I knew I could not cope with the future unless I was able to rediscover the past.

Tierney’s line frames recovery and self-understanding as an act of historical retrieval: the “future” cannot be managed until the “past” is faced, reconstructed, and integrated. The verb “rediscover” suggests that the past is not merely remembered but found anew—perhaps after denial, repression, or confusion—so that one can regain continuity of identity. In this view, coping is not willpower alone; it depends on narrative coherence, on knowing what happened and what it meant. The quote resonates with therapeutic ideas about trauma and memory: healing often requires revisiting origins, naming losses, and reinterpreting earlier experience so that it no longer silently governs the present.