What does it really mean to survive genocide, war, a mass shooting, or another act of mass violence? And what happens to the people who remain alive long after the world stops watching?

When we hear about mass violence, we count the dead, the injured, and the survivors. But those numbers cannot tell us what happened to the lives, identities, childhoods, and sense of safety of those who survived.

Surviving is not the same as surviving intact.

In this episode of Exiled & Rising, Ana Mael, a Serbian genocide survivor from Croatia, somatic trauma therapist, and author of The Trauma We Don't Talk About, challenges our understanding of survival, resilience, and the psychological aftermath of mass violence.

Drawing from her experience of surviving genocide and repeated wars across three generations of her family, Ana reveals what physical survival alone cannot tell us about the human consequences of violence.

Her testimony also invites us to consider a wider question relevant to survivors of war, mass shootings, terrorist attacks, and other forms of collective violence: What does it mean to remain alive when the life you knew has been profoundly altered?

What you'll discover in this episode:

• The difference between surviving and surviving intact. Why physical survival does not tell us whether a person's identity, childhood, belonging, and sense of safety have been preserved.

• The hidden cost of resilience. Why admiring someone's strength can distract us from recognizing the suffering, loss, and ongoing fear that survival required.

• Why trauma can continue long after violence ends. Understand how historical events may be over while their psychological and bodily consequences remain part of everyday life.

• How mass violence affects generations. Explore what happens when war and persecution are repeatedly experienced across a family, shaping expectations of safety, stability, and the future.

• What society overlooks when counting survivors. Learn why survival statistics, public recognition, and declarations that a conflict has ended cannot describe the full human consequences.

• Why witnessing and recognition matter. Understand the importance of acknowledging what people continue to carry, especially when their suffering remains unrecognized.

Whether you are a survivor of war or mass violence, a therapist, a trauma professional, a student, or someone seeking to understand the human consequences of collective tragedy, this episode offers a deeper perspective on survival.

Ana does not ask you to imagine genocide. She asks you to recognize what the word survivor has never been able to tell us.

Because knowing who survived does not tell us what survived.

Continue exploring

The Trauma We Don't Talk About, Volume 1 — Explore Ana's writing on trauma, survival, and recovery.

https://amzn.to/41SjKKL

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Content note: Discussion of genocide, war, displacement, identity loss, and the long-term effects of traumatic violence.

In the wake of the school shooting in Canada that took the lives of fifteen children, Ana offers a moral reflection on grief, anger, leadership, and collective responsibility.

This is not news commentary. It is a call to conscience.

Ana speaks directly to the societal questions emerging after the Canada school shooting: What happens when children are no longer safe in schools? What does moral leadership look like when institutions fail? Why do some people say, “It didn’t happen here,” and how does that trauma response reduce proximity of threat and normalize what should never be normalized?

In this episode, Ana addresses:

• collective grief after a school shooting
• trauma responses and societal numbness
• leadership failure and civic responsibility
• the normalization of violence
• why children’s safety is a human rights issue
• how adults can respond without collapsing into despair

Ana also offers a closing prayer for the children, families, and communities affected — a grounding moment for those carrying grief, anger, and moral shock.

If you are feeling devastated, angry, morally unsettled, or disoriented after the school shooting in Canada, this episode offers clarity, conscience, and a space to grieve without becoming numb.

This is about grief without collapse.
Anger without chaos.
And refusing to normalize violence.

Ana also offers a closing prayer for the children, families, and communities affected — a grounding, somatic moment for those carrying grief, anger, and moral shock. This prayer is an invitation to hold sorrow without collapsing, to stay human in the face of violence, and to refuse normalization.

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About Ana Mael:

Ana Mael is a genocide survivor, somatic therapist, and author of The Trauma We Don’t Talk About. She is the founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center and has dedicated her career to helping survivors reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust.

With decades of lived experience, Ana offers a unique, unapologetic approach to healing that combines trauma justice, somatic therapy, and spiritual integrity. She advocates for vulnerability, accountability, and collective healing to dismantle the systems that perpetuate oppression and harm.

Ana’s work provides a critical lens into the trauma of marginalized communities and offers a roadmap for healing that is both deeply personal and collectively transformative.

• (00:00:00) - Canada's response to the shooting
• (00:11:09) - A call for activism in the year 2020
• (00:15:12) - A Prayer for the Victims of the Terror

Ana is sounding the alarm: fascism doesn’t begin with violence—it begins with apathy. It creeps in through:

• disinterest,

• detachment masked as spirituality,

• normalized silence,

• the overemphasis on self-care as a form of avoidance.

She is not dismissing self-care, but calling out how it’s been commodified into an escape hatch—a way for people to say, “not my circus, not my problem,” while the world burns around them.

She draws a bold line between early fascism and the bystander effect. It doesn’t require weapons to begin—just a populace too tuned out, too passive, or too spiritually “above it all” to act.

“Fascism doesn’t begin with guns. It begins with disinterest.”

Ana criticizes how some spiritual communities tell people to “stay in their frequency” or ignore the suffering of others under the guise of “vibrational alignment.” This, she argues, is spiritual bypassing and a dereliction of collective moral duty.

“Spiritual influencers telling you to stay in your own frequency…”

She’s not against self-care. She is against using it to replace collective action. When we idolize self-care and ignore community responsibility, we are sacrificing our shared humanity.

“Self-care has become the new religion, and the price of that religion is our humanity.”

Ana speaks with:

• Radical clarity – There’s no soft-pedaling.

• Moral urgency – It’s a wake-up call to a community lulled by comfort and detachment.

• Feminist and anti-fascist resistance – This is aligned with activist traditions rooted in trauma-informed, politically aware healing.

• Healing without action = complicity.
  We cannot heal in isolation while harm is enacted around us. Ana insists that true healing includes moral responsibility to others.

• Collective care must return.
  The absence of collective care has left us vulnerable to oppressive systems—and we can’t afford to keep paying that price.

• Reclaim community and moral bravery.
  This is a call to remember our shared obligations as citizens, neighbors, and humans—especially when laws are being signed in silence.

Ana is pushing against a rising tide of:

• performative healing,

• detached spirituality,

• passive liberalism.

Her voice re-centers the urgent moral work of being alive during political collapse. She’s inviting her audience—particularly trauma survivors and empathic people—to stop retreating inward as their only response. She’s saying:

“Your healing is real. But so is the world. Don’t trade one for the other.”

Ana Mael’s Unique Approach to Trauma Healing:

Ana Mael offers a trauma-informed, justice-centered approach to healing. As a somatic therapist and genocide survivor, Ana’s unique insights stem from lived experience. She doesn’t just teach healing in the traditional sense; she advocates for truth, acco...

• (00:00:00) - Self-Care has become the new religion