They say time heals all wounds…but I disagree.

I don’t believe time plays a part, at least not in as linear a way as we would like to believe.

You see, time won’t heal anything if our mind is still bruised by the imprint of our trauma.

Our minds have a funny way of repeating the same images, the same scenarios, over and over and over in order for us to somehow make sense of, understand, or rearrange these moments—“If I just did this or I just did that, this would never have happened.”

We’re addicted to solving the past, even though there’s no changing what has happened.

We are so addicted to focusing on what’s behind us, that we recreate it in front of us and drive straight into the same scenario, dressed up in different clothes, with different characters.

What we don’t understand is that analysing and categorising and compartmentalising won’t heal our wounds; these practices only keep them as raw as the day they were created.

What we need is less about fact and exact distinctions, and more about validation.

Our wounds need validating. They need to be heard, felt, seen.

We were taught to cover our wounds out of fear.

Fear of judgement.
Fear of criticism.
Fear of rejection.

We were taught to feel ashamed that we were ever wounded in the first place or to pretend like it never happened.

Those wounds are the wounds of a child, and that same child is crying out to us now—through our relationships, our triggers, and our continuous, self-sabotaging cycles.

The child who is neglected by our incessant need to push and push and push, always moving, never stopping.

The child who is silenced, as we stuff food down our throat to shut it up.

The child whose pain is numbed as we drown it with our heavy consumption of alcohol.

The child who bangs on our lower back as we turn away from it by focusing so heavily on our outside world, our body, our popularity, our position in the eyes of others.

What are we so afraid of?

We’re scared of the wound itself, and yet we relive it every day.

All we need to do is reach out to the wounded part of us who is screaming our name and give it the acceptance and acknowledgement it asks for so that the pain and the suffering can be released.

Time may be what we need to realise how much we’ve wasted it running when we could have stayed, but it will by no means clear us of our demons or our past.

What we continue running from, will continue to chase us.

So what is really required to heal?

Face it.
Feel it.
Let it wash over you.

Breathe into it.
Listen to it.
Understand it.
Validate it.

Learn from it.

Only then are we truly free and ready to move forward.

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“Never be afraid of your past. It was a lesson, not a life sentence.” ~ Unknown

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Author: Yasmin Eve Basili-Miller
Image: Author’s own
Editor: Nicole Cameron
Copy Editor: Catherine Monkman