My first step is coming to grips with the word, ‘survivor.’ I have a love/hate relationship with that word. 

My gut instinct is to hate it, yet I can’t quite put my finger on why. I mean, I do have this inherent abhorrence to clichés  and “You’re such a survivor” [flex bicep muscle here] feels annoyingly cliché to me so it makes sense that that is the likely culprit to my disdain for the word. (And then don’t even get me started on the sentiment of “do you simply survive or should you choose to thrive?” [enter the raised eyebrow and smirk of conjecture]) … Ugh. 

Now let me state for the record real quick, that whenever someone says these things to me, I don’t immediately discount them. I get it. I understand the difficulty in knowing what to say because, well, it’s just difficult to know what to say. And I receive their encouragement even if I cringe a little at the words. But nonetheless, I am so wishing there was another word. When I searched a thesaurus for synonyms to replace it, nothing else jumped out at me that was more palpable to my spirit, so, where does that leave me? Acceptance. That’s where. So much so that now I wear a necklace with the word ‘survivor’ on it (a very thoughtful gift from a friend) so that I can practice, each and every day, what it means to accept it. 

That lends very nicely, though, to the reason that I am learning to love the word [read: I’m not fully there yet]. One, if there are no words in a thesaurus to replace it, then that, in and of itself, is telling. Right? The fact is, that surviving something terrible, dreadful, ugly, treacherous, traumatic is deeply resilient and being that there is no.other.word to capture that bad-ass-ness, well, then, I am a freakin’ survivor. Say it again, Amber, “I am a survivor.” And now say it inflecting each word.

I am a survivor of watching domestic abuse as a small child. I am a survivor of abandonment. I am a survivor of middle school (I know you know what I mean). I am a survivor of rape. I am a survivor of miscarriage. I am a survivor of the normal day-to-day struggles in life. I am a survivor of advanced stage breast cancer. And it is this last one that has really thrown me for a loop. It has propelled me into wrestling with the literal definition and the figurative baggage of surviving. And I’m learning that it is okay that surviving doesn’t have to be qualified as or with a cheesy positive opposite. Instead, it is hard. And complicated. And confusing. And frustrating. And wonderful.