The Soul’s Timeline

Everyone’s soul has a timeline.

A time when we are ready to know the truth about what this journey has cost us. And who we had to become to get through it.

Not an intellectual knowing. Not the laundry list of the things we have suffered that we recite to our therapist each week while remaining safely removed from what it would mean to actually be with the reality of it all.

I mean, really know.

Jesus once said;

“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

I used to hear the emphasis on truth because so many denominations think they own it, even though they are all reading from the same book, including the church I had to painfully deconstruct from years ago. 

Now I hear it on know.

The biblical sense of “know” goes beyond intellectual understanding. It means to intimately know. A knowing that will change you. And for the purpose of this writing,  to know what it was like to be you as a child—deeply enough that it changes how you see yourself, your life, and what actually happened.

To stop minimizing what was missing; what we deserved but never got. To stop calling survival a personality trait. Not only to "know" but to actually be with that truth, feel that truth in a way we weren't able to before.

I thought about my own timeline as I sat on that bench this morning. How every moment, every "wildly misguided" relationship, every soul-crushing experience, every length of time was necessary.

I remember leaving a therapy session in my thirties. Even by then, there had been so many. I don’t remember exactly what we talked about. Maybe it was something he said, or how I heard it, but I do remember driving away. I still remember exactly what road I was on and the hopelessness I felt. 

I remember thinking: Why so much in one lifetime? How will I ever become whole? How will I ever be acceptable?How will I ever be good enough for someone to love me? My head used to reel from not even knowing where to start.

What I understand now is that much of what I was doing was symptom management. So much dysregulation that nobody seemed to know what to do with me other than medicate me. Looking back, it's amazing that I could even function at all. The "knowing" would have to wait.

I was trying to quiet the pain without understanding that it was actually trying to tell me something. 

I truly thought the answer would be to finally get someone to see my worth, if I had any at all, in a way I couldn't see it for myself. Something so undeniable that I might finally believe it too. But part of what kept the cycle going and the pain alive was that the people I kept around me only served to remind me of where I had been, breathing life back into how little I valued myself.

The answer was learning to see me for myself. All of me. That meant being able to tell myself the truth of how I got there and what my role had been in keeping it going. All of it.

I could not have taken it in all at once. Some truths had to wait until I was ready to know them. That is what I mean by the soul’s timeline. 

We can be aware of truths long before we can stand steady in them.  

Until there is nothing left but us, the truth, and finally being ready. 

After the relationship ends (again).

After the body says no more. After the coping strategy stops working.

After the person we were certain would save us cannot.

After the life we carefully constructed becomes too painful to keep maintaining.

People awaken to themselves when they are ready. And not one moment sooner.

Sometimes in my practice, people ask me, “How long will this take? How long do I have to keep doing this?”

I feel an ache in my heart because I know that place. I wish I could give them the answer I wanted someone to give me so many years ago. But I also know there is a depth that can only come from living your own way through it.

There is yet another truth here. Some people cannot be with their truth no matter how much you want them to. My sister died from a drug and alcohol overdose after a lifetime of suffering. I used to think that because we shared so much of the same history, we could somehow see our way through to the other side together. We did not. Our capacity to be with what happened to us was different.

Her life and her death taught me something I carry into my work now: this journey is not the same for everyone, but it matters that we keep turning toward ourselves when we can. Even slowly. Even imperfectly. Every time we stay present with one more piece of our truth, we build the capacity to hold a little more.

So when people ask me how long this takes, I can only tell them what I wish someone had told me years ago: keep going. You do not have to face all of it at once. You do not have to be anywhere other than where your feet are. Your soul knows when you are ready for the next layer, and you are not alone.

Just keep going.

Arleen