You can make it. You can find something to hold on to. A strength, a light in the darkness. A light that overcomes the darkness within and around you. It will bring you into a new life, a new self. Changing everything you have ever known. You can survive. You. Will. Survive.Surviving is a collection of poetry and prose inspired by real mental health issues and emotions experienced. The words written on these pages dive into different themes between darkness and light. In the poem below, you’ll learn more about the specific themes such as depression, anxiety, and hope. Throughout each section, you’ll find pieces that help you feel understood, seen, and heard. In part 2 and 3 of Surviving, you’ll read pieces that also bring you comfort, strength, and promise.The specific themes mentioned throughout Surviving are listed in the poem below.Loneliness tangles itself to become one with depression, often leaning on anxiety, creating a storm that welcomes insecurity, tempting self-harm, and beckoning for negative and suicidal thoughts.The shadows whisper fears of repeated abandonment, infidelity, and abuse. Sexual, emotional, and even physical. It pushes you to reach out to the substances, to take another step further into the dark.It won’t. Because even though you may be blind to it now, a ray peeks through the clouds, tearing every wall down, the mere touch bringing them to ashes. It sparks hope inside, igniting a fire of strength, spreading faith to every corner, and leaving victory in its wake. Because time and time, we see that in the light, every shadow flees. And from the ashes, a new creation breathes.