Sometimes surviving means becoming unfamiliar to the version of you that entered the storm.

Coming through something difficult often means you are no longer quite the person who went in. Some of what you lost was innocence or ease that you would rather have kept, and there can be real grief in that, separate from the grief for whatever happened. Survival is not always a return. Sometimes it is an arrival somewhere new, with the old version left behind.

Give yourself room to mourn the version of you that existed before, without deciding whether the change was good or bad. Then get to know who you are now on current evidence rather than old assumptions. Some of what you find will be worth keeping.