What makes a ‘survivor?’
Are you a survivor? We are not, luckily, all Gloria Gaynors. She declared in 1979: “I’ve got all my life to live, and I’ve got all my love to give/ And I will survive.” Gaynor has, so far, made good on her promise. Surviving afflictions unscathed is not always an unmixed virtue. “She would be earning a good living somewhere… The Mary Taylors of the world were natural survivors,” wrote P.D. James in Shroud for a Nightingale in 1971. Now, even a new biography of Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443-1509) is subtitled Survivor, Rebel, Kingmaker. But what of those poor people who have gone through the misery of child sexual “grooming?”
