Trauma distorts our sense of time. This is true of both personal and collective trauma. As a gentler example, many of us noticed this during the pandemic — how difficult it became to locate ourselves accurately in time. Experiences from long ago felt recent, while things that had just happened already felt distant. I still notice this in myself sometimes, and I hear it echoed often by others.
More deeply, when trauma lives in our bodies, the painful past can feel as though it is being re-lived in the present. At the same time, we may project our anxieties into the future, and those imagined scenarios can begin to feel just as real. Past pain and future fear converge inside us. Time collapses. Our bodies respond accordingly, often through fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
But what if we could also interrupt this process, intentionally bending time in our favor?
What if we choose to recall the most supportive and affirming people, experiences, and chapters of our lives, remembering them in ways that allow their presence to be felt in our bodies? What if we let those memories feel present?
And what if we imagine a future shaped by care, belonging, and resilience — one where things may not be perfect, but where we are held and able to adapt? What if that future, too, becomes something we can feel in the present?
In this way, an affirming past and a supportive future can converge in the here and now, not by accident, but by choice. We begin to work with time differently, using its perceptions not only as something that happens to us, but as something we can gently reclaim.
—Renee Roederer
Smuggling Grace 