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.
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