By Jane Hoppen

I believe that words, especially those we use to describe ourselves and our histories, have the power to imprint patterns and connotations on our minds and souls. The impact of a word is weighty. A word forms an image that eventually turns to vision. One who is abused journeys to change from victim to survivor, but we never hear of a journey beyond that.

I have traveled from victim to survivor, and I know with no doubt that there is a beyond. The word survivor invokes battles and pains, scars and sorrows, echoes and screams, the state of overcoming and then remaining in the battle aftermath. That is no reward, not the parade one should want for one’s self, not the victory celebration so very much deserved.

I want a big parade, with streamers and floats, loud bands with cymbals clashing, balloons drifting free. A word can hold a world, and I want to be known, not as a survivor, but as a thriver. Thriver invokes victory, nourishment, growth, glory, success. I have been a victim, and I have been a survivor. I now call myself thriver. This is a just reward.

As time passes and I repeat my new title to myself, thriver, the word settles in me, takes root, mixes with my energies, becomes an evolution in myself. I feel filled with possibility. Yet, as one passes from the limits of survivor into the vast openness of thriver, one finds one’s self delivered into a land of unfamiliarity. The old rules, habits, sayings hold little meaning. The landscape awaits your painting, and the brush lies silently, listlessly, in your hand. The key lies in understanding the variations of the landscape, the core differences between thriver and survivor.

A survivor carries a list of symptoms, most of which she or he wants to eliminate, particularly those that are self destructive, deadly, diminishing. This is a list of symptoms that the survivor carries each day, always a heavy shroud of darkness that invades day and night. As a survivor I was always focused on my flaws, the symptoms of my abuse. Despite all of the items I had checked off the list, all I saw were the remaining tasks, the self-chores still to be done. I would look at my list and see ahead a life of endless toil, ever mending and repairing. I incorporated a routine and rhythm – erase one item from the list and move on to the next. The word survivor keeps one linked to the past, to the thread of destructive history.

A thriver holds a list of skills and abilities, many of which can be attributed to, a tribute to, the act of surviving and then moving on. The thriver learns how to transform the list from a compilation of disdain to a collection of strengths and compliments. As a thriver I feel I lend myself more freely to positive thinking. Instead of life’s downfalls, I see life’s potentials. The word thriver links one to the present, to the day’s accomplishments and future possibilities. Thriver implies birthing, blooming, the red carpet being rolled out to greet a special day.

I can close my eyes now and see how I once spent my days spinning a web around a past that kept repeating. I can see that much of the movement in my life was a way of placing myself on an edge that felt common to my spirit of survival. I see the discomfort I felt any time my life began to feel warm, comfortable, safe, and steady. I can feel the anxiety that was the fear of unfamiliar feelings. I see myself jerking myself from safety and security, because I believed that some event would innately crush those feelings, steal them from me. Rather than wait for the blow, I simply moved on, caused my own change, created a new beginning, even if it was catastrophe. I had created a life of beginning again and again.

The transition from to survivor to thriver can be a difficult one, steeped in the unfamiliar. I felt lost in my newfound state. Before, I at least had the familiarity of the chaos, the turmoil, the terror and depression. Before, I at least knew where I was. But I found myself again on scary grounds, feeling the fear I would have felt as a little girl, lying in my bed at night, convinced that some evil lurked in the closet, so frightened that I mistook my own breathing for dark breathing behind the door. In the void, I feared that another step, any step, might take me where I wasn’t meant to go. I feared the calm. I had grown used to the clamor of catastrophe, but believed I could adapt to a softer, calmer state of living.

I knew then that I had to exchange the familiar for the new. The mind can be trained to either build or annihilate. I had to rewire myself, so to speak, change the brain patterns that controlled my thoughts and actions. In the beginning one of the most difficult aspects of thriving was the depression that would seep back in, its presence such a constant since childhood. I knew it no longer served any purpose, that I had no more need for it, but there it would be, on any given morning or night, looming in the shadows. And I would accept it back – old friend. As unhealthy as I knew it was for me, it was my familiar, almost a safe place. Joy and calm felt uncomfortable, and though I should have embraced them with glee, I shuddered at their newness.

I was talking to a friend one day and she asked me what was wrong. I told her I was depressed, and she asked me why. Only then did I realize that I truly had no response, no reason, except that it was familiar, and I kept running back to the common ground. Oh no, I thought, this won’t work. From that point on, whenever that blanket of darkness loomed, I would sit myself down at the table, place a pen and a writing pad before me, and make myself list all of the reasons for my depression. If the pad was still empty after five minutes, I put it away and made myself begin the day, doing the dishes, taking a walk, preparing for work. I made myself move, just move, and before I would realize it, the fog would lift and evaporate to nothing. In time the uncomfortable unfamiliarity lifted also, and I realized I had given myself the grandest gift of all – the permission to allow myself the calm and the joy.

In this new place, where I have learned to honor my self and my journies, I have gone from doubting the future to designing one. I have freed myself to possibilities, for no act is more honorable than the act of saving one’s self for life. I look at the woman I have become because of my life history – strong, empathetic, courageous, intuitive, persistent, respectful, open. I am a thriver. The present is mine, and the future is unfolding.

Originally published at Moondance.org

About The Author: I am a creative writer with fiction and non-fiction published in various periodicals, I have had poetry, fiction, and non-fiction published in various periodicals and literary magazines, including Moondance, Scary Stories, Wilde Times, Capper's, Wanton Words, Grit: American Life and Traditions, and Feminist Studies. I am also an avid nature lover and love to immerse in her beauty, as well as an advocate regarding various social issues.