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candybear said:
It didn't kill me, but it didn't make me stronger, either -- I simply lived through it. Scarred, battered, broken, and considerably the worse for wear, I am still walking around the planet, but I haven't survived a damn thing. My only accomplishment is continuing to breathe in and out on a regular basis (whether I like it or not).

I guess I'd like to hear other people's takes on this. Do you feel like you have triumphed over the bad things in your life, or like they just kind of happened to you, and you did what you had to do to get through it, and then just moved on, waiting for the next bad thing to happen? I feel like there is absolutely nothing triumphant about my life. I just woke up every day and dealt with what I got handed, because that's what you have to do to get through life.

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I think we put too much on the poor word "survive." Survive means to me that lots of other people in the same/similar conditions didn't, make it. People survived the death camps of WWII or survived imprisionment, etc. That's what "survive" means to me and so, being 56 and having gone through what I've gone through, I'm doing pretty good. In 1800, people in England could expect to live to be an average of 36 years old (I know this because I just used it in an essay for my European history course midterm :-) Look! I've lived 20 years longer, I've "survived." I try not to put any emotional baggage on the poor word, I let it survive as just a placeholder. It's kind of a greeting in psychology I think, "Wow, you and me, we're here together against the odds." My mother died when she was 40. I've "survived" 16 years longer than she did and I'm reasonably healthy, happy, and sane and did it without my mother! What other wildlife could do as well; all the nature shows on television start playing the serious music when a child's mother in the wild dies. The penguin eggs/chicks don't make it if the mother doesn't come back and the father has to leave to feed himself, etc. Babies die if they're not handled, they "fail to thrive." There's more than physical death that faces us though when we're born and you (and I and everyone here) has had our share and we're still here.

That being true; I also think we have built-in negators. I remember feeling like I'd done nothing when my T congratulated me (and I saw her a total of 18 years, thank you very much :-) on having graduated from college. But I began to see it in a better light 8-10 years later when I had to have braces on my teeth and was 29/30 years old and long flown out of the nest so had to pay for them myself! I am so proud of having paid for my braces and it seems such a small thing but it makes "getting through" college look better too. At the time I was just putting one foot in front of another and doing what was "expected" of me, etc. and so my perception of what had happened was off. My T was able to show me at one point (and me, see/understand what she was showing :-) that because my stepmother "expected" I make the bed every day does not mean making the bed has no value. My stepmother made fun of me wishing for validation and approval for making the bed, that was one of her put-downs, as if one shouldn't wish for that or that it was stupid when you're FIVE to get encouragement and help making the bed. It was my perception that got warped, I have been doing better than existing/surviving and there are quite a few things exceptional about me. Do you make a certain kind of cookie/cake or meatloaf, etc. that's really good and you like? No one else makes it like that and that's worthy of joy/"pride." How "you" do things is important. No one else can be you, in the place you are, etc.

I like to remember "It's a Wonderful Life" and imagine what the world would be like without me. There are all sorts of things I don't even know about that have influenced people and may have "saved" the world, who knows? Jimmy Stewart saved his brother from drowning in the movie and 20 years later his brother saved a shipload of people or whatever to get his Medal of Honor. Usually we don't even know what we've done for others but I believe it's all important. Maybe something I write here will inspire or cheer you and you'll inspire or cheer your grandson who will become head of a company and influence. . . etc. We don't have to be President of the United States ourselves to influence in that manner. Think of the past presidents that compliment their third grade teacher or something. The teacher is usually dead by then and had no idea when they were living that their student would become a future president. Act as if the next person you talk to will talk to a person who talks to a person who _______. Some book I read expressed it in terms of being a freckle by the elbow and being the best freckle and making sure it didn't become cancerous, etc. We all have our place and are in "it" I believe. If we get to see how it works out later or not, we still should work at it as if we're important and necessary because we are.