Victimhood

Preface: There is a story behind this post, but the gist of it is that it's a blog post I wrote and shared at work on our company blog (with some very minor changes). It's been a journey full of hills & valleys and my hope is, that by sharing my journey, I can help others on their own journeys. 

In our quest for growth, change, enlightenment and progress the biggest challenge I have faced is dealing with the idea of “victimhood”. It is, if you will, the elephant in the room that we all know is there but none of us want to talk about. As the great Albus Dumbledore points out, “Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”

I will be perfectly honest about this…I have struggled with victimhood. A LOT. When the subject of overcoming victimhood was first brought up in a group discussion, I wasn’t receptive to it at all. I felt personally affronted and shamed for feeling like I was entitled to being a victim. I had lived my life, I had fought my battles, I had earned these scars…who are you to tell me that I’m not a victim? That’s what it felt like.

A little over 4 years ago I had my world turned upside down. I was living a June Cleaver kind of life when my husband, who was driving truck, was involved in an accident that he should not have survived; an accident that was entirely the fault of another person. To tell me that I wasn’t a victim was crazy. How could I be anything other than that? I didn’t choose for this to happen. In addition to the many hats I was already wearing, I didn’t ask to become the primary wage earner and a care-taker for a disabled spouse. I couldn’t pretend everything was okay because it most certainly was not. My family was, in every sense of the word, victims to someone else’s poor choices through no fault of our own. Every bit of that was, and still is, true.

My struggle dealing with what I knew and felt to be real, absolute truth and then pairing it with the idea that it wasn’t okay to be a victim, was a difficult journey. I spent a lot of time in thought, study and prayer trying to come to terms with the concept. The obvious question was “How do I change things?” The answer, “I can’t.” Somewhere in the soul-searching, I found my glimpse of sanity, I found my answer. Yes, I am a victim to the things that have happened. No, I cannot change that, BUT what I can change is how I respond to it. I had an epiphany that even when you are legitimately victimized, you have to make the conscious decision to not allow the victimization to continue. Yes, this thing happened. Yes, it hurt. Yes, it changed my life in ways I could never imagine. Yes, it tore through my family like a jagged blade and left a lot of scars. I cannot undo any of that, but I can take control back. I have the power, the ability and the responsibility to take a stand and say “Enough.”

In the moment when I realized that the true power to stand up to my own victimhood came in my ability to take back control, things changed. The past cannot be undone, but what we do with those lessons, those trials, those moments moving forward are what count. Yes, I was a victim but I am not defined by that moment. I will no longer allow it to control me, my thoughts, my actions. I will take the lessons and the heartache that came with it and I will use them to strengthen myself and do good for others.

That isn’t to say that I don’t still have those “moments” where I feel overwhelmed and I struggle with what has happened. I’m human – of course I do. Hand in hand with the recognition of the role of victimhood in my life, came an understanding that sometimes it’s okay to feel those things still. It’s funny how I’ve developed a bit of a duplicity of thought about it. I see the feelings for what they are, I take a step back and tell myself “Okay, I see this for what it is and I’m allowing you to feel this, but only for a little bit.” After I’ve had my moment, I will remind myself that it’s not okay to linger in the darkness and it’s time to get back to living. I give myself that moment to remember that the feelings are valid, but they no longer control me. The lessons and the growth are what matter now.

It is only when I reached this moment of self-awareness and understanding that I was able to really appreciate and embrace the idea of change. Without realizing it, I was allowing my victimhood to hold me back from a lot of things. I was cheating myself out of the chance to grow, to learn, to add new skills and abilities to my tool belt. My victimhood has a role in my life, but it wasn’t the role I initially thought it would have. I’m grateful to have been able to recognize this and learn from it instead of continuing to let it enslave me.

One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned through this is that you cannot grow in one area of your life and not have that impact other areas of your life. As a team and a work family, we work toward finding ways to create value for ourselves, our co-workers, our customers, our vendors and, in fact, every person that we come in contact with. If we are sincere in those efforts, we are doing that in our lives outside of work as well. We take that desire to do better, be better, do more and constantly seek for growth, and take that home to our families to share that with them. I have found, personally, the more I do that, the “work me” and the “home me” aren’t quite so different. That true, genuine desire for honorable growth and creating value is becoming such a part of what makes me who I am, that the line between “work me” and “home me” has blurred. Knowledge without passing it on is wasted so why wouldn’t I want to share that with others?

Perhaps the idea is best expressed in the following quote: “Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny.”