Time passes. Love heals.

Time. It waits for no man. Nor woman. Time. It heals all wounds. Softens all blows.

I cannot hold it in my arms. I cannot stop its inevitable course. I can only journey with it from this moment to the next. I cannot change time passing. I can change how I pass through time.

Time. When in an abusive relationship, time was my foe. It passed in relentless pursuit of itself, while I stood still, locked into the macabre dance of his sinuously veiled truths reflected in the contortions of his lies sifting through the hourglass of time, burying me alive. With him, time passed. Heavy. Ponderous. Dark. Angry waves crashing against the once impenetrable fortress of my psyche, eroding my foundation, peeling back my flesh to expose the soft underbelly of my dreams until I stood, alone. Lost in time.

With him, time passed, but the pain endured. Each moment a continuation of the last. Each second weighing me down until I could not rise above the nightmare of my happily ever after dreams distorted in the mirror of the living nightmare of the truth that I was dying. Time passed and I stayed trapped in silence. A victim of my fear that I could never be more than the silent witness of this living death with him. And then time stood still.

And in that moment. I was set free.

It was time.Time to pick up the pieces of my self. Time to discard the horror of his lies. Time to turn up for me. Without him and his lies.

Without him, time is my ally. Time passes, and as it moves it washes through me like waves rippling upon the sands, gentling caressing my wounded spirit, setting my heart free to break wide open in love. Time supports me. It moves through me and under me and over me and in me on gentle wings of love. Time encompasses me with its melodious song as I learn to dance to the gentle tattoo of my heart beating freely in time away from the constraints of what was into what truly is.

At the time of my release from the nightmare that was my life with him, I was numb. Every moment filled with tears. The pain of what was and what I could not yet believe would never be again pummelling me with its incessant questions of what happened to me? At the time of my release, I feared I would never find the missing pieces of my self. I feared I would never find myself in time to stop the bleeding of my heart.

In time, I found my answers. In time, I found myself.

My journey through time away from him began on May 21, 2003. Since that date, I have never spoken to him, seen him or tried to contact him. Other than the one time while he was on parole when he jumped out at me from the dark of a tree he was hiding beneath, I have had no contact with him. What a gift of time!

No contact has been my life support. It has been my safety harness, my flotation device. It has helped me through those times when my body ached with loneliness in the night and my mind yearned to hear him say, I’m sorry, or any other lie he would have conjured up had I taken my precious time and given it to him.

Time is wondrous. Time is miraculous. It is a gift from the Divine. From the heavens. It is a gift of life.

Time becomes our ally when we face the truth of how much time we’ve spent being hurt by the one who says he loves us the most. When we count up the moments spent trying to fix the times in which nothing could ever be put right because we were always wrong. When we weigh our tears against our laughter and discover the imbalance caused by his relentless pursuit of what he wants without consideration to us or anyone else. When we balance out the facts and find the truth buried somewhere in the past -- that we can never measure up to his lies – and don’t want to. When we quit saying, I’m sorry, to the one who isn’t real, whose love is but a four letter word scattered like chicken feed to appease our hungry heart’s need for succour. And, when we take the time to look at ourselves in the mirror and recognize the miraculous beings we are, in spite of our flaws, our pain, our sorrow we discover the time is now. Now or never. To be free.

In that moment of time, we crawl out from under the burden of the past, tentatively stepping into the light of a new day dawning. Our eyes squinting, our minds reeling against the beauty of a world we had forgotten existed beyond the confines of the dark corridors of his lies.

It takes time to come to the truth. It takes time to find our selves again. But in time, all things are possible.

In time, the pain fades, the tears subside and fear moves us into the courage to surrender to that which has endured throughout our journey through hell. Love. True love comes to the rescue upon a moment in time when we accept no one else can make the pain stop. No one else can fix it. No one else can make it all better. It's our time to turn up for ourselves and love the one who is here right now, in this moment, needing our time. Ourselves.

In time, I have come to love myself. All of me. Beauty and my beast. My strength and my weaknesses. My flawless imperfection of being human.

In time, I have surrendered my fear and claimed my right to be free. Claimed my right to love myself, exactly the way I am so that I can be all that I am meant to be.

In time I have come to know that feelings fade, emotions pass, time moves on -- and only love heals the broken heart.

In time, a broken heart becomes an open heart. An open heart is a loving heart as each day opens up to the glorious truth that I become the love of my life. The more I give. The more I receive.

May your day be filled with loving moments spending time with those you love, doing the things you love, being love, giving and receiving.