these things back then. Maybe it’s just some weird, random thing that popped up..  

I’m always worried about Gavin because there’s always something to be worried about. This caught me off guard in a big way. We briefly talked about it with Dr. Pattie today but ran out of time before we could really discuss anything with her. Gavin did tell her about it though.  

As a parent, I don’t want him reliving anything that happened to him when he was with that part of his family. They’ve been gone forever now and I’d like him to be able to have as little memory of the terrible things that happened to him as possible. 

This trauma in his past, did gift him with PTSD. That’s where Lizze received it from as well.

In a weird way, Gavin being who he is and having such a bad memory, has worked out to his advantage in this particular area of his life. 

This showing up out of nowhere just sorta freaked me out a little.  

Gavin doesn’t know anything about the concern, because that’s a grownup issue. He just knows he had a really bad nightmare where people were beating the crap out of him and it ended with his biological father cutting his hands open with a knife… That’s the long and short of it… 

Memories and dreams are fascinating things and I don’t know what, if anything, this means….