Growing Up “Fine”: When Survival Is Mistaken for Success

Perhaps the more honest answer is this: two things can be true at once. A parent can try and still fail. A child can succeed and still hurt. Gratitude does not require silence, and understanding does not erase accountability.             

                                 

From the outside, it looked like a good home.

A parent in a respectable government job. A schoolteacher—someone entrusted to shape young minds, teach discipline, patience, and good values. Stable income. Moral authority. In the eyes of relatives, neighbors, and society, this child was lucky. He was expected to grow up well, to be guided properly, to become someone stable and successful.

And in many ways, he did.

He finished tertiary education. He found a good job. His salary was above average. On paper, this is a success story—the kind often used to prove that hardship builds character.

But memory is not paper. And childhood leaves marks that achievement does not erase.

Behind the image of a “proper” household was a life shaped by scarcity. One income shared among nine people meant constant trade-offs. Food was divided carefully. Bedrooms were crowded or nonexistent. Privacy was a luxury no one could afford. Opportunities were rationed too—if one child advanced, another had to wait, or sacrifice, so the family wouldn’t collapse under the weight of expenses.

Even the home itself reflected this lack. Repairs were done out of necessity, not skill. A clogged sink stayed clogged. A basin leaked through holes. Doors no longer locked and had to be blocked with improvised objects. 

The family learned to live with broken things, bad smells, and quiet embarrassment. Calling a professional was not an option—it cost too much. Endurance became the default solution.

School offered little refuge. Late payment of fees turned into public humiliation, announced in classrooms as if shame were an acceptable teaching tool. 

Transportation was unreliable, too. The family car—always second hand—broke down often, draining more money and patience. At one point, a pickup truck became the solution, with older children riding in the back under harsh sun and rain, without seatbelts. 

Safety, like comfort, was negotiable.

And then there was the violence.

The father carried his own history of abuse, passed down like an inheritance no one asked for. Financial pressure and unresolved trauma spilled into the home. Arguments escalated into domestic violence, witnessed by children who learned early that love could coexist with fear. Alcohol offered brief escape, but often worsened the damage.

Yet the story is not simple. It never is.

Despite everything, the father took loan after loan to put his children through tertiary education. He limited his own spending so none of them would starve. He did not abandon them. He tried, in the ways he knew how, and sometimes in ways that hurt. His actions were not all bad—but they were not enough.

This kind of story is not rare. Many families once believed that more children meant more prosperity, more security, more hands to help. Among millennials, it’s common to hear some version of this refrain: “I had a tough life, but I turned out okay. I’m stronger because of it.”

But are they really okay?

Resilience is often praised without asking what it cost. Strength is celebrated while the scars are ignored. 

Survival becomes confused with success. 

Emotional neglect, chronic stress, and normalized dysfunction are brushed aside because the child grew up, got a job, and didn’t completely fall apart.

Gratitude, in these narratives, becomes complicated. Should children be thankful simply because their parents did what they could? Does financial provision cancel out emotional harm? Does intention outweigh impact?

And then there is the question of repayment.

How much do children owe their parents? Is it a lifetime debt, regardless of pain? Or is responsibility limited to care, not unquestioning loyalty? Can someone acknowledge sacrifice while also holding space for anger, grief, and unmet needs?

Perhaps the more honest answer is this: two things can be true at once. A parent can try and still fail. A child can succeed and still hurt. Gratitude does not require silence, and understanding does not erase accountability.

Maybe the goal is not to declare whether such children are “okay,” but to finally allow them to say they weren’t—without guilt, without comparison, and without being told that resilience should be enough.

Because turning out “fine” is not the same as healing.