I spent years being proud of calling myself a survivor. It felt like an upgrade from victim—like I’d graduated from something shameful to something admirable. Society certainly treated it that way. People celebrated my survival stories with the same enthusiasm they’d show for a war hero returning home.
“You’re so strong!” they’d say when I told them about leaving my abusive ex-husband. “Good for you for getting out of that toxic family situation!” when I described cutting contact with my mother. “You survived war—you can survive anything!”
The applause felt good. The recognition felt validating. But what I didn’t realize was that “survivor” had become another cage—one I’d built myself and was proud to live in.
Here’s what nobody tells you: society loves to celebrate survivors, but they have no idea how to teach you to thrive.
The Survivor Celebration Circuit
We have entire industries built around celebrating survival. Military veterans get parades and “thank you for your service.” People who leave abusive relationships get support groups and social media validation. Adult children of toxic parents get book clubs and therapy recommendations.
All of this is good. All of this is necessary. But it’s also where the help ends.
Society cheers when you escape the bad, but offers no roadmap for building the good. They’ll celebrate you for recognizing abuse, but they won’t teach you what healthy love actually looks like. They’ll applaud you for setting boundaries, but they won’t show you how to build relationships that don’t require them.
They’ll call you brave for cutting off toxic family, but they won’t prepare you for the grief that follows.
The Grief No One Mentions
When I finally cut ties with my mother after decades of manipulation and emotional abuse, people celebrated. “You don’t owe her anything just because she gave birth to you!” they said. “Family isn’t about blood—it’s about love!”
They meant well. They were right, even. But what they didn’t prepare me for was the grief that would follow—not just for losing her, but for losing something I’d never actually had but had always hoped for.
I grieved never having a mother who was genuinely proud of me. Never having that family group chat full of inside jokes and unconditional support. Never having someone to call with good news who would be purely, simply happy for me. Never walking into a family gathering and feeling like I belonged instead of like I was performing.
I watched my partner Percy with his children and felt the absence of that easy familiarity, that shared history of love without conditions. I saw other people take for granted what I’d spent my whole life longing for.
That’s the grief no one talks about when they celebrate your survivor story.
You made the healthy choice, but you still have to live with the loss every single day. At weddings, graduations, holidays—everywhere families are celebrated, you feel the absence.
The Survivor Identity Trap
The problem with stopping at “survivor” is that it keeps you defined by what you’ve escaped from rather than what you’re building toward. It keeps you looking backward instead of forward. It makes your trauma the center of your story instead of your choices.
I spent years in survivor mode—proving I wasn’t broken, demonstrating I could function, showing the world I was “healed enough” to deserve basic respect. I fought custody battles, rebuilt my credit, got therapy, went to college. I checked all the boxes that society uses to measure whether someone has “overcome” their past.
But I wasn’t thriving. I was just surviving more competently.
The Shift to Thriving
Thriving started when I stopped trying to prove anything to anyone and started building the life I actually wanted. It started when I met Percy and learned what love looked like when it didn’t come with conditions or costs. It started when I created a home that felt like sanctuary instead of just safety.
Most importantly, it started when I accepted that some relationships are too toxic to survive—even when they’re with people who share your DNA.
Breaking that bond with my mother wasn’t just about protecting myself from her toxicity. It was about refusing to model dysfunction for my daughter. It was about choosing to build chosen family based on love and respect rather than obligation and guilt.
The proof came when my adult daughter called me after years of limited contact, not because she had to, but because she finally could. When her father’s neglect finally caught up with him and she needed somewhere safe to land, she chose the sanctuary Percy and I had built together. She chose our stability over his chaos, our love over his manipulation.
She chose what we’d created rather than what biology had assigned her.
What Thriving Actually Looks Like
Thriving isn’t about healing perfectly or having all your trauma responses under control. It’s not about never being triggered or always making the healthiest choices.
Thriving is about building something so genuine and stable that people choose it freely. It’s about creating rather than just surviving. It’s about making decisions based on what you want to build instead of what you need to escape.
Thriving is knowing that some wounds don’t heal—they just become part of your landscape. And that’s okay, because the landscape you’ve created is beautiful despite the scars, maybe even because of them.
The Permission You Don’t Need But Deserve
If you’re reading this and you’ve been stuck in survivor mode, here’s what I want you to know: You have permission to want more than just making it through. You have permission to grieve what you’ve never had while building something new. You have permission to break bonds that are too toxic to survive, even when society tells you family is everything.
Most importantly, you have permission to stop defining yourself by what you’ve survived and start defining yourself by what you choose to create.
Society will celebrate your survival story. But your thriving story? That’s the one only you can write.
And it’s the one that matters most.—What’s your next chapter going to say?