WOMAN, DETERMINED
Creative Works & Advocacy
Resources Do Not a Survivor Make
I’m remembering the time someone suggested that I’ve gotten where I am — healing, sharing, teaching — because I must have had more and better resources than other survivors.
If she’d had any idea how long I’ve struggled financially and fought emotionally, how many times I’ve pulled myself up by the proverbial boot straps, how often I’ve pushed my sorrow, anxiety, anger, trauma into raw hope, the weeks and months and years I’ve spent incredibly alone with only myself to rely on, she’d have never said a thing.
But perhaps that wouldn’t have mattered to her.
Perhaps all she needed to understand was that fighting for survival isn’t about resources, anyway. Not really.
Do resources help? Hell, yeah. And we all deserve them.
But what truly matters in our fight for survival is how willing we are to hunt down those resources—because they don’t just show up at the doorstep—and also, how willing we are to become resourceful.
What matters is how soon we realize that no one can or should come to our rescue and make it easy, or take away the fight. Because we have to take on the journey ourselves.
And what matters is how readily we understand that we actually have to do the homework of building our safe space,
breaking the patterns that only we are responsible for and which cannot continue,
establishing the boundaries necessary for healthier choices and future relationships,
and transforming our mentality from that of victim to that of a warrior.
Of course resources help. Support helps. Financial aid helps. Having a good job helps. Surprise opportunity — like being in the right place at the right time — helps.
But not as much as choosing our path forward, laying claim to our very future, and then showing up every damn day to manifest the life we deserve.
And I wanted you to know.
WOMAN, DETERMINED 