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The ones in the dark; the rest of us. By E.Singh

 “Hello everyone, my name is Eli and a little about me is that I am an estranged student doing Masters in Education. About me? You can find me around cats, coffee, soft blankets or plushies and shawls on hot days” 

For a long time, I didn’t realise I was living in survival mode. I thought being constantly alert, emotionally guarded, and braced for loss was simply part of existing. When you grow up care-experienced or estranged, your nervous system learns early that safety isn’t guaranteed. You learn to adapt, to cope, to keep going. Survival mode becomes a default — not because life is easy, but because softness once felt dangerous.

That survival instinct followed me into university life. In lecture halls, friendships, and everyday moments, I often felt alienated, like I was watching life happen from the outside. There is a quiet grief in observing families that seem functional and secure — warm houses with lights on, laughter spilling through open doors. It can make you question whether you are entitled to the same love and belonging, or whether those things are reserved for people whose lives look simpler.

For a long time, finding where I belonged felt like something other people did effortlessly — something I had somehow missed the instructions for. When you’re in survival mode, belonging can feel like a luxury, something you’ll earn later once you’re more stable, more settled, more “together.” You stay on guard, scanning for loss, giving care outward while neglecting it inward. You become very good at surviving, and very unfamiliar with resting.

But difference does not mean deficiency. Being care-experienced or estranged doesn’t mean we want less love — it means we often learn to seek it differently. Intersectionality matters here. Our identities, mental health, culture, and life experiences overlap in ways that shape how we connect and how safe we feel doing so. Survival mode is not a personality flaw; it is a learned response to instability.

What I am learning now is that survival does not have to be permanent. There can be a transformation — slow, unfamiliar, and deeply personal — from survival mode into something softer and safer. That transition doesn’t happen all at once. It happens in moments: when someone listens without judgement, when support is offered without conditions, when a space allows you to rest rather than perform resilience.

For me, belonging didn’t arrive in one big, cinematic moment. It arrived in fragments. In societies and small groups at university, in shared hobbies that gave me something to look forward to each week, and sometimes in the strangest, quietest places — like exchanging smiles with the cashier at the corner shop while counting out my last £5 for noodles. Fleeting moments of connection still matter. Being seen, even briefly, can soften a day spent surviving.

Advocacy and support networks showed me that I wasn’t alone. The university wellbeing team, and connecting with other care-experienced and estranged students, changed something fundamental for me. For the first time, I understood that I wasn’t abandoned — I wasn’t failing at coping. I finally had language for what I’d been carrying. People didn’t love us in the ways we needed, and that was never our fault. Naming that truth alongside others who understood it made space for compassion — toward myself and toward my past.

Finding these communities helped me understand that belonging doesn’t have to look traditional. Sometimes it looks like chosen family, mentors, or friends who respect your boundaries and meet you where you are. These connections don’t erase the past, but they create room for healing. They remind you that you don’t have to carry everything alone.

There is love and light available to us, even if we weren’t shown it early on. We are not less entitled to it simply because our paths have been different. Sometimes we have to create our own versions of love — love that is steady, intentional, and expansive enough to let us flourish.

Learning to feel safe — truly safe — is an act of courage. It means allowing softness to exist where survival once ruled. If you are still in survival mode, know this: it will not always be this way. You are allowed to move towards safety, gentleness, and belonging at your own pace. There is a place for you — not despite your story, but alongside it — where survival can finally give way to peace.

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