From Survival to Thriving: No More Bandages

Kathy Mattoon
Sep 10, 2025
3 min read

For years, I mistook coping for strength. I wore survival like a badge of honor, convincing myself that enduring was the same as living. I became an expert at patching walls with bandages,c overing, numbing, pressing forward, without ever truly tending to the wounds underneath.

I told myself I was strong. But what I really was… was stuck.

Coping Isn’t the Same as Living

By the time my classmates were struggling through multiplication tables in second grade, I was already a master at something else, enduring. Abuse had forced me into survival mode far too young.

At eighteen, I thought I had it all figured out. I believed my coping mechanisms were resilience. That white-knuckling my way through life was control. That bracing for the next blow made me strong.

But coping isn’t freedom. Coping is a cage.

Survival kept me breathing, but it never gave me life.

The Bandages We Wear

Looking back, I can’t count how many times I slapped on a quick bandage over an open wound, convincing myself it was “healed.” In reality, it was still bleeding, festering, unseen.

It wasn’t until life ripped those bandages off, leaving me exposed and raw, that I had to ask myself:

Why am I wasting so much energy replacing bandages instead of actually healing the wound?

Survival strategies feel like armor, but they make us brittle. They keep us small. They fool us into believing we’re safe when we’re really just stuck in the same old cycles.

Shadows Over Joy

Even in childhood moments of joy, sledding on snowy hills in upstate New York, warming up by the fire with hot cocoa and my mom’s chocolate chip cookies (the kind that never tasted the same when I made them as an adult), I wasn’t free.

While I laughed and played, fear lingered like a shadow. I was always bracing and always watching, always waiting for the next storm.

My mother was coping, too. Terrified of what others might think, she swept the truth under the rug. But rugs don’t erase what’s underneath. They just hide it. And in hiding it, she unraveled alone.

Thriving Is a Choice

Here’s the truth: survival is not the same as thriving. Survival will get you through a day, but it will never give you a life.

Thriving requires courage, the kind that refuses to settle for “good enough.” It demands that we stop changing the bandage and start tending to the wound. It means facing the pain, messy and real, so it can finally heal.

You may not have chosen your wounds. But you can choose to heal from them.

Thriving is a slow, deliberate climb. Some days it feels like one shaky step forward. Other days, like falling back down the hill. But every step you choose to heal instead of hide brings you closer to freedom.

Opening Your Hands

If you’ve been white-knuckling your way through life, let go.

You’ve gripped pain for so long, you’ve forgotten what it feels like to open your hands wide. But when you do, you’ll discover they were never meant to just hold suffering.

They were made to hold joy.

To hold freedom.

To hold peace.

No more bandages.

No more survival.

It’s time to thrive.