I have been curious...
The one I had most recently was actually two or three consecutive dreams that took place in a large dark murkey pond. In one of the dreams, the dark murkey water was a classroom filled almost to the top with water, where my young mom had (in the dream) gone to nursing school. I was revisiting her past, seeing pictures of her, talking to her friends.... In the next dream, my parents (when they were young and dating) had tipped over in a canoe out in a big dark lake. I was only there mentally. I remembered how my mom used to explain that we would never go canoeing as a family because they tried it once while dating (apparently it didn't go well?). Wierd! In the third dream, I was swimming in a huge dark pond in my grandmother's back yard. My cousins were there swimming too. There were trees and ice bergs in the pond. I never knew what my feet were going to touch.... They would have made a good surrealist movie.
peace, sjkravill
The thing that struck me about your posts, is that they are not about your life, they are about your mother and her experiences. Even the one where you are present, you are in your grandmother's yard, swimming in a deep dark pond. I suspect that all three murky ponds are your mother's life, and you are swimming around in them, probably wondering what the hell you are doing there, instead of in your own nice clear little pond.
What this tells me is that you are possessed by your mother. Not in a demonic way, but in an emotional way. She has told you lots of personal, intimate stuff, not to become close to you, but to get you to relive her life for her, and you are doing it in your dreams, and probably in real life too.
Water is often symbolic of emotion, and in particular powerful emotions. And as has already been said, it can also be symbolic of motherhood. In this case, the motherhood it shows you is not a very nice kind. It is cold, dark, and deep, and has trees (family problems???) and icebergs (rejection??) in it. And quite rightly, you are not the only one caught in the pool, your cousins are involved, which suggests that your grandmother was the same as your mother, and all her children were affected, and their children, as you have been. As you rightly say, this is a huge dark pool.
My own family swims in an equally huge dark pool, so I know this can be true. Lots of people there, but most of them don't know it.
I think to help deal with this one, I would try to find a picture of your ideal pond or lake; somewhere really beautiful. A photograph would be nice, but if not then an imagined image would do. Perhaps somewhere you have actually been. Use it as a soothing image when things get difficult, and 'escape' to it. Or change the image, and use a mountain. But something that you own for yourself, and
you choose who you swim with.
In effect, your dreams are saying, 'this water is yucky, how do I get out?'
Hope this helps.
Cathy