We Need To Stop Calling Trauma Survivors Resilient — Here’s Why
It isn’t resilience, it’s survival. And it’s f*cking exhausting.
“I dream of never being called resilient again in my life. I’m exhausted by strength. I want support. I want softness. I want ease. I want to be amongst kin. Not patted on the back for how well I take a hit. Or for how many.” ~ Zandashé L’Orelia Brown
I’ve always been called resilient.
As any survivor of childhood trauma and abuse will tell you, it’s a word we hear often — one which denotes our ability to have survived the worst and come through the other side somehow still intact.
It’s also a word that carries an assumption that we handled it so well; that our resilience is what made us strong and courageous and able to overcome all that was thrown our way with grace and little repercussion into our adult lives.
But resilience is one of the most misunderstood components of trauma survivors.
We think it is something people have — this amazing characteristic of resilience that has carried them through such hard things — but resilience isn’t a trait so much as a survival skill. And while it may seem like something to be admired or…
