Well that depends upon your perspective.
If you are a refugee, running from the devastation of your past- and if that devastation has come to define you- then you are a survivor. There is some nobility in being a survivor, but it is limiting. You live in shackles, chained to the trauma that you were forced to endure. You live your life oriented to the past damage. But the largest danger of being a survivor is that you welcome Self-Pity as your traveling companion. Your future is limited by your past, since that is the vision of yourself upon which your eye is perpetually dwelling.
If you are the same person, having been drug backward thru the same knothole, but look forward to something that is "more" (even if you can't yet articulate it), then you may be an overcomer. An overcomer is defined by his/her hope in the future rather than limited by the tragedies of the past.
Take the same person and same severe circumstances. If he looks at those issues as identifying himself, he will see nothing but his lack. If he looks at those issues as horrible circumstances that he had to find a way thru on his way to a compelling hope in the future, then he will approach his life from the perspective of having something worth fighting for.
And therein lies the difference: having something worth fighting for, versus having to fight just because you have to fight. One is the invitation to strength, while the other is the invitation to despair.
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