Life can be stressful. Our memories can haunt us and our experiences can define us if we let them. We can face our problems head-on or we can run from them until they catch up to us. This last part is inevitable.

Sometimes, we just need to hit the pause button. Cool off, relax, slow down — running gets exhausting. Accept and understand our situations. Let our problems catch up to us so we can turn around and grab them by the throat.

It takes patience. It takes hard work. It takes focus and determination. It takes getting past our memories. It takes getting past our fears. It takes getting past I don’t need anyone’s help.

Because sometimes, we do. And that’s fine.

Maureen Richards, a survivor of sexual abuse, knows this from experience. During our conversation, she described how she woke up one morning to absolute internal silence. Waking up to no sound seems like a good thing, but this was different. Maureen explained that it was as if her mind was completely quiet, like something was broken.

Fast-forward a couple of years, when Maureen has not only flourished in group sessions but has formed a support group of her own.

Her group — called Now We Thrive — meets weekly at a church in Neptune, New Jersey. When Maureen explained her concept to us, she stated her mission was simply to educate. As a witness, victim, and survivor, she knew she could help provide a soft landing ground for women in similar situations.

Maureen identified a problem with the current support system. Group sessions help victims face their issues head-on, but after the therapy process ends, counselors expect people to hit the ground running. Maureen’s goal is to help women settle back into their lives at their own paces after getting through the most difficult steps of adjustment.

She believes that the most important part of this process is moving past the label of victim and learning how to take control of life. It’s okay to express some anger, but we must eventually progress from that emotion and replace it with something more positive.

During the early stages of therapy, victims dig deep to find out exactly what triggers these emotions for them. It is crucial that, through open dialogue, we teach each other to associate these triggers with something positive. If we truly want to move past victim and learn to thrive, we must work to supersede the bad associations with good.

Too many support groups — which Maureen refers to as “bitch groups”— encourage practices that prove counterproductive for survivors of sexual assault and abuse. Complaining, expressing anger toward the offender, and comparing individual experiences may feel great short-term. However, these habits stunt our growth as people and never really allow us to graduate from those negative connotations.

After all, thriving isn’t about your rapist or abuser; it’s about you. It isn’t about how your story stacks up against another person’s. It’s about accepting your experiences as part of your past and learning to look ahead.

Thriving is about catharsis. When you release all of those bad feelings, you create space for good ones.

While writing the second installment of this series, I found myself wanting to compare the stories of two young women. These individuals’ experiences may have involved similar circumstances, but that does not make it right to juxtapose the two.

The comparison of victims’ experiences is another aspect of rape culture, a problem that society perpetuates in the most subtle of manners. My first instinct was to compare the stories because that was all I knew how to do. Educating ourselves and each other about ways to combat this problem is a necessary step for progress.

“I have been through it, survived it, and am now learning to thrive. Thriving should be the goal… not just surviving.”

As we learned from our conversation with Maureen, “We are all survivors of something.”

Tell your story. But when you’re done telling it, don’t be satisfied with labeling yourself a survivor. Because that’s all the word is — a label.

In addition to Now We Thrive, Maureen is working on a book about her experiences, entitled Press Pause. The book outlines her progression from breakdown to thriving, a topic we don’t seem to discuss enough.

Like most things, thriving is a process. We cannot learn to thrive in a day. It’s not a single moment that changes everything. It’s a conscious decision to thrive, followed by a series of events that help us move past our experiences— that help us accept and understand them, and allow them to fuel us rather than define us.

There is no end to this process, though. It is a constant struggle to reach the light at the end of the tunnel, a light whose true source we know we may never see. But we find solace in the fact that this light has given us a reason to look forward.

And as long as we focus on what’s in front of us — our present and our future — things look brighter than they ever have.

For readers outside of the New Jersey area, you can find more information about support groups and preventing rape and sexual assault on the following websites: