You Have to Believe it to Create it

Manifesting Your Future Starts with A Vision

When I was 29 I took a walk with my new puppy in the California Redwoods. Getting Scarffy was by far the biggest commitment I’d ever made and I was legit terrified. After spinning out for a few days and deciding that no, I wasn’t going to send her back, and that yes, I was in fact committing to her for the next 10-16 years, I started contemplating the next chapter of our shared life together. Knowing I was in it with her, allowed me to imagine my future in a new way, because committing to her, also meant I was committing to life, and perhaps that’s what made it so fucking scary. 

I imagined the next decade, and all that she’d be by my side for. I imagined her waiting by the door when I came home from a first date with a life partner I didn’t yet know. I imagined her playing with my babies who were still only abstractions of my mind.  

It overwhelmed me with emotion, because these dreams felt eons away from me. 

PTSD & A Foreshortened Future

One symptom of PTSD is a “foreshortened future,” the inability to see the future, a belief that your life will be cut short. It makes it impossible to plan, to dream, to envision, to manifest. 

It’s feeling like you won’t live long enough anyway, so what does it even matter?

It’s feeling like you don’t deserve that life, or maybe any life at all. 

The future is stolen, kind of like the past.   

At 29 years old, I was still in the hazy abyss of healing, walking through a dark tunnel not even sure which direction would provide the proverbial glimmer of light at the end. It scared me to think of the future because I knew I wasn’t yet at the rock bottom of what I had yet to heal, and I knew that profound suffering stood between me and this happy, imagined future. How did I know I could get there?    

But that day, I created a vision anyway, allowed myself to dream, felt the hot tears of joy on my cheeks, as I imagined what it might be like to have a family of my own. What if I did live long enough? What if I did deserve it? 

On Labor Day, I was in the mountains with my little family, Axl insisting that he walk Scarffy, and Felix pointing at her wet paw prints– “look at Scarffy’s paw prints! They’re so cute!” ––and the vision of walking through the redwoods twelve years ago flashed through my mind. OHMYGOD, I did it. 

I did it because I believed it first. Before there was evidence, or proof, or data. When in fact, all the research made me feel like I was doomed, that a survivor of this kind of abuse would only turn out one way.  

But even while holding that, I let a little flicker of hope stay aglow, allowed it to whisper to me–maybe you’re not broken, or doomed. Maybe you’re powerful, brilliant. Maybe you can get through this and become who you’re supposed to be. Maybe there is light at the end of this darkness, maybe you just can’t see it yet. Maybe, maybe, maybe. 

But even while holding that, I let a little flicker of hope stay aglow, allowed it to whisper to me–maybe you’re not broken, or doomed. Maybe you’re powerful, brilliant. Maybe you can get through this and become who you’re supposed to be. Maybe there is light at the end of this darkness, maybe you just can’t see it yet. Maybe, maybe, maybe. 

And guess what? That maybe turned into a yes, turned into a life that I get to live everyday. 

If you’re still in the darkness, keep going.  Even if you don’t know which way to go, just choose a direction and walk. Then, keep walking.  

Because what if you do live long enough? What if you make it to the next year, or the next decade, or to old age? What if your dreams come true? 

Imagining the future is the antidote to a foreshortened one. You have to be able to imagine it in order to create it. But, lawwwd, I know, it’s vulnerable to hope. And also, sweetheart, it’s the only way.