How to Be When the World Is Breaking: Trauma Healing, Grief, and Choosing to Stay Alive (Part 2)
Thu Feb 05 2026
When the world feels cruel, violent, and unjust—when immigrants are dehumanized, people are harmed, and systems fail: it can feel pointless to focus on healing. Like nothing you do matters.
In Part Two of this series, we talk about how personal trauma and collective trauma collide, and why letting defeat take root is exactly what harms us most. Whether it’s the people who traumatized us in the past or the systems dehumanizing people now, when we give up on our own humanity, they win.
This episode explores how anger, grief, exhaustion, and helplessness are reasonable responses - and how choosing to care for your mental health is not escapism, but resistance. I talk about why healing yourself is one of the most meaningful ways to impact the world, how nervous system regulation supports ethical action, and how staying emotionally alive matters more than perfection.
This is a grounded, trauma-informed conversation for anyone trying to heal while living in a deeply broken world: and wondering how to keep going without going numb.You still have agency.Your healing still matters.And your being here is not insignificant.
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When the world feels cruel, violent, and unjust—when immigrants are dehumanized, people are harmed, and systems fail: it can feel pointless to focus on healing. Like nothing you do matters. In Part Two of this series, we talk about how personal trauma and collective trauma collide, and why letting defeat take root is exactly what harms us most. Whether it’s the people who traumatized us in the past or the systems dehumanizing people now, when we give up on our own humanity, they win. This episode explores how anger, grief, exhaustion, and helplessness are reasonable responses - and how choosing to care for your mental health is not escapism, but resistance. I talk about why healing yourself is one of the most meaningful ways to impact the world, how nervous system regulation supports ethical action, and how staying emotionally alive matters more than perfection. This is a grounded, trauma-informed conversation for anyone trying to heal while living in a deeply broken world: and wondering how to keep going without going numb.You still have agency.Your healing still matters.And your being here is not insignificant.