I had the great gift of spending the weekend with a group of incredible women. Other than the facilitator and one friend, everyone was new to me and everyone’s story was new. The focus of our retreat was preparing for and envisioning the year ahead, 2023 while it is still bright and shiny and ripe with possibilities.

The connection between these women was not the product of casual conversations over the course of time. To the contrary, we were sharing very personal stories and baring very intimate feelings. As can happen when people know they are in a safe place, the honesty was real and raw and pulsing with an energy that was palpable.

Everyone has a story. Everyone has a journey. And each of us must traverse the complicated and unpredictable path of our lives. How often do we believe that tomorrow is going to be the same as today and, without warning, the world turns upside down? How often do make one decision, as simple as turning right instead of turning left, and everything changes? We each carry our own challenges, our own burdens, our own pain.

What so struck me as I learned from the others is that each of us, in our own way, is a survivor. Each of us has gotten through what we had to get through, each of us has lived to tell the tale. But what I realized, on reflection, is that survivors were not who I saw, not who I heard, not, in truth, who I feel to be. Survival gets us through but what matters more is overcoming.

Surviving may be tenacity or luck or just the process of putting one foot in front of the other, whether we want to or not. The body keeps moving, the brain keeps functioning, we go forward even when it doesn’t feel like it. I can think of many times in my life, especially in the throes of grief, when it took all I had to just keep my head above the whirlpool of pain. And, yet, somehow I did.

But survival is not enough. Survival is endurance. Overcoming is something else entirely. Overcoming requires us to transcend our agony and build on it. It requires strength and commitment to rise from the ashes and begin again. Not to obliterate what has been, not to forget or ignore or pretend but rather to understand that this is part of our whole, our humanness, our fullness.

The stories I heard, the people I met are rising above, finding joy and peace and hope. They are opening themselves to the journey, wherever the road leads, not forgetting where they have been but keeping their eyes, and their full hearts, forward.