Five Things You Can’t Get Back and the Survivor’s Truth Behind Them

There’s a quote that says there are five things you can never recover in life:
A stone after it’s thrown, a word after it’s said, an occasion after it’s missed, time after it’s gone, and trust after it’s lost.

For survivors, these aren’t just poetic lines—these are lived realities. They’re the pieces of life that taught us our hardest lessons and shaped the strength we now carry.

A stone after it’s thrown reminds us of the harm we endured—harm that should’ve never been ours to carry. We can’t un-throw the stones that were hurled at us, literally or emotionally, but we can choose what we build with them now: boundaries, wisdom, and the foundation of a new life.

A word after it’s said hits differently when you’ve had words used as weapons. Words that diminished you. Silenced you. Blamed you. And yet, healing teaches us this truth: we can’t control the words that were spoken to wound us, but we can reclaim the ones that help us rise. Our voice now becomes our power, not our punishment.

An occasion after it’s missed speaks to the moments we lost birthdays we weren’t present for in spirit, opportunities we didn’t take because we were just trying to survive. Those missed moments don’t define us; they remind us to show up now, fully, loudly, bravely.

Time after it’s gone is something survivors feel deeply. We grieve time we can’t get back the years spent in chaos, fear, or healing. But here’s the survivor truth: we can’t get that time back, but we can refuse to lose any more. Every day we choose ourselves is a day reclaimed.

And then there’s trust after it’s lost the one that cuts the deepest. Trust is the currency of safety, and once someone steals it, rebuilding it feels impossible. But survivors learn something powerful: we don’t have to trust everyone again. We just need to trust ourselves. Our intuition. Our strength. Our worth.

These five things may not be recoverable, but they do not define our limit they define our rise.

Because survivors don’t live in the “what can’t be recovered.”
We live in what we can rebuild, reclaim, and rewrite.

And every day we do exactly that.