Walking Through the Fire to find Grace:
- amandamcgregor
- Jun 13
- 9 min read
Updated: Jun 15
Honoring Survivors and Awakening Community Responsibility
There is a fire that burns in the soul of every survivor, a sacred fire that tests, refines and ultimately reveals the hidden strength beneath the ashes of trauma. It is not a fire of destruction, but a fire of grace. This is the fire that a person walks through when they face the projection of shame, enforced silence, cover-ups and neglect. They walk not as victims, but as warriors of truth, courage and resilience.
There comes a moment in life, often quiet, unmarked, when we realise we've been carrying the weight of other people’s silence. The cover-ups, the denial, the indifference; not just of one event, but of a lifetime of community avoidance, when harm was allowed to pass unspoken and the burden placed squarely on the shoulders of the survivor.
For over twenty years, I witnessed how systems fail. How entire collectives find ways to look away from abuse, assault and manipulation; minimising responsibility, marginalising the survivor and disguising their role, as not their problem; thereby perpetuating harm. All while expecting the very person who had already endured the trauma and has gone through a recovery process, to somehow deal with it all: the truth, the healing, the justice, the changes to community, the communication, the development strategy, the safeguarding in prevention.
But harm is not personal, it maybe put on just one person, but it came from a communal source. Abuse does not happen in community isolation; it survives in collective environments that allow it; the family, the school, the church, the work environment, the community, the culture. The source of the aggressive behaviour; whether passive, or passive-aggressive or aggressive, came from somewhere. The person was nurtured into their behaviour. There maybe a want to ignore them, or quietly benefit from the silence or avoidance around the situation, but this avoidance of involvement is a neglectful compliant behaviour.
When someone is harmed; through assault, trafficking, domestic abuse, manipulation, crime, cultural abuse, or interference with justice, it is not enough to point to the survivor and say, 'This is your problem to deal with'. The roles that others play, whether as passive observers, enablers, authority figures who look away, or communities that don’t want disruption, or hang on to cultural exploitative abuse, must be bought into accountability both emotionally, spiritually and physically. We are able to put words to these complications, we can communicate in ways that can be understood.
When organisations, families, schools, police and communities closet abuse, when they pass off harm, when they are careless in investigation, they become complicit. When they deny their duty of care, or interfere in the legal process, or fail to protect, those are not oversights, those are actions, they shape lives.
They leave survivors with a deficit: emotional, spiritual and financial. A vacuum where belonging, safety, security and acknowledgement should have been. Survivors are often left to build from scraps, in which they often have to fight off further 'exploitation' of their vulnerabilities, in severe cases, what often follows, is a warning of an early death, without ever being supported into the resources to truly recover.
This isn’t about blame. It’s about alignment, it is about self mastery and it is about community healing, creating a culture of change that enables constructive processes.
Recognising that social justice is not just a system issue, it’s a community responsibility. When we ignore survivors, dismiss their wisdom, or gate keep their contributions, we continue the very cycle of harm we claim to oppose.
What If We Honoured Survivors?
There can be an arrogance in assuming authority knows best. In reality, survivors that have processed their stories hold a depth of understanding, that no certificate can teach. They know how to walk through a cold empty furnace, how to rise from what was meant to destroy them, and often they know how to speak truth even when that truth is inconvenient.
Their voices aren’t just valid, they are vital. They offer a wisdom that can guide us toward collective repair and healthier futures for new families, children a promising future. But for that to happen, we must be willing to value them, financially, emotionally and socially. Through contracts, development plans, seats at the table and respect for their lived experience.
Survivors should not be exiled or exploited for surviving. They should be celebrated for enduring and transforming pain into power. Real justice is not just legal, it’s personal. It comes when survivors are no longer asked to shrink, to self-fund endless emotional processing, or to be grateful for crumbs of attention. It comes when they are honoured, paid, encouraged to live a full life and welcomed; when the masks and smoke screens are peeled back and their strength and resilience is seen.
The First Flame:
Imagine a child whose most basic needs in food, shelter, safety, care and emotional presence, are unpredictable shadows in their life, sometimes there, sometimes not, then the child stumbles across something bigger, a dark void which can consume and overwhelm them, they have to survive the darkness. The child withdraws as a way to cope and the steady warmth the child deserves is replaced by coldness, distance, insecurity, unsettling chaos and silence around the true nature of their reality, the deficit is louder than words.
In this void, this absence, the child's inner compass falters, creating disorientation and a doubt. The child's nervous system is caught in a relentless alert, unable to rest or trust, constantly vigilant about what may or may not happen. They may have only been born a few years prior but they don't know if life will always be so complex, so unpredictable, so unstable, so cold. The tender roots of identity strain under the weight of confusion and projected shame, for they have learnt early, that their pain is unwelcome or preferred to be unseen, it does not fit the masking of society, role playing and status, a smoke screen of beauty and style is often used as a cover-up.
The child may have become withdrawn, quiet, disengaged. This is the beginning of a journey, in which the person begins to find their own resilience, their own power, by observing the world around them, surviving the trauma by touching into more complex realities, distorted relationships, unequal power dynamics that may lead to abuse of authority, abuse of power. The fire is an elemental crucible where their soul is yearning to be reached, met, uncovered, found.
The Family’s Role - are they protectors, Guardians or Bystanders?
The fire of survival is never meant to be faced alone, it is a complex story, made up through friends, relatives, ancestors, traditions, sometime's the abuse comes through patriarchal leadership; as with child brides, genital manipulation, sexual abuse, arranged marriages, unequal power dynamics. Yet too often, those who should be guardians become bystanders, sometimes even supporting the manipulation, coercion and abandonment of the child into a dangerous situation. Unwilling to protect, save, compensate. Families may turn away, wrapped in avoidance, denial, fear, unwilling or unable to confront the truth burning before them.
They may mask the truth, playing the role of tradition.
They may make choices that put their own survival first.
They may avoid emotional and physical accountability even adding money into the situation, to make a concrete pledge; with human trafficking, child brides and arranged marriage.
They may use an 'emotional unavailability', to avoid emotional accountability.
They may encourage a misuse of the word stoicism, which is a word from Greek Philosophy, used to process emotions and to transcend pain through a meditative and considered process. Emotional unavailability can be used to hide, mask, cover-up; to suggest the child or young person sucks the situation up, trapping them into something harmful. Even the British Government regulations around pain management in social and healthcare misuses the word 'stoicism' when assessing a person's ability to tolerate physical and emotional pain.
They may cloak harm in silence, placing a bell jar over the victim.
They may protect the abuser instead of the child, playing a role to social image.
They may dismiss the child or person's voice as exaggerated or inconvenient.
They may fail to tend to the pain, the wounds that cry out for care.
They may exploit the vulnerabilities of the person, using the persons innocence, disorientation, vulnerabilities for their own self centred comfort or gain.
This neglect is not only a fracture in one life; it is a rupture in the family’s own soul, in their collective understanding, in the community; a collective drama of missed opportunity to create a sanctuary rather than feed a fire and create more pain.
The Fire Spreads: Ripples Across a Lifetime
As the child grows, the fire’s heat lingers, magnified by carelessness, disregarding the true nature, abandoning the circumstance instead of taking responsibility. The fire sweeps and ignites. Unmet survival needs cast long shadows into adolescence and adulthood:
The wounds of a learnt mistrust may close the heart to real love or support. In time resentment may form, making relationships very hard to sustain.
A constant need for safety may cause controlling aspects in the person, as they grow up they may seek more control over their environments, creating dominant traits, a need to lead and to have a strong voice.
The trauma imprint, etched deep in the body and mind attracts complex relationships, misalignments, distortions, tricky persons, which leads to a constant need for vigilance, for accountability, a need for safety, stability and trust.
Superficial, but financially viable opportunities are sometimes missed as the need for emotional accountability and processing, development in safety, sustainability, validation, justice, fairness.
Vulnerabilities grow; sometimes drawing the person to painful choices or environments, searching for what was lost, trying to heal from the pain.
Yet amidst this blaze, there is a profound and quiet wisdom: the survivor’s lived experience holds truths no training can replace, the person works out how to survive and how to find their buoyancy in light.
The journey of healing is not a path of avoidance or denial but one of walking through fire, embracing the searing pain with courage, openness, and grace. To walk through this fire is to refuse shame’s voice, projected by those who have not got the courage to reach into the emotional well and ground with the truth. The person claims the dignity of survival; to stand amid the burning embers and say: 'I am not the problem. I am the bearer of wisdom born in flames, I rise.'
To hold information that is highly valuable to the community at large.
A Community’s Sacred Duty: Closing the Gaps
But grace is not only a gift of the survivor, it is a call to the community. When justice systems fail or falter, when families avoid, or turn away, coverting the truth, it is a wider community’s sacred duty to step in.
To hold space for truth and accountability rather than concealment.
To bring emotional presence and care where neglect once thrived.
To offer financial recognition and compensation when there have been failings, that honour the cost of survival, the lessons learnt, enabling realistic restoration.
To resist a projection of downtrodden life; squashing the person and hijacking the mind of the person.
To create development pathways where strength and courage become advocacy and enable leadership.
To develop processes with safeguarding and the dealing of 'offenders'.
To work with prevention and therapeutic processes by closing in gaps made through unmet survival needs.
To enable group processing in collective healing, enabling a strong process of constructive relationship, communication and development.
This is how the fire’s heat is tempered; not by masking scars but by honouring them and the strength they represent, by embracing the person who carries them, enabling a peaceful settlement, that brings trust, elevation and enables awareness.
Accountability and Transformation
Accountability is the cornerstone of transformation. It requires that families, institutions and social systems face the reflection of their actions and inactions:
Acknowledge harm without deflection.
Support healing rather than silencing.
Engage survivors as 'experts' of their own experience, giving voice to change - Advocates in change.
Commit to nurturing environments where safety, growth and fair justice prevails.
Enabling a life-long commitment to change, reducing the carelessness, neglect and long-lasting effects.
To turn away is to feed the fire of ongoing drama. To step forward is to use the water of responsibility, healing and collective care, to create gentleness, warmth, kindness and compassion.
The Flame of Hope: Survivors as Beacons of Change
From the ashes of neglect and trauma rises a powerful light, the survivor becomes an advocate, a teacher, a leader. Their voice carries the wisdom of lived experience; their courage preserves the innocence lost but not destroyed.
Honouring survivors means more than words; it means creating tangible support:
Financial remuneration that reflects their value.
Contracts and roles that empower their voice.
Emotional care that sustains their journey, support workers, therapists, to help them develop constructive purpose and give back to the community in a constructive and well meaning way.
Platforms where they shape the future of healing and justice, giving them respect.
Together, we unify around the fire, bringing warmth, truth and a golden glow of peace.
Walking through the fire of grace is both a deeply personal and profoundly communal journey. It calls each of us and our families, communities, institutions, to awaken to our role in the collective story and the cycle of neglect and healing.
We are all guardians of the sacred flame. When we stand accountable, when we open our hearts and hands to survivors, we transform pain into power, silence into voice, isolation into belonging. The fire is real, but so is the grace that walks with us; steady, fierce, and illuminating the way forward, one love.
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