Survivor Is Not My Full Name
This is for anyone who’s ever been called strong when they needed softness.
For those surviving things no one sees.
For those holding it down while holding it in.
For those who have always been more than what happened to them—
This is for you.
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I’ve been called “survivor” more times than I can count.
Sometimes with love.
Sometimes with strategy.
Sometimes with a kind of distant reverence that sees the strength—but not the scars.
We carry that name with pride, because we lived.
But we also know this:
Survivor is not our full name.
It is not the only reason we deserve space.
It is not the ceiling of our story.
It is not the final word.
We survived because we had to.
But we are becoming because we choose to.
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Survival mode helped us live—but it is not where we are meant to stay.
Living in survival mode long-term is not living.
It’s bracing.
It’s guarding.
It’s holding your breath and calling it peace.
So when we’re always reminded by others—especially systems or organizations—that we are “survivors,”
it can feel like they’re keeping us tied to the very state our bodies are trying to recover from.
It keeps us visible in our pain, but not always valued in our power.
Do you mean the nights I went without?
Or the mornings we still woke up and showed up—quietly, without fanfare?
Do you mean the violence? Or the silence after?
Do you mean the state-sanctioned systems? Or the ways we were taught to disappear in their presence?
The way we learned to harden, to soften, to shrink, to adapt—not because we were weak,
but because we were watching, surviving, calculating how to stay alive?
Because if survival only means the moment of harm—then you’ve missed the miracle.
We are survivors of forgetting—and the fight to remember.
Survivors of being too much, too loud, too Black, too foreign, too tender, too quiet, too bold, too “unreasonable.”
Survivors of being read as danger before being seen as human.
Survivors of being taught to hold pain in our backs, our jaws, our silence.
Survivors of carrying everyone and still being seen as ungrateful.
Survivors of invisibility in plain sight—when we show up, show love, offer protection, and still get erased.
Survivors of being the first. Of being the only.
Of never being given room to fall apart—yet still being asked to hold it all together.
Being called strong doesn’t always feel like love.
Sometimes it feels like abandonment in a compliment’s clothing.
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We are surviving systems that tell us who we’re allowed to be.
The ones that measure our worth by what we produce, how we look, where we’re from, or what we’ve lost.
Systems rooted in domination and control—across time, language, borders, and belief.
We feel it in what we’re paid.
In whose grief is honored.
In what histories are erased.
In the borders we’re born into.
In the names we’re mispronounced by.
In who’s allowed to rest.
And who must always explain their existence.
We are surviving systems that fear our love,
exploit our labor,
study our brilliance,
and still deny us rest.
We are surviving the kind of grief that never had a funeral.
The kind of loss that’s called “normal.”
The kind of pain we inherited like last names.
And yet—we love anyway.
We show up anyway.
We protect.
We praise.
We cook, build, cry, crack jokes, organize, overextend, hold it down, hold it in, hold each other.
We survive in plain sight,
even when the world only sees us as something to overcome.
Joy is not a reward for surviving.
It is our inheritance.
It is proof that they never took everything.
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Sometimes, the most hurtful erasure comes wrapped in polished language.
We often hear things like,
“you can’t be safe on minimum wage.”
Or, “you can’t heal if you’re broke.”
But what is safety really?
What is healing?
And why is it that so many believe that survivors like us can only know these things when wealth or comfort show up first?
I come from communities of survivors—those who’ve endured systemic violence, exclusion, and generational harm.
Especially Black survivors.
Not only did I live it—I witnessed it. I walked with it. I shared life with it.
We’ve known healing in soup pots passed around crowded kitchens.
In porch chairs after long shifts.
In playlists shared like prayers.
In laughter echoing through Section 8 hallways.
In borrowed clothes that carried love.
In unpaid labor offered with full hearts.
In EBT balances that stretched miracles.
In music sent as a message—telling someone you love them, miss them, forgive them, or need space.
In food pantry lines where dignity was never lost.
In healing circles under streetlights and storytelling over the phone after midnight.
In hair braiding on living room floors and praise breaks in parking lots.
In gofundme links passed like collection plates.
In thrift store outfits that became graduation gowns.
In walking to job interviews in your one good pair of shoes.
In splitting the last plate of food—and still making it feel like a feast.
In church mothers’ whispers and barbershop wisdom.
In wudu water poured before dawn prayers.
In Eid feasts built from food stamps and faith.
In hands joined across prayer styles and quiet moments where God was called by many names.
In shared fasts, lit candles, stitched garments, and grace said in every tongue.
In bus stop theology and library card revolutions.
We’ve made safety out of cracked windows and locked doors.
We’ve created wealth through what we’ve passed on—stories, recipes, rhythms, names.
We’ve been healing while broke.
We’ve been building safety with what we had—long before systems took notice, before grants, before platforms.
That was healing, even when it didn’t look like it.
Especially then.
We have made healing where there was none.
We have made safety in a world that calls us unsafe.
We have made joy in shelters, on shared mattresses, in motels, in back rooms, in car seats.
Safety is not always separation. It can mean self-healing.
It can mean healing with others, even those who once harmed us.
It can look like second chances. It can look like choosing each other again.
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So no, we don’t need to be rescued to be whole.
And we don’t need to prove pain to be worthy of healing.
We don’t need saviors.
We need systems to move. To shift. To get out of the way.
We need those who benefit to ask themselves:
What are we willing to lose for their thriving?
What are we willing to surrender so they can breathe?
What are we willing to rebuild—not for our own comfort—but for their freedom?
And most of all:
Are we truly in community,
if our liberation means nothing changes for you?
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And to those who are not surviving in the same way:
Be gentle with those who are.
Listen more than you speak.
Show up without needing to be seen.
If your liberation cost nothing, ask why.
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We were never the story of what was broken.
We were always the story of what refused to die.
What kept loving.
What kept rising.
What kept protecting others even when no one protected us.
That is the truth.
That is the wealth.
That is the healing.
And that is our name, too.
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Affirmation for Us — A Collective Prayer
May we never forget what we made from nothing.
May we remember the kitchens, the corners, the couches that held us.
May we honor the healing that never had a name.
May we always name our worth before they name our pain.
Before the labels, before the reports, before the forms—
may we say: We are still here. And we are not what they called us.
May we rise and keep rising—loud, soft, whole, and ours.
In every whisper, every joke, every plate passed, every braid braided—
may we recognize ourselves as the miracle.
We are not what was done to us.
We are what we are becoming.
We are what refused to die.
We are love in motion.
We are healing in plain sight.
We are already enough.
And may those who come after us know:
They were born from healing—not harm.
They are not here by accident.
They are our answered prayer.
Say your name—not the one they gave you in crisis.
The one you earned through becoming.
What is your name beyond survival?
What have you healed in plain sight?
What systems still need to move?
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With love and honor,
Chriseithia
Founder of Black Self Wellth™
This is sacred work, not open source.
Please honor the heart behind these words.
All rights reserved © Chriseithia Collins | Black Self Wellth™