Victim or survivor?
Throughout my ten years of recovery from cultic abuse, I’ve squirmed many a time, with the word survivor, equating it with victim. But today, that has changed, thanks to my hero Robert Jay Lifton (RJL). 🌟
I was tickled to read RJL's entomological exploration of the words ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’. (Those of you who attend Writing to Reckon classes know how I too, often employ this nerdy practice.) In the book Surviving Our Catastrophes, Lifton walks readers through the origin and evolution of the Latin word ‘victima’ - a journey that began with sacrificial offerings of living creatures and ends with a person who is duped or far worse...
To be a victim then, is to be helpless, to be acted upon by others for their own purposes - to be harmed, deceived, even destroyed. RJL
In contrast, RJL offers readers a redemptive perspective on what it means to be a survivor, leaning into Latin once again. The word survivor comes from supervivere - vivere means to live while supersuggests a sense of being “over" or “beyond.” Supervivere then refers to living beyond the forces that may seek to cut off life. RJL sums it up this way:
A survivor, then, is an active agent of the continuation of life. RJL
The respect that Lifton bestows upon survivors parallels my experience of bearing witness to countless individuals who have freed their voices and reclaimed their lives after leaving controlling and cultic environments. They have taught me that to be a survivor of spiritual, religious or cultic abuse is to rise from the ashes of systems designed to dehumanize and claim a seat at life’s table.
To survive means to have faced death in its nuanced and complicated variations and it often ushers in the all-important process of seeking meaning. When death, destruction and dehumanization occur, people naturally strive to create coherence and engage in what RJL calls the “survivor mission” where people may devote much of their lives to combatting the catastrophe they experienced.
Survivors can only emerge from immobilizing “victim consciousness” by finding…meaning…that can help them grasp what they have endured. RJL
Healing however, is by no means a linear process. When catastrophe strikes, humans naturally go into survival mode. To one degree or another, we remain there until a natural opening for healing appears.
My obsessive concern for friends in Burnsville, NC during hurricane Helene led me to a natural opening. Empathy for them awakened my own trauma that had been frozen in time since 2011, when my ex-teacher berated me for my natural response to a very different flood. I’m grateful for therapy and for finding words and for a nervous system that's regulated enough today to share a poem with you. This helps me release an emotional burden I unknowingly carried for so long.
UNWINDING
Trauma was frozen in time
by his cavalier dismissal of tragedy.
His claim on reality trumped
my thinning threads of selfhood,
So, I believed him.
Dictated by a decree
that I sought attention to avoid doing “real work”,
I swapped his immorality for my integrity.
Oblivious of the victim mantle seeping into my muscles,
I squared my shoulders to the beat of his drum.
A decade of dismantling, reclamation and rebuilding missed
the iced over tissue that waited
for my mama bear heart to contain her fierceness enough
that warmth spread through my own chest cavity.
Pectorals and deltoids heaved in release
Offering the promise of new freedoms to follow.
If you have read this far, I thank you. I hope my unexpected journey these past two weeks supports your own in some way.
Although I no longer conflate victim for survivor, I honor and support the recovery and discovery process necessary for transformation from victim to survivor and beyond.
Where are you in this process? In what ways have you shifted?
Please do share. And reach out if you think you might benefit from some writing support.
Warmly,
Gerette
