Does Time Heal All Wounds?

This old adage has been around for time immemorial and has often been used as a way to dismiss current feelings. Folks will use it to get out of a difficult conversation or, more optimistically, to provide a possibility of future relief for someone they care about. Whatever intent is initially meant, the validity of the statement should be tested.

Mary Frances O’Connor and her team studied the brains of individuals suffering from complicated bereavement in order to assess the different ways their brains interpret stimuli concerning loved ones who have passed away. What she found was that images that sparked thoughts of the deceased lit up the part of the brain concerned with receiving rewards. O’Connor hypothesizes that, when there is no reward of future connection with their loved ones, the individual is put into a consistent state of reminder that their loved one is gone without the ability to develop acceptance.

So, how does this tie into time being the ultimate healer? Our brains are designed to adapt to new situations. They may take their sweet time doing so, but this is typically how they operate. However, when our mind will not accept a new reality, time is not allowed to work. If the new reality of a loved one being gone is “not real” to our minds, then how can we expect to believe it?

Time does a lot of things. It mutates our surroundings, our relationships, and our responsibilities. It creates new priorities and solidifies old ones. When our brains allow it to, it adapts to the realities of loss and the new world that it presents. Therefore, I don’t believe that time “heals” all wounds; I believe a better framing is that time allows us to adapt to this wound. There is not a world where the loss didn’t occur, but time gives us the ability to exist in the one where it did.