This is Not Survivor, You Weren’t Meant to Just Survive.

Suffering in Silence… Is it a badge of honor or it is survivors remorse? Maybe it’s just become normal in today’s culture.

I learned so much last year about how suffering in silence never brings you closer to your destination, only further away from who you used to be and those that can help uplift you.

I am here to tell you that life can be isolating, , but you don’t have to isolate yourself even more because you think you can and should do everything on your own.

I am a woman who always wants to do it herself, who wants to figure out how I can help other people, but never how anyone can help me or lighten my load.

I wore survivorship as a badge of honor, actually I lied. I AM WEARING IT like a badge of honor. I didn’t think it was meant for me to have help or thrive at all.

I thought surviving was the only choice that I had, especially  as a woman of color. But that does not have to be your story. You don’t have to wake up every day with your sympathetic nervous system on full alert (aka fight-or-flight mode). That is not normal; that is survival. Not even survival of the fittest because you’re weakening your body day by day, moment by moment. And if we want to lean into the evolutionary principle of survival of the fittest for a moment: you are not passing on the best traits to your progeny by merely surviving. You are not creating enough joy. You are not finding outlets for self-care and happiness. You are self-preserving yourself in a moment in time that has become the mantra for your life.

I am here to tell you to shake off the permafrost and thaw yourself out—because you don’t have to be stuck in the ice age of your life, where everything was cold, barren, and miserable.

That time is devoid of life, but you are not.

You are living each day, full of warmth and reason to be more than just the moments that make you want to crawl into your tomb of isolation and sit there just to survive.

Maybe you don’t have a support system that can hold you up and help you thrive.

Maybe you don’t want to thrive.

Maybe I am delusional to think it does not have to be this way, but I truly don’t believe it should or will always be this way.

But maybe, just maybe, if we start each day by growing outside our own weeds, we can fully see the life blooming in the field of roses around us. And maybe the rose you never expected will lend you its roots, and you will both grow and thrive.

But it starts first with reaching out and asking for a little water and sunshine.

You do not have to persist alone.
It was not meant to be this hard.

With Love,

Amber