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People say to me, “Things in my life are pretty hard right now, but I have no right to complain—it’s not Auschwitz.” This kind of comparison can lead us to minimize or diminish our own suffering. Being a survivor, being a “thriver” requires absolute acceptance of what was and what is. If we discount our pain, or punish ourselves for feeling lost or isolated or scared about the challenges in our lives, however insignificant these challenges may seem to someone else, then we’re still choosing to be victims. We’re not seeing our choices. We’re judging ourselves. I don’t want you to hear my story
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There are different ways to keep yourself going. I will have to find my own way to live with what has happened. I don’t know what it is yet. We’re free from the death camps, but we also must be free to—free to create, to make a life, to choose. And until we find our freedom to, we’re just spinning around in the same endless darkness.
There is no door for survival. Or recovery either. It’s all windows. Latches you can’t reach easily, panes too small, spaces where a body shouldn’t fit. But you can’t stand where you are. You must find a way.
To be passive is to let others decide for you. To be aggressive is to decide for others. To be assertive is to decide for yourself. And to trust that there is enough, that you are enough.
This is why I now object to pathologizing post-traumatic stress by calling it a disorder. It’s not a disordered reaction to trauma—it’s a common and natural one.
What I really mean—the subtext of so many of my choices and beliefs—is, “I don’t deserve to have survived.” I am so obsessed with proving my worth, with earning my place in the world, that I don’t need Hitler anymore. I have become my own jailor, telling myself, “No matter what you do, you will never be good enough.”
Suppressing the feelings only makes it harder to let them go. Expression is the opposite of depression.
There is no forgiveness without rage.
