Looking At The Past To Trust The Future
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
There are moments
when the past resurfaces
not to reopen itself,
but to be understood
correctly.
A message.
A memory.
A version of ourselves
who once wanted something
with absolute conviction
and could not imagine
how wrong that wanting was.
At the time,
we called it heartbreak.
We called it loss.
We believed that if love left,
it had taken the future with it.
But wanting is not wisdom.
And desire is not prophecy.
We are remarkably sincere
about what we think will save us—
especially when we are young,
especially when our vision
has not yet been widened
by living.
What we asked for then
was shaped by limitation.
By what we had seen.
By what we thought was available.
By what we mistook
for stability,
for intelligence,
for love.
Time has a way
of revealing the mercy
in what did not work.
The doors that closed
were not failures of effort,
but acts of redirection
we could not yet interpret.
Had the past agreed with us,
had it given us exactly
what we begged for,
entire lives would have vanished.
Cities unvisited.
Worlds unopened.
Versions of ourselves
that required distance,
movement,
better love
to exist at all.
We would not know
what support feels like
without conditions.
What partnership looks like
without diminishment.
What it means to be chosen
without being edited.
The past does not embarrass me.
It instructs me.
It shows me
how often my certainty
was rooted in survival,
not truth.
How many times
what felt unbearable
was actually making room.
So when the future hesitates,
when it asks for trust
without offering proof,
I look back—not with regret,
but with recognition.
I see how wrong I was.
And how grateful I am
that life did not agree with me
when I didn’t yet know
what I deserved.
That is how I trust the future—
not because it promises ease,
but because the past
has already proven
that disappointment
can be a form of deliverance.
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Poetry Anthologies by Britt Wolfe:
