I’ve had recurring dreams for years where I see myself as a child. In the dream, I’m always drawn to her. I want to go to her, comfort her, reach her, warn her of what is to come — but something always prevents me from getting close. There’s this invisible barrier, like time itself is keeping us apart. I’ve also struggled with nightmares and flashbacks where my traumatic experiences don’t feel like memories at all. They feel like they are happening right now, as if no time has passed. In those moments, my body doesn’t know I’m safe in the present. It reacts as if I’m still back there. Sometimes it creates this eerie sensation that the past, present, and future are all happening at once. When experiences overwhelm us, they don’t always get stored in the brain as a completed, “past” event. Instead, they can remain fragmented — held as sensations, emotions, and survival responses that were never fully anchored in time. That’s why survivors may feel: • Stuck at a certain age • Pulled back into the past during triggers • Like part of them never moved forward In a very real way, trauma can fracture our internal timeline. Time stops in one place while life continues everywhere else. Healing is partly about restoring continuity — helping the nervous system learn the difference between then and now, and gently bringing those frozen pieces back into the flow of time. Not erasing the past. But finally allowing it to be the past.