What have you survived?
In From a Survivor, Adrienne Rich writes,
Next year it would have been 20 years
and you are wastefully dead
who might have made the leap
we talked, too late, of making
which I live now
not as a leap
but a succession of brief, amazing movements
each one making possible the next
Every one of us who lives another day is a survivor of something, or everything.
Survivors of violent, personal trauma–domestic violence, sexual abuse, rape.
Others are survivors of cancer, accidents, natural disasters, genocide, the suicide of a loved one.
What have you survived? What has been your “succession of brief, amazing movements”?