Time Traveler

Picture Credit: Lakshmi Ambady

I am a time traveler. The past is not behind me. It is within me. Shaping me. Moulding me, kneading me. I am born into a body that is not just my own. My breath is stitched with ancestral memory. My gait carries the rhythm of life that has preceded me. My body is a palimpsest written by time.

Epigenetics calls it an experience of my past generations that has altered my genetic expression. Somatic Experiencing calls it incomplete survival responses passed on.  Family Constellations calls it morphic resonance. Biology calls it a memory of my fascia and muscles. Physics calls it Gravity. Yoga calls it karma. Tantra calls it Runanubandha. Astrology calls it “Pitru Dosha.”

I am a time traveler. I am the unfinished business of my soul line. I don’t just look like my ancestors.

I carry their wounds, their dreams, their impulses, their joys.

My great grandfather came from a foreign land. I can see it in my eyes and skin.

My grandfather was a man of science. I love astronomy.

My grandfather loved daughters. I still crave to have a daughter.

My grandmother was a woman who didn’t have a voice and hid her true feelings. I have a hypothyroid condition.

My father loved to smoke. I enjoy putting pencils and toothpicks between my teeth and biting them.

My mother takes an hour to settle into sleep. I take much more than that. My mother also has a strong fawn response. I have a strong flight and a hidden fawn response too.

I am my ancestor. A living repetition of what they are and of what they could not be. Of what they could have been. That is me. Right here. Right now. In this life of mine. I am a time traveler. Until I decide to change. Until I decide that the healing can happen through me.  That I am that speck of sand that can be washed away by waves only to land up on another shore. I am here to survive. I am here to complete. I am here to interrupt the patterns. I am not burdened. I am chosen. I am the one who remembered. I am a time traveler.