You Passed Survival / Healing Beyond Just Making It Through

How long have you been surviving instead of living?

In this week’s solo episode, Jenelle speaks honestly about survival mode, trauma, emotional exhaustion, hyper independence, and the difficult reality of trying to heal while still carrying the weight of everything you’ve been through.

A lot of people look functional on the outside while silently struggling on the inside. You go to work, show up for people, keep moving, keep smiling, but deep down you know you’ve been operating from pain for far too long.

This conversation is about what happens when God starts calling you beyond survival mode. Beyond fear. Beyond the identity you built around pain.

Because survival may have protected you once, but it was never meant to become your permanent identity.

You are not just what happened to you.
You are becoming.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Life's Disease Podcast. I'm your host, Jen Simpson. I hope you're having a beautiful morning, afternoon, night, wherever you are in the world. Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. Last week's conversation, we sat with the beautiful Aisha Campbell.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Being around children, I feel like they are not going by script. They are 100%, whatever comes to their mind, they say it. They don't care, you know, if it's wrong, right, bad, they just say it. And I love that. And I give them unconditional love no matter what they say and what they do. And I always wish I had somebody to give me that when I was younger.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

That conversation reminded me of how important it is to have people in our lives in our corner that truly care enough to sharpen us. Not just show up and encourage, but sharpen those rough edges. I know you you mentioned your childhood and how rough it was for you to not feeling loved in a home and accepted. But what did that do to you as a child and now transforming your voice for other children?

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Growing up, like I was told more what I couldn't do, what I couldn't be, and if I did anything wrong, I mean I understand everybody got their own views and stuff about spanking and stuff, but my father incident when he was teaching me how to put my shoes on the right feet and the top of my shoes. Every time I messed up, I got hit in the face. Over and over and over again until he got frustrated and just told me to go outside. And my sister, my older sister actually was the one who taught me how to put my shoes on the right feet and stuff. Then growing up, I would say, like, I want to be a firefighter. Girls can't be that. Girls can't be firefighters, girls are not supposed to go to school. Um, girls' position is supposed to be in the kitchen, in the bedroom. So hearing all of that growing up nonstop, it kind of takes your voice away and makes you feel like I don't got no purpose anymore.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Aisha herself carries such a gentle soul. But also a rare kind of wisdom. A very rare wisdom. Not just because of what she survived or what she lived through, but because of what she said without even realizing the weight of it. For a listener who's listening right now, who is stuck in that, I'm not valued, I'm not loved, I don't deserve to be here, I should just leave because nobody cares about me. What would you say to them right now?

SPEAKER_01 2:49

I think what got me to that point, it had a lot to do with me trying to take myself out of this world. And the more damage I was doing to try to leave, it was doing damage to my own body. And that wasn't fair to me. It wasn't fair to me to harm myself because of what other people are doing and saying to me. That that's not fair. So I guess I came to that realization, was like, you know what? I'm gonna stop punishing myself because of what they have to say or what they did. They're gonna have to give account of it at the end of the day. I just have to keep being the person that I am and keep moving forward, and good things will happen. I can't say we ain't gonna happen, but good things will happen if I just keep moving forward.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Without her even noticing the magnitude of her voice and her presence, some people enter our lives loudly, others change it quietly, and some disturb it. And sometimes God places people in our path not to comfort our excuses, but to refine your spirit, challenge your perspective, and remind you of who you're becoming, and more importantly, to remind you that you're no longer the old version of yourself. Growth looks different when you stop surrounding yourself with noise and start surrounding yourself with truth. Truth that reveals yourself, truth that goes underneath the surface. So today's episode is a continuation of what it means to not just survive, but to make it through and continue growing and healing. Today's a deeper conversation of not just surviving, but living. And I certainly don't have all the answers. And I have not mastered the art of healing. Life isn't always soft, it's not easy, and it's certainly not a walk in the park. Some days you'll buck your toe. But I know what it feels like to live in survival mode for so long that you're dependent on your survival, that you forget you are actually allowed to live. You're actually allowed to live in the moment, live in your life, feel your life. You're allowed to rest, you're allowed to feel joy. You're allowed to become more than what hurt you, more than your experiences, more than those people. And maybe that's where healing truly begins. Aisha kept referring to herself as surviving. She's a survivor. And somewhere in the middle of that conversation, I heard myself say to her, no, no, no, no, no. I said it louder. You passed survival. And ever since then, I haven't stopped thinking about it. Because how many of us, yes, you, how many of us, we, are still introducing ourselves through our pain, through our trauma, through our experiences, through that person that caused us so much heartache? How many of us are still living like we are emotionally trapped in the worst thing that could ever happen to us in life? How many of us are still living in a prison, our own prison? How many of us are still waking up every morning preparing for danger, even when the danger is no longer there? That's survival mode. And survival mode will convince you that peace is unsafe, that rest is laziness. Taking some time to sleep, that's not good. You're lazy. That softness, being soft, being vulnerable is weakness. That love is dangerous. I can't allow myself to be loved again. I don't want to be hurt. That vulnerability will destroy you, that you must constantly stay alert, aware of what's going on. Some of us don't even know who we are outside of surviving, outside of survival mode. We survived the toxic homes. We survived the abandonment. We survived betrayal. We even survived assault, poverty, heartbreak, and we survived being neglected, rejected, feeling that hurt. We survived imposter syndrome. We even survived environments where we had to grow up too fast, be adults instead of enjoying our childhood, being a kid, going outside, riding our bike, playing in the dirt, running in the rain. We survived parents who don't know how to love us properly or love us in the way that we needed and we wanted to be loved. We survived constantly being told we couldn't become after surviving all of that. We built identities around pain. We became hyper-independent because nobody came to save us. Nobody showed us that it was okay. Nobody showed us that we are now safe. We became emotionally grounded, guarded because trusting people hurt too much, and we don't want to repeat the same things, the same cycle. So we became overachievers because we thought our worth had to be earned. We became people pleasers because rejection terrified us. We didn't want people to look at us like aliens. We became strong because weakness was never an option. But somewhere along the lines, survival stopped being a season and became our personality. And I truly need somebody to listen closely and understand this and receive it. Please receive this. I beg of you. Survival is not your final form. You were not created just to suffer indoor and barely make it through life. You were created to live abundantly, to experience joy, to experience peace, purpose, to laugh without guilt and shame, to rest, really take a rest, sleep without fear and walking on eggshells, to love without constantly preparing for abandonment. But healing becomes difficult when survival is all you know, because peace feels unfamiliar, way too unfamiliar. And sometimes chaos becomes so normal that when life finally gets quiet, we're in panic mode. Some people don't know how to function without struggle because struggle raised them. That's all they know. This is all I know, it's to struggle. I don't know any other thing, no other side of struggle. And when God finally starts removing people that don't belong, that don't fit environments and situations that kept you in survival mode, you don't always feel relieved. Sometimes the rejection starts to come back. You start feeling rejected, you feel lost. Because now you have to meet the version of yourself that exists beyond the pain. You have to go in the mirror and say, hey, what up? It's me. This is the version I'm supposed to be. And that version scares a lot of people. It scared me because healing requires a lot, it requires a lot of responsibility. Healing forces you to stop introducing yourself through your trauma, through your pain, through your experiences, through that heartache, and healing asks you a lot of things. Like, who are you outside of what hurt you? And that question is terrifying because we don't always know how to answer it. Because survival gave us an identity, it gave us that armor, that strong metal armor, warrior armor. It gave us control. We can control our life, our narrative, but it also exhausted us. And I think a lot of people are tired. I was tired, not physically, but mentally, emotionally, soul tired, tired of carrying pain, tired of pretending they're okay, tired of pretending that I was okay. I'm okay, I'm good, I'm good by myself. I can do bad by myself. Tired of functioning while emotionally drowning, tired of overthinking, tired of constantly being strong for everybody else but yourself. What about me? Tired of constantly fighting battles, nobody can see or hear. And maybe that's why this episode matters so much, especially for me. Because I needed you to understand something and know this to be true and hold on to it. Healing is not performance. Healing does not mean you never cry or you never feel something. Healing does not mean you are never triggered or reminded of things that happened in the past. Healing does not mean you never have bad days or hiccups. Healing does not mean the memories disappear overnight and you don't remember. Everything's just washed from your brain, everything's gone, clean slate. Healing means you stop abandoning yourself, you stop rejecting yourself, you stop denying yourself of the good things you deserve. Healing means you stop calling yourself broken every time you struggle, every time you experience something. Healing means you stop punishing yourself for what happened to you so long ago. It means learning that your trauma may have shaped you, but it doesn't own you, and it doesn't define you, and it's not your end story. I had to learn something recently. It was a hard pill to swallow. I'm still swallowing it. Not everybody is going to understand your healing journey. Ooh, that one's hard. Not everyone's going to have the emotional capacity to stand beside you while you heal. Not everybody is going to know how to help you. Not everyone's going to want to help you. Not everyone's going to want to stand beside you while you're doing this healing thing. Not everyone's going to be able to stomach the version of you that starts setting boundaries, changing, evolving, grieving, resting, questioning, rebuilding, and becoming and loving and embracing on yourself. And honestly, that's okay. Because everybody is in their season and everybody's entitled to do what they want and feel how they want. Some people are in a breaking season. Some are in a building season. Many are in a grieving season. And some are in confusing seasons. Some are in a lonely season, a healing season, survival season. And some are in their transformation season. They are transforming. They are working on themselves. They are focused on themselves and they are entitled to do that. They are entitled to do that for themselves. And I learned that we may not always agree with someone's season, but we may not always understand it either. But we must respect it. You may not like their season. You may not agree with it. You may not be able to resonate with it or settle with it. But we have to stop suffocating people because their healing does not look like our expectations or what we expect it to be or what we want it to be for them. We need to stop transferring things onto them. Stop trying to diagnose people. Stop trying to fix everybody. Stop trying to rush people and stop trying to control how people process pain. Give them grace, quit the judging because they had to disappear. Some people have to disappear for a moment to take care of themselves and heal. We gotta allow them to do what they need to do for themselves because healing requires space sometimes. And I think for me personally, I'm in a season where I'm no longer trying to control. Oh God, I want to control you sometimes. God, I want to control your hand. Well, I'm stop trying to control God's direction for my life. I'm tired of fighting him on the route. I gotta stop fighting God on his route. Sometimes I want to change everything that he told me to do. I want to change his whole plan for me. I'm tired of asking him to reroute me every time the road gets uncomfortable. Because healing with God sometimes feels like drive it, it feels like driving down a road, driving down a dark back road at night, late at night. Let's say you're driving to the states or something from Canada, and you don't know what's ahead. You don't know what's going to jump out at you. Could be a deer, could be a fox. Oh my gosh. Imagine you hit a fox. Don't do that, please don't. Trust God. You don't know where the road fully leads or ends. You don't know why he's taking you that way. And if I'm being honest, sometimes it's terrifying. Sometimes it's scary. Sometimes I don't even want to do it. Sometimes I want to jump out of the car and be like, drive by yourself, car. I'm not coming with you. I'm no longer steering. I'm no longer navigating, I'm no longer following that navigation system. Sometimes I feel like I'm driving through darkness, trying to trust a God I cannot physically see, while wondering what kind of pain, loss, disappointment, or lesson is waiting around the corner for me. What is around that corner? What is around that curtain? What is waiting for me that I can't see? But I'm learning. I'm gracefully learning and I'm enjoying it. That faith is trusting him even when the road looks unfamiliar. Faith is saying, God, I don't understand this season. It's scary, it's rocky, I'm afraid, but I trust you in it. And maybe some of you listening right now are in that exact same season too that I'm in. Or I'm just trusting him, like, okay, God, you gave me this promise. I'm trusting you. I'm doing the work. I'm digging deep. I'm pouring into myself. Okay, cool. You don't fully understand what God is doing. People are misunderstanding you. Trust me, I know it. I know it all too well, baby. Some relationships are shifting, some doors are closing, some things feel uncertain, some days feel heavy. But maybe God is not punishing you. Not even maybe. God is not punishing you at all. Stop thinking that. He is repositioning you, he's removing survival from your definition, from your identity, so you can finally meet who you were always meant to become. And I know there's somebody listening to this right now who feels stuck. You feel like your mind never shuts off. You're always on overdrive. You're always on the gas pedal, pressing gas down the road. Your mind's just going 20, 100 miles an hour. You feel like your body's always tense, on edge. You're always clenching, waiting for something to happen. You feel like you can never fully relax. You feel like people don't understand how hard you had to fight internally just to function normally at your normal capacity. And I want you to hear me clearly and believe me when I say this because I love you. I do. I love you so much. You are not weak because healing is taking longer than you expected. Some wounds are deep. Some wounds changed your nervous system. It did. It changed how you digest things. Some wounds change the way you see people. Some wounds change the way you see yourself, the way that you treat yourself, the way that you show up for yourself. And some wounds change the way your body responds to safety. And healing from that takes time. Takes lots of time and patience. Give yourself grace. You are never behind. Stop romanticizing survival. I know society praises people for being strong. I'm a strong black woman. For pushing through, for never breaking, for handling everything alone. But some of us became strong because we never had another choice but to be strong and show up for ourselves and do everything for ourselves. And now we have to learn how to become soft again, how to trust again, how to receive love again, how to ask for help and ask it genuinely and then receive it intentionally. How to stop viewing rest as failure. That is healing. Healing is not always glamorous. Sometimes healing looks like going to therapy. Yes, going to therapy. Therapy is a beautiful thing. Maybe taking medication, setting boundaries, distancing yourself and cutting off access to people from you. Crying in your car, taking a break, and finally telling your story. Learning to say no, learning to stop saving everybody else while you abandon your own self and your feelings. It's time to take care of you. That is healing. And I think one of the hardest parts about healing is grieving. The version of yourself that deserved better. The child version of you. The teenage version of you. The younger adult version of you. The version of you that kept begging to be loved correctly while neglecting your own self. Neglecting your own self-love. That grief is real and it cuts deep. But I also believe in something else. I believe there comes a moment in healing where God slowly starts showing you you survived it. Heck yeah, you survived it. You dominated that. You survived it. Yes, you did. But you are not meant to stay there. You are not meant to stay there. This episode is a reminder. A reminder that you passed survival. You passed survival mode long ago. You passed the version of yourself that thought dying emotionally was easier than doing the work and healing. You passed that already. You were tired that you graduated that. That version you passed of yourself that thought pain was your permanent address. The version of yourself that thought you were unworthy of love, trust, affection. You passed survival. Now it's time to become, to build, to heal intentionally, because you deserve it. It's time to enjoy the life without feeling guilty for enjoying your life. Peace, love, harmony, excitement, laughter. It's time to stop apologizing for taking up space because you deserve all the space in the world. It's time. It's time to let yourself experience peace without sabotaging, without sabotaging your own self, because survival kept you alive, but healing, healing, baby, will finally let you live the life that you truly deserve. And I just want to say to anybody listening to this, right now, in this moment, from my lips to your ears, I know it's hard. I know some nights still hurt. You still feel wounded. I know some memories still haunt you. You keep replaying it. Some wounds still feel fresh, like it happened yesterday, but it was 10 years ago. I know healing feels exhausting, but keep going, please. You owe it to yourself. Your story does not end in survival mode. Your story is not survival mode. There is still purpose attached and is attached to your life. Purpose is yours. There is healing attached to your name, your first, middle, and last name, or first and last. There is still joy attached to your future. It is your future. And one day you're gonna wake up and realize and you're gonna feel you are no longer just surviving, you're finally living abundantly and in your blessings. And before we leave today, I want you to sit with these two questions, honestly. When you're ready, dissect them, write them down in your journals, get a pen, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, and paper. Just two questions. Not for social media, not for appearance, and definitely not for performance, but for you, for genuinely for you. This is for you. You got your pen? You got your paper. Question number one: What are you becoming now that survival is no longer your identity? And two, what parts of yourself are you still trying to protect that God may actually be asking you to heal from? Think about it. Take time, read it back to yourself after you write your answer. And start your work. You're no longer surviving. It's time for you to live. Thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of Lyseses Podcasts. If you have not subscribed yet, before you leave, please hit the subscribe button, give me a like, leave a comment, and share with your friend. I'm your host, Jen Simpson. And until next time, please remember to pour into yourself first so you can become an overflow in someone else's life. Bye guys, I'll see you next week. What you choose today becomes the legacy you pass on.