Time is irrelevant. It’s never ending, all surrounding.

We define the days, the nights, the weeks, the months, the years and the decades—we created the passage of time. What happened 10, 15 years ago is not necessarily the past, does not fall on a certain point on a manmade timeline, but is closer—and further—than we think. It is embedded in our cells at the most subconscious level, peeking and dropping clues and hints when it feels it’s time to be recognized, when these damaged cells feel it’s time to be known and healed.

Our bodies have a miraculous way of not only holding onto trauma, but of keeping it hidden and secure until our minds and hearts have healed themselves enough to come to understand and know even more.

Timing is everything, and there are no mistakes. Everything happens for a reason, even to victims. How the victims respond to the challenges and hurts and atrocities visited upon them truly make them who they are.

Everyone is a victim, as is everyone a hero. Every person has a right to claim their place, be the ultimate version of themselves. Just as everyone has the right to crumble, to cave under all of the inhumane, unspeakable horrors and pains we inflict upon each other each day. We all have a right to retreat in the face of fear, to shut down, to sleep—to go unconscious to protect ourselves from the unspeakable horrors visited upon us.

Time heals, and time awakens, and one day, we wake up.

For a moment, we gain glimpses of truth, experience crystal clear clarity. And if we can handle those truths, our spirits show us more, peeling back further layers of what we perceive time to be, exposing old wounds, old demons, and if we’re lucky, dormant angels just waiting to be reawakened and showered in light and love.

Because they’re all there, we’re holding them all within the caverns of our soul, adding blanket upon blanket of years and years, old muses and guides covered and discarded as new ones come into view, waiting patiently for the day we return to visit them, consult with them, honor them.

Time fosters fear. Fear that we’ll never attain happiness, fear that we’ll never do what we were meant to do, fear that we’re not good enough, strong enough, smart enough, able enough. Quilts of fear extinguish the flame burning in our innermost cavern, the house of our soul, our purest spirit, our truest selves devoid of fear or anger or sadness or betrayal. Fear grows, fear infests, fear manifests—if we let it.

Time releases fear—if we let it. Time inspires, breathes hope and light into the darkness. Time is an ally of light, and light always, always overcomes fear—if we allow it.

Flashbacks are imprints of time, imprints of fear long-buried. Flashbacks are proof of the  mind and spirit’s infinite love for us, creating sequences of past events to show us, when we are ready, to reveal the source of our current plight.

We come into this light, this knowing, not from a place of pain, but from a place of wanted release, a wanted awakening. We look back at the past, at the signs, all of the signs and messages we couldn’t possibly understand at the time because we weren’t ready, and our spirits knew that. So, they kept us in the dark, used time as an ally, and waited.

They exercised patience and unconditional love and waited until the time was right, until we did the work to reach those forgotten, shrouded places within ourselves. Those caves, tunnels, secret passage ways, closets, vaults, safes, hiding spots of the soul—those nooks where we sweep away all that doesn’t feel good, all the we can’t or won’t face, and leave them to collect dust until we find our way back to them, back to ourselves.

This is real work. This is excruciating, painful mining, physical and emotional labor, the true dark nights of the soul.

But we all must walk through the darkness, navigate and hone our instincts, our survival instincts, learn to live and thrive off the land, off the terra-cotta of our internal landscape, to trust and follow only our light. It’s the most frightening, most lonely and isolated work of all, but once we do that, once we face those ghosts and vicious demons that sought to take us down, we find that their fangs melt away, their eyes turn from flaming red to soothing blue, that years and years in the darkness have transformed them the same way it transformed us.

It is only through the darkness that we find the light, and transform all of our demons into sprites of love and acceptance and forgiveness and healing. We all have the capacity to do this, it’s just a matter of time.

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Assistant Editor: Sara McKeown

Ed: Kate Bartolotta