Exercise 07 · Full guide · Time & grief
Crip Time Timeline.
You’re not behind. You were handed someone else’s clock.
The client draws three lines: the life they were expected to live, the life they have actually lived, and a timeline of the milestones they count. It makes room for grief about the expected life while ending its role as the only measure.
1Why this exercise exists
Most of us absorb a standard life script early: school, exam results, a job, a partner, a home, children, promotion, retirement, each at roughly the right age. Disability, chronic illness and neurodivergence often disrupt that script. A diagnosis at 25, years lost to a flare, a career that has to change, a pace that will never match peers.
Measured against the standard script, the result is a constant sense of being late, failing, or missing out. Social media and family comparisons make it louder.
The Crip Time Timeline doesn’t ask the client to stop caring about the standard script. It puts that script on paper as one version among others, so it can be grieved where needed and questioned where it no longer fits.
Grief for the expected timeline is real and allowed. The aim isn’t to argue it away, only to stop it being the only measure.
2The thinking behind it
Crip time
“Crip time” began as a phrase within disability communities for the extra time things take: getting ready, getting there, recovering afterwards. Alison Kafer, in Feminist, Queer, Crip (2013), extended it into a broader idea: instead of disabled people being forced to fit the clock, crip time reshapes the clock around disabled bodies and minds. Ellen Samuels’ essay Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time (2017) adds that crip time is also about loss, grief and broken time, not only freedom.
Compulsory able-bodiedness
Robert McRuer argues that culture assumes an able body as the default, so that a life that doesn’t fit is read as tragic or lacking. The standard life script is one of the places this shows most clearly.
Grief that has no ending
Pauline Boss’s concept of ambiguous loss describes losses without clear endings or rituals, such as an expected future that quietly disappears. Naming it as loss, rather than failure, often helps.
Narrative and re-authoring
Drawing the lines is a form of re-authoring, close to narrative therapy: the dominant story is made visible, and the client looks for the events it leaves out.
3What it looks like in a session
Fictional example Maeve, 34, has ME/CFS and lives with her parents. A school friend has just announced a second pregnancy.
Everyone’s moved on. I’m still in my childhood bedroom.
Could we draw the timeline you were supposed to have? Ages and milestones.
Degree at 22, job, flat by 27, married by 30, kids by 33.
And underneath, the one you lived?
Got ill at 23. Two years in bed. Learned to pace. Started the Etsy shop. Found the ME group. Got through last winter without a crash.
Which of those would be on your own list of milestones?
…Getting through the winter. Honestly, that was massive.
Maeve cries about the children she may not have, and the therapist stays with that. In the next session she adds three of her own milestones to the third line, and names one thing for “the next bit”: moving the shop to a bigger platform, at her own pace.
4How to run it
Ask first, and agree a time limit. Remind the client they can stop at any point, shorten it, or take the rest home.
- 5 minutes
Draw the borrowed timeline
Draw a line and mark the expected milestones and ages: the script others expected, or the one the client absorbed.
“What were you supposed to have done by now, and by when?”
Why: Making it visible turns it into one story, not reality itself.
- 5–8 minutes
Draw the lived timeline below it
Mark what actually happened: diagnosis, flares, recovery, discoveries, community, love, adaptations, losses.
“What actually happened, including the things no one celebrated?”
Why: Prompt for good things too. This line is usually richer than people expect.
- 3–5 minutes
Mark the gaps
Where do the two lines differ? Name the grief honestly. Some gaps hurt; some are relief.
“Which gaps hurt? Are any a relief?”
Why: Give this step time. Don’t hurry to step 4.
- 5 minutes
Draw your own milestones
A third line of what the client counts as achievement: getting through a winter, finding the right aid, saying no, meeting other disabled people.
“What would you celebrate if no one were watching?”
- 3 minutes
Future in crip time
What comes next, at a pace the body sets?
“What’s the next thing on your own line, at your pace?”
Why: Keep it small and unrushed.
Reflection prompts
- Whose clock have you been living by?
- Which milestones do you still want, on your own timescale?
- Which ones can you put down?
5Adapting it
| If… | Try |
|---|---|
| Grief is raw | Do steps 1–3 only, and leave the third line for another time. |
| A recent diagnosis | Focus on naming the expected timeline and the loss; your own milestones may come later. |
| Writing or drawing is hard | Use sticky notes, or talk it through while you draw. |
| Young people | Use school and peer milestones; involve parents only if the client wants. |
| Groups | Share personal milestones only. It’s often moving to hear others celebrate the same small wins. |
6Through different approaches
The exercise sits inside most ways of working. What changes is what you do with what comes up.
Narrative
Treat the standard timeline as a dominant story and the third line as re-authoring.
“What story does your own timeline tell?”
Grief-informed
Name ambiguous loss and allow mourning without a deadline.
“What have you lost that no one has acknowledged?”
ACT
Separate values (connection, creativity) from the goals the script attached to them.
“What do those milestones stand for, underneath?”
Person-centred
Follow the client’s own valuing process; their milestones are theirs.
“What matters to you, separate from what you were told?”
CBT
Examine “I should be further on by now” and where the rule came from.
“Whose rule is that, and does it fit your life?”
Existential
Explore meaning, time and mortality without a fixed script.
“What do you want your time to be for?”
7Signs it’s helping, and when to hold back
Signs it’s helping
- Less “I’m behind”, more “I’m on my own timescale”.
- Grief is named and allowed.
- The client values milestones they once dismissed.
- Peer comparison stings a little less.
- Future plans are paced, not rushed.
When to hold back
- Never imply the expected timeline wasn’t worth wanting.
- Don’t rush to the positive third line.
- Take extra care with milestones like parenthood that may be grieved for years.
- If grief becomes overwhelming, slow down and support rather than finish.
8Printable worksheet
My crip time timeline · Date: __________
The borrowed timeline: what I was expected to do, and when
The lived timeline: what actually happened
The gaps I want to name
My own milestones
What’s next, at my pace
9Evidence & sources
- Established conceptKafer, A. (2013). Feminist, Queer, Crip. Indiana University Press.
- Established conceptSamuels, E. (2017). Six ways of looking at crip time. Disability Studies Quarterly, 37(3).
- Established conceptMcRuer, R. (2006). Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. NYU Press.
- Established conceptBoss, P. (1999). Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief. Harvard University Press.
- Established conceptWhite, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends. Norton.
- Our frameworkThe Crip Time Timeline is this site’s own tool, not a validated measure.
Related: Grieving the Life You Expected · Narrative Therapy · Accessible Utopia · All eleven exercises