For a long time, survival was my only language.
It spoke in shallow breaths and clenched jaws. In nights measured not by hours of sleep, but by how many times I reminded myself to keep going. Survival didn’t ask me to be hopeful. It asked me to endure.
Gratitude felt like a word for another life.
Then the crow appeared.
Not literally at first—but symbolically. The crow has always been misunderstood. Associated with endings. With death. With omens people don’t want to look at. But the crow is also a keeper of memory. A witness. A creature that walks comfortably between what has been lost and what still remains.
I think survival makes us crows.
We learn how to stand in the aftermath. How to remember without being destroyed by remembering. How to pick through what’s left—not to dwell in the ruin, but to find what still has use. What still has meaning.
I didn’t feel grateful while I was surviving.
I felt alert. Guarded. Exhausted.
Gratitude came later, quietly, like a crow landing nearby—close enough to notice, far enough not to demand anything of me.
It came in fragments:
A moment where my breath didn’t hitch.
A morning when the dread didn’t arrive first.
The sound of laughter surprising me out of my own chest.
The realization that I was no longer bracing for impact all the time.
Survival sharpens your sight.
You start noticing beauty not because everything is suddenly good—but because you know how easily everything can disappear. Beauty becomes sacred because it is temporary.
And then there was flame.
Flame is often mistaken for destruction alone. But flame is also warmth. Light. The thing people gather around when the world goes dark. Fire doesn’t apologize for what it burns—but it also makes space for what can grow next.
I didn’t survive untouched.
I survived changed.
The fire burned illusions. Burned versions of me that were built only to endure. Burned the belief that I had to be hard to stay alive. What remained was quieter. Softer. Truer.
And that is where gratitude lives.
Not in pretending the fire didn’t hurt—but in recognizing what it didn’t take.
I am grateful for:
The body that carried me through panic and still kept breathing.
The heart that learned how to open again, slowly, carefully.
The boundaries that rose from ash.
The tenderness that survived the flames.
Gratitude, I’ve learned, is not about praising the pain.
It’s about honoring the survival.
It’s about standing where the crow stands—seeing clearly, remembering honestly, refusing to turn away from what was lost. And it’s about carrying flame—not to destroy, but to light the path forward.
Some days, gratitude is loud.
Other days, it’s barely a flicker.
Some days, beauty is obvious—in sunsets and stars and shared laughter.
Other days, beauty is simply the fact that I am still here to witness anything at all.
If you are still surviving, hear this:
You are not behind.
You are not failing.
You are not required to be grateful yet.
But one day, you may notice a crow watching from a distance—reminding you of how far you’ve come. You may feel warmth where there was once only cold.
And when that happens, let gratitude rise—not as obligation, but as recognition.
You lived.
You endured.
You transformed.
From ash.
From memory.
From flame.
And that, in itself, is beautiful.
Crow and Flame 