Getting through it doesn’t mean you have to be grateful for it. Some things were just hard.

Gratitude sometimes gets offered as the correct ending to a hard story, which quietly adds a task to something you have only just survived. Having come through does not oblige you to find the good in it. Some experiences have no redeeming part, and saying so plainly is more honest than the tidy version people expect to hear. Recovering does not require you to approve of what happened.

If you have been assembling a positive account for other people, you are allowed to drop it. Hard is a complete description. Keep the ones who can hear that without trying to improve it for you.