When Survival Was the Plan
Image of a woman hanging onto a rope suspended over choppy water during a storm, signifying holding on for dear life
There’s a quote I’ve heard too many times:
“Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”
It sounds poetic. Reflective. Like a gentle reminder to slow down and enjoy the ride.
But I have a problem with it.
A big one.
Because if your “other plans” involve just trying to survive—that quote becomes not only inaccurate, but incredibly ableist.
Let me explain.
Survival Isn’t a Distraction. It’s the Only Thing.
For years, I lived in survival mode.
Not because I was chasing the wrong goals or trying to climb some ladder.
But because my mind and body were trying to keep me alive.
Internally, I was still living as a survivor.
That state of being where you’re stuck in a loop:
Pain → wrong decisions → shame → deeper pain.
You don’t have the luxury of planning your “real” life when your brain is scanning every room for threat.
When you’re navigating triggers, trying to get through the day without falling apart, you’re not distracted from life.
You’re fighting for a version of it you’ve never even fully experienced.
That’s Why This Quote Feels So Off
When Allen Saunders said that in 1957, he wasn’t talking to the person living in fight-or-flight.
He wasn’t talking to the kid navigating trauma responses in an adult body.
He wasn’t talking to the person with chronic illness, neurodivergence, grief, disability, poverty—or any reality that makes survival the main plan.
He was speaking from a place of assumed access to stability.
But for many of us?
The “plans” aren’t a distraction from life.
They are life.
Why It’s Ableist
Because it:
Assumes you have the privilege of presence
Minimizes the reality of surviving as something you can just shift out of
Treats planning and surviving as equal distractions
Sends the message that if you’re not “living” some ideal version of life, you’re somehow doing it wrong
That’s the part that stings.
Because surviving is not doing it wrong.
It’s doing the best you can with what you were handed.
Living Begins When Survival Isn’t the Whole Story
When I started healing—not just intellectually, but neurologically—that’s when something shifted.
I stopped waiting for “life to happen” and started realizing I had to rebuild my capacity to live.
That didn’t mean ditching survival. It meant expanding beyond it.
But that expansion?
It took work.
It took rewiring.
And it took permission to stop pretending that surviving was a detour from life.
It was my life.
Until it wasn’t.
The Rewrite
So maybe we need to change the quote:
Life doesn’t just happen when you’re surviving.
But it can begin again when you stop treating survival as a failure.
And when you finally give your nervous system, your body, and your story the space to update…
That’s when something new becomes possible.
Ready to Build a Life Beyond Surviving?
If you're tired of feeling like you’re stuck in survival mode—even when everything looks fine on the outside—you're not alone.
Your brain’s doing exactly what it was trained to do.
But that doesn't mean it has to stay that way.
If you’re ready to stop running old survival patterns and start making space for actual living—
👉 Click the button below and let’s talk about what’s really going on beneath the surface.
Because you don’t need to fight your brain to feel better.
You just need to teach it something new.
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