A recent episode of my favorite podcast (On Being) featured the singing/songwriting dynamic duo Amy Ray & Emily Saliers, known as The Indigo Girls. The entire podcast is fabulous and fascinating but most through provoking for me were Sailer’s words on the loss it can be for members of the queer community to have life events out of order:
“I’m getting married next week. My partner’s Canadian. We’re getting married by a justice of the peace because we’re afraid they’re going to repeal the laws before we get a chance to — so we’re going to hurry up and get married, and then we’re going to have a ceremony. So queer people they have to — you can’t do it the way you dream about it really, you know? We had the kid first and then — it doesn’t matter how straight people do it. It’s fine. But we haven’t had the same privileges of chronology.”
The phrase “privilege of chronology” is an insightful path we can all follow deeper into our stories of loss. As a developmental trauma survivor, I had to become more adult at a very young age in order to parent my parents. This beautiful phrase “the privilege of chronology” captures the tragedy it was for me to know how to do my own laundry at age 6 but without a memory of someone ever reading a picture book out loud to me.
When in your story have things been dis-ordered regarding time? What did you learn to do earlier than would have been good for your young heart? What did no one teach you until later in life when an inability became a source of shame? When as an adult have circumstances (infertility, premature loss of a parent) meant you felt “behind” others?
What does it mean for you to name a loss of the privilege of chronology in your story--that something didn’t happen the way you dreamed it would? How might you give yourself the gift of becoming a “time traveler” as you care for yourself now?