Re: Warrior Women

I was talking to a very dear friend the other day, whose been going through some pretty tough change for some time now. She was talking about a new tattoo that would mark a new way of being for her. And she said something so profound and so ordinarily lost for most women that it set me on a real bender this week.

She said...."I'm not a survivor, I am a warrior."

There's a huge difference to me because to say that you're a survivor implies that you were (and probably still are) a victim. When someone talks about a soldier living through 'the-battle-of-such-and-such', they don't say...."so-and-so is a survivor of the-battle-of-such-and-such'. They say, "so-and-so is a veteran of the-battle-of-such-and-such".  An even if the word 'survived' is used, it's never in the context of the soldier being a victim in the first place. Victims are survivors when they win through their challenges - warriors are veterans.

Now don't get me wrong.....I'm not belittling the efforts of those who call themselves survivors - hell no. Until a week ago - so did I! It's no small feat to get through the garbage life can chuck at a person - life's a funny beast. What I'm saying is that with term survivor, we may not have entirely moved out of the arena of 'victim'. As a veteran of domestic abuse, there is has definitely been a subtle change in my thought patterns when I think of that time in my life. I believe that we can get further still in our healing processes by addressing ourselves as warriors rather than survivors.

A sense of self worth

Self worth.....not self esteem.......very, very different in my book. And it's fascinating to realise that every single case of depression that I have ever come to understand (including my own) has stemmed from a damaged sense of self-worth - the idea of your own preciousness. A damaged sense of self-worth always seems to begin in childhood and the consequences continue to ripple throughout our lives. A question that I have (amongst many of course) is.....are we born with this sense of preciousness intact or is it something we learn (or don't). In other words, do we already have it and it is taken by a death or a callous act.....or is it something that the people around us encourage us to feel & understand?

And the thing that gets on my bal-lee-lees is that even as a rational, reasoning adult, I can't seem to repair it - no matter what epiphanies or emotional techniques I come up with. It's like a spiritual memory just out of my reach. And I understand why some psychology exercises should technically work well to repair this kind of damage but don't - like the one where you get to shout at someone who is 'standing in' for one of the people who were the source of your pain. Maybe the damage is specific the person who caused it and surrogate techniques can't work because of it.

What I know is that I came to believe, as a very young child, that I didn't matter much. I kept it as a core belief all the way through into adulthood and even though I have a loving family of my own - this belief still persists.

However, having said all that - perhaps it's not so strong as it used to be. I have come to understand that every living thing is special to the universe because we are all unique from the moment we are conceived and every experience that we gain - every moment of understanding we achieve - enhances our uniqueness throughout our lives. Yes.......that's kinda cool and I think it definitely helps.