SURVIVOR

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Earlier on this year, I wrote “I wish younger me had known that it was possible to be this happy all of the time”. Since then, my life has become even happier, if you can believe it! Yet earlier on this week, I shared a post with you that opened up about a time when my life wasn’t quite so happy.  A time when things were far bleaker, where I hit rock bottom and fully believed that that was as good as it was ever going to get for me.

I am a firm believer in the fact that your past does not define you, in any way, shape or form. Sure, it can influence who you are and the choices you make in life, but it doesn’t have to define you and your future, not at all. My past certainly influences the person I am today but it absolutely doesn’t define me. Rather, it has taught me a lesson I won’t ever forget. It taught me how to survive. Because even when I was at rock bottom, when I was torturing myself over the behaviour of others, when my parents were going through a divorce that was breaking my heart and I was being bullied at school by people I believed were my friends and I was being abused by someone who I thought loved me, I survived. I pulled myself through on my own. I made sure I achieved the grades I needed to get into university on my own. I made career choices, worked my butt off to get where I am today and pulled myself through all the hardships on my own. My past, if nothing else, made me a survivor. It taught me how to be strong, how to look after myself, to not let the nasty people in this world drag me down- and today, I am a far better person because of it.




I get called mouthy now. I get told I’m too big for my boots, that I have an attitude problem, that I have my walls built too high around me. Can anyone blame me? After everything I’ve been through, I spot one sign of trouble from someone and I’m out! It’s a defence mechanism that I developed at the age of 15 when my life first began to tilt upside down, and I have used ever since. My ‘mouthy-ness’ isn’t because I don’t care, or want to be a ‘bitch’- it’s because you’ve started to give me shit and I’m not prepared to deal with it, so I’m shutting it down in the only way I know how; by getting defensive, parring you off with some sort of savage comment and cutting you out of my life. It might sound brutal but it’s the way I am because of the things that have happened to me- my brain wants to protect me from everyone.

I don’t mind though. It means I don’t take shit, which means that I am only surrounded by the best people possible. It means no one messes with me, because I don’t give them the chance to. The people in my life are genuine, true friends who are deserving of being there. I couldn’t appreciate them more.

From the age of 15-20 I was bullied, I was abused and I was left with a broken home. Now, I’m 21, with a dream career that I love, alongside running my own business, an incredible group of friends around me who I absolutely love, a settled family home (give or take a few bust ups with my mum…) and an incredible boyfriend. I am happy almost all of the time, happier than I can ever remember feeling before in my life. I honestly couldn’t ask for much more.

I’m a survivor and I'm here to tell you that it always gets better. Life gets better. I can promise you that.

Love from,

Florence Grace

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