Time After Time

I have been traveling back in time to my childhood through the vehicle of a memoir writing class. This class has no magic buttons, and no scientific instrument panel that takes advantage of advances in quantum physics, but it does take me back. And soon, in my 10 year old girl self, I am experiencing the world through both by child self and my adult self. My child self, hurting, confused, my adult self, saying,”Oh, hmm, now I get it.” And while I’m traveling back I’m trying to also create my future. I’m looking at publishing sites again, wondering, “Will I ever find the time to get this query put together?” Trying to find a place to get my memoir on being the mom of a teen mom published. And visiting places where I hope to rent space for my growing psychotherapy practice.

And so as I find myself traipsing back and forth between past and future, I find the present more empty, more frightening, perhaps because I’m being too thin with myself, and in order to be present, well, in the present, you have to have a certain weight of being. And also, I believe, that in order to be present, and to be a fairly good therapist, you have to do some work of making sense of your own life, including your childhood. The things we don’t make sense of are the things that can take us back by surprise, when we’re not ready, and being the therapist in the room is not the place to be taken by surprise, and dragged back into our own trauma, when there’s a client sitting across from us. So, I travel in time to make peace with the present.

I’m seeing now the non-linear aspects of time, the non-time aspects of movement through space and how children can raise their own parents sometimes, and this is not in the textbooks, but it happens a lot. Of why often good people fail us, when they’re following a linear path through a circular universe. Of why time travel is often important, but coming home to yourself is imperative.