This episode isn’t just healing—it’s cultural critique, political advocacy, and nervous system literacy woven together.

In a landscape where "healing" is often watered down into Instagram platitudes or spiritual bypassing, this episode reclaims trauma work as justice work.

What if going home never felt safe?

In this raw, unedited, and deeply embodied episode of Exiled and Rising, Ana Mael revisits her viral piece “Walk Back Home” and reflects on the haunting truth of what it means to be an adult carrying unresolved childhood trauma—especially when the home you were raised in eroded your safety, your voice, and your sense of self step by step.

This is not a healing episode in the polished sense.
This is a truth-telling episode.
A reckoning with the body.
A ritual of witnessing what was never named.

Ana takes you into the somatic landscape of the child who didn’t grow up in their family—but shrank down in order to survive it.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• What it means to shrink down in childhood instead of growing up

• The nervous system symptoms of covert trauma and emotional neglect

• Why your dread of going home was not drama—it was wisdom

• The long-term impact of invisible abuse, subtle disconnect, and ritualized betrayal

• How the walk from school or work to “home” can trigger collapse, shame, or vigilance—decades later

• Why your healing starts with truth, not forgiveness

• How to recognize children who are shrinking, and how to respond

Who This Episode Is For

• Adults with unresolved childhood emotional abuse or neglect

• Survivors of covert trauma or passive-aggressive family dynamics

• Those who feel guilt or dread around visiting family or going “home”

• People struggling with chronic fawning, self-abandonment, or shame

• Therapists, teachers, coaches, and caregivers who want to better support trauma survivors and children

Ana’s Core Message in This Episode

“You didn’t grow up in your family. You shrank down. That shrinking happened at the soul level, the emotional level, the body level. And that’s the trauma we don’t talk about.”

This episode doesn’t offer you a ten-step healing plan.
It offers you something more sacred: a place to stop minimizing what happened.
To feel what your body has always known.
To begin—slowly, gently—walking back to yourself.

Mentioned in This Episode

• The original reading of Walk Back Home (now page 93 in Ana's book)

• The difference between covert and overt abuse

• A breakdown of somatic survival cues: posture collapse, dread, breath-holding, body shame

• The concept of "ritual betrayal" as a daily trauma for children

• Introduction to Ana’s mini-course on projected shame and somatic restoration

• Private community access and deeper resources for trauma-informed healing

Join the Community

Exiled & Rising – Premium Podcast Membership. JOIN FOR FREE: https://exiledandrising.supercast.com/

New. Micro Lesson.Years of unlearning : https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/signup

❤️ Please donate. This podcast is independently run. No production teams. Fancy edits. Only a truth & storytelling.

https://buy.stripe.com/3cscOqbbXfZp0sU7ss

Get the Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About – Ana Mael’s bestselling memoir for survivors, therapists, and seekers of truth : https://amzn.to/41SjKKL

About Ana Mael

Ana Mael is a Somatic Experiencing Therapist (SEP), Nervous System Specialist, and founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center. She specializes in working with individuals who have experienced complex trauma, war trauma, systemic oppression, exile, and patriarchal abuse.

Born into war and displacement, Ana survived three wars and years of statelessness, navigating forced migration, identity erasure, and profound loss. These experiences did not just shape her perspective—they forged her expertise. She knows, firsthand, the physiological cost of survival and the monumental resilience of the human nervous system.

Ana’s work is grounded in cutting-edge neuroscience, attachment theory, polyvagal regulation, and embodied trauma healing. She is known for:

• Reframing dissociation as a survival ally rather than a pathology, allowing clients to honor their nervous system’s intelligence rather than fight it.
• Naming and deconstructing the wound of non-existence, helping people reclaim space in a world that conditioned them to disappear.
• Bringing depth, honesty, and scientific rigor to trauma recovery, challenging mainstream healing models that ignore the complexity of survival.

Her work is sought after by therapists, trauma survivors, and those who feel exiled from their own bodies, histories, and communities.

Through Exiled and Rising, Ana is not just educating—she is leading a movement for those who were never meant to survive but did. And now, it’s time to rise.