If we are hurt or threatened we tense the pelvic and abdominal area. Vanessa wakes to just such tension, with a sense of her body being fragmented.
The opposite is to dream of waves of pleasure moving within us, which gives us a sense of integration within ourself and with the world.
In general the abdomen represents the potential of our fully active natural drives—hunger, longing to be held; desire to give of ourself.
If these are hurt, we tend to hold ourself back from active social expression or intimacy of feelings in relationships. Our abdomen is also our digestive ability, both physical and psychological. Stomach or abdominal dreams may refer to some dis-ease in the actual organs. We might not be able to stomach something we have met in the everyday world.
To vomit: a discharging of unpleasant feelings resulting from ingesting (hearing, reading, being told, experiencing) something unpleasant.
In her dream Vanessa was re-enacting the Hungerford disaster, and feeling the fear it engendered. Shot in the belly, sex; painful response to relationship. Idioms: bellyaching; have a bellyful; eyes bigger than one’s belly, have a strong stomach; turn one’s stomach; butterflies in stomach.