Let’s talk about will to thrive.
Being a victim for me feels stuck, like I’m right in the front row of the experience.
It took cultivated awareness to know I’m sitting there, absorbing, getting involved, and to remind myself I can actually walk out of the shit show that is so far in the past and that there was no need to keep occupying the seat in the first place.
Being a survivor for me feels like I am taking action, past feeling in the experience but I am still carrying the burden of it so it is easy to dip in and out of victim because I am still labeling myself as the person who is surviving the abuse, toxic behavior, addictions, or whatever it may be.
In a way, I feel survivor is the learning place and a very potent place to stand firm in self-discovery.
Thriving for me is choosing to go past what you suffered and the hurts you have been left alone with, leaving that front row seat is huge!
When I was there it felt like I landed in an enormous falsity of freedom. I was out of an abusive relationship and I thought that’s all I had to do, that if I get out it is done.
In reality that’s when the real work began for me. After this false sense of freedom, I created perhaps as a coping mechanism was recognised the healing really started to begin, the impact of trauma was realised, which isn’t an easy stage at all.
Thriving to me means that all I experienced was still there; the difficult conversations, the triggers, and responses to trauma, the person doing the toxic thing can still be doing the toxic things, your children may be going to that environment and having to navigate those transitions while you try your best to hold it all together.
Just because you are a survivor the road doesn’t end there. You can thrive wholeheartedly within the chaos of the shitty storms that come your way by developing tools for resilience to the unwelcome guests and emotions constantly knocking—you thrive despite them.
Eventually, i realised the storm is what was consistent for me, it kept knocking me over while i played in it so one day I changed my perspective. The storm was something so out of my control so I thought to myself “why don’t i use this time to centre myself, settle into the eye of this long drawn out nightmare and let it just happen around me?” which lead me to a mantra I would repeat in times I felt my center get shaky.
I would repeat “Chaos is the perfect time to ground”.
And i taught myself to stay in my center – Thanks to the situation I was in I was given so many chances to choose chaos or calm so I feel that practice of finding stillness within me allowed me to find what my truth was, invite my energy back in for life, I realised the power that was mine to claim and that my life could be more peaceful one choice at a time.
You choose to thrive just as you chose to survive. You do it because when you reach a point in the journey of peeling back enough of the layers to reveal a deeper connection to the place where you know yourself, what you stand for, how you deserve to be treated, and how you show up in the world. You are able to sit with yourself in curiosity and compassionate inquiry, communicating truth and creating awareness that this is what you are about and if that doesn’t sit with someone then they can take a seat in someone else’s life and you are more than okay with that. You will thrive anyway.
Thriving is choosing present moment responses while you may be taking the victim seat momentarily by having a response. It is knowing our perception of feelings, and whether they belong in that moment with us or not—the truth helps to discern this in every moment we experience as a thriver.
In fact, I have so joyfully discovered you can use your past for fuel to live lighter and love deeper. The scars we have are sacred to our journey. They remind us of our strength and courage, our willingness to be alive, and as we begin to access our pain as higher knowledge we can channel that inner power to make aligned actions and change belief systems.
It is moving from woundedness to wisdom because what you have experienced can now be seen as your initiation into the empowerment of your divine self.
Your greatest struggles can truly become the gateway to you discovering your fullest expression of truth and light.
Gift yourself permission to shine and thrive in truth of what was then and what is now.
