The War Didn’t End When We Left It Just Moved into Our Bodies

The invisible war of PTSD, anxiety, and collective trauma

There’s a civil war happening in the U.S., but they won’t call it that. Not on paper. Not on CNN. Not until the body count tips into something they can no longer spiritualize, monetize, or explain away. But if you’ve got any kind of soul left, you can feel it. People are unraveling. Families are being evicted. Gunshots are becoming lullabies. Food is a privilege. Healthcare is a myth. Spirit is under siege. And even over here, across an ocean or a border, I feel it crawling up my spine.

I didn’t wake up anxious because of a bad dream or a personal issue. I woke up anxious because I’m American, and the sickness doesn’t stop at customs. The nervous system doesn’t care about relocation. The grief still finds me. The headlines still hit like flashbangs, and even after four years of living abroad, there are days like today where it all gets in the fear, the helplessness, the hypervigilance I thought I left behind.

And what’s wild is, even in a beautiful place, surrounded by warmth and safety and relative peace, the loneliness can still land like a sucker punch. Because the trauma isn’t just about where you are it’s about what you carry. And I carry a country I didn’t consent to. I carry generations of chaos dressed up as freedom. I carry the ache of trying to build new relationships when trust was shattered in the place that raised me. I carry the silence of those who don’t have words for what this is this ache, this displacement, this constant recalibration of who we are in places that were never made for our wholeness.

So, if you’re feeling it too that strange fog, that tension behind your eyes, that dread that doesn’t come with a name, know that you’re not fragile. You’re not broken. You’re awake. And this awareness is not an inconvenience, it’s a compass. I’m holding my herbs like armor. Chamomile, mullein, deep breath, closed eyes, bare feet on tile. I’m grounding myself because I have to. Because no pill ever gave me the kind of safety I’m still learning how to build.

Today, I’m not pretending I’m okay. I’m honoring the part of me of us that refuses to go numb. Because some of us were never meant to just survive. We came here to feel, to name, to transform.

We need presence. So, if you’re somewhere out there, holding your chest for no reason you can name, I see you. This isn’t just personal. It’s ancestral. It’s political. It’s spiritual. And we’re still here, still breathing, still refusing to go numb. That counts for everything.