For years I never understood what Kendal meant when they said, "time is a man-made construct." I thought it was a reason to explain when someone was late or didn't pay attention to time... The older I get, and the more I do the work to unpack, process, and heal from my complex and generational trauma, I have a complete understanding of the felt sense of that concept. Time is not linear. It is not something that passes, and once doing so, never returning or being squarely back to the past in a real embodied way. The couple to the left are my parents exactly where I am right now, 43—that time for my parents, was such a painful and lonely one. I was 9, and three years prior was the start of my family's implosion, which to this day, none of us ever recovered from. For many years I was angry and blamed both of them for their lack, for their harm, selfishness, and inability to take care of my older sisters and me. That was an assessment from a sensitive child and in deep pain who could only understand binaries - either/or right/wrong. As a basic necessity, we just want safety, care, and love. I was unable to understand that's what they needed and never had in any consistent way. Understandably in my youth, I wasn't able to understand the nuance and complexity. And as an adult, my emotional and spiritual knowing was stunted by my trauma, still judging others and myself in the binaries. Since time is not linear, the connection to me being 43 has placed me back in 1986. I have emotional and bodily felt flashbacks connected to both my parents as adults. I sense their struggling to live, facing demons resulting from the impact of their ancestors and elders' demons, shadows, hardships, and oppression. I also have felt flashbacks to me, confused, neglected, overperforming, feeling unsafe, and lonely. I feel it when I interact with my youngest daughter, she is 7, and many times I'm back to being 7 too. She has a condition in which her body believes it is 9. How old was I in 1986...time. I am feverishly trying to heal all of it in real-time as if my life depends on it because it does. Sometimes I can do it with loving-kindness, grace, and compassion. I often fail miserab (at Earth) https://www.instagram.com/p/CKB_14ulp4b/?igshid=1rmbyhgouxgcp