Surviving Savannah

by Patti Callahan Henry

I know this: we’re made of stories, legends and myths just as we are made of water, atoms and flesh. Once you know it, you can’t un-know it; you can’t pretend that everything that happened before you were born doesn’t have something to do with who you are today.

Photos, no matter how glorious, and movies, no matter how accurate, couldn’t convey the way Savannah felt—seductive and lazy, busy and slow, modern and ancient.

the heart has reason that reason knows nothing of,

“If one wants to move beyond the past, one must not delve into the past,” some out-of-date advice book once told me. But no one, even if they believe they have, moves past the past. It follows; it shadows; it breathes quietly in the dark corners.

“not everyone who survives trauma becomes a better person. The idea that surviving brings everyone to a new and better place is a lie told by people who need the world to make sense.”

Getting over someone is a myth. Closure is a myth.

sometimes things look worse before they look better.”

We are our truest selves when life and death walk hand in hand. When crisis comes, and tragedy explodes, our true character comes to the fore.

“We can’t change the past, but it has the power to shape who we are today. We are who we are because of the past, not in spite of it. How can we understand ourselves unless we understand where we came from?

Life brings us to new places all the time.”

We were, all of us, hidden in different ways, under different waves. The broken parts, the remnants of our own explosions, kept secret from others.

“How will we survive the surviving?”

The life we live is the life we choose with every decision of the heart, soul and mind. What do we do with our survival?