What does it mean to be a survivor? I really don't know. Do you ever *really* survive something? I mean, it's going to be there with you, haunting you, for the rest of your life... you will never totally escape what has happened to you so have you really survived it?
Yes, I think you have. You have been through it and you've come out of the other side alive. You are a survivor.
When people find out about my past, the one thing that I hear most often is "bad things happen to good people". Never has a truer word been spoken. It *shouldn't* happen, but it does. There are far too many survivors out there - people who have seen things and heard things and been through things that *nobody* should be put through. Each and every one of those people is a survivor - they shouldn't have to be, but they are.
There are all kinds of different survivor though - not only surviving what they have been through, but surviving as best they can and coping as best they can with everyday life, living with the constant knowledge that they have had to survive something that should never have happened in the first place. Some of them are keeping their pain totally to themselves (like I did until very recently) and hurting alone. Some survivors are still living in their situation and surviving it minute to minute. Some are out of the situation but still too scared to talk about what happened to them... some *can't* talk about what happened to them. Some are slowly starting to feel safe enough to open up to just a few people that they trust (which is where I am atm) and others can talk about it openly - it must be incredibly hard for them to do that but they refuse to be silenced. To those people who are speaking out, I'd like to say a huge thank you on behalf of everyone who can't do what you are doing yet.
This is still a very new page and I'm going to be working on it more and more as I discover more about myself and as I become a stronger survivor. In the meantime, if you are a survivor, then please feel free to take one or more of the gifts that I've added to the next few pages (they are very graphics intense so please wait for them all to load - they open in a new window). If you have an idea for any other gifts for this page I would love to hear from you. A link back would be nice (so that other survivors can come and pick up their gifts too) but it's not required. If you email me with your website address I'll add a link to your site and all the survivors can join hands around the world as we stand tall together.
I've got an online shop where you can buy all sorts of things! Take a look and maybe buy something?
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