Welcome.
In this episode,
I share one part of my life in the war,
Through lived experience and a therapist's lens about exile,
War,
Belonging,
Unbelonging,
Impact on the nervous system and on the soma,
And what carries people through.
This is episode Exiled in 10 minutes.
Let's begin.
This podcast is called Exile and Rising,
And one place I deeply know and probably you know is a place of being exiled.
There is no consent in exile.
There is no closure in exile.
Body,
Trauma body only remembers rupture and something what was too much and too sudden.
And there are more of us living inside unbelonging than the world wants to admit.
I truly believe in a place of unbelonging in exile,
We have now more than 40% people.
If you're including being exiled from your family of origin because of violence and abuse,
Numbers are even higher.
And this place of unbelonging comes through war,
Genocide,
Poverty,
Forced migration,
Family abuse,
Cultural shunning,
Where we are pushed into a state of shock and confusion and still instinctual,
We are searching for glimpses of what it felt like when we belonged somewhere once.
And for almost two decades,
I lived inside that search.
Even when the evidence around me said,
You belong now,
You're here in this land,
Very safe land.
I live in Canada,
In Toronto.
But my nervous system could not settle into it.
It wanted the same proof as before.
It was recalling the same memory before the war,
Before the genocide.
And brain,
Survival brain wanted the proof that no longer existed.
And the memory could not let go of the heartbreak of being uprooted,
Of being displaced.
And yet,
At the same time,
It could not allow to see new evidence where I build new home and new community,
Because trauma body is stuck in the old timeline.
And it's loyal to the old home,
Which absolutely makes sense for many of us.
And I became exiled into homelessness in less than 10,
15 minutes.
We were denied,
My parents and my two sisters,
We were denied entry to a bomb shelter,
Because we were not right ethnicity.
I am Serbian.
We lived in a building with neighbors we knew,
Neighbors I grew up with,
Croats.
And one neighbor,
He didn't let us in.
And we were left in the parking lot to be killed.
My mom,
My dad,
My older sister and my four-year-old baby sister.
And that's life.
And it's happening now for many,
For thousands of people,
We can see what's happening.
On the news.
And that moment cut deeper than fear.
It carved something into identity itself,
A wound of being declared so unworthy.
So unworthy.
Because of ethnicity.
By propaganda,
By many people's beliefs at that time.
And we were not worthy of protection and of lives.
And not because of anything we did,
But because of who we were.
That ethnicity,
Being Serbian,
Was labeled as so wrong and unwanted.
And what happened?
We exiled.
We packed in less than 10 minutes.
I packed a couple of shirts,
Pants,
And I brought my journal,
Which I kept and has evidence of the wars I went through.
I can read my war journal.
Let me know if you'd like to hear that.
And next thing you know,
We were in the car,
Escaping while waiting to be executed by grenades on the highway.
And the truth is,
None of us cared the way we should have.
That's the trauma,
When you stop caring and seeing reality.
And we didn't care,
Not because we wanted to die.
But because death in that moment felt easier than what had just happened.
Killing would have been easier.
Bomb,
It will ease the injury of the pain of being cast out by people you thought you can lean on,
By your neighbors,
By your community.
It would be easier.
Because compared to the humiliation of being refused safety because of your ethnicity,
By people I grew up with and my parents socialized and had dinners,
Social events,
It was easier to think about dying than carrying the deep injury of humanity.
And in less than,
I would say,
30,
35 minutes,
Everything was erased.
You move,
Not by your choice,
From belonging to homelessness.
So sudden that you cannot fully understand what happened until years later.
And you live in a high-functioning freeze.
You move,
You survive,
But you don't process because you cannot pause and process.
And that heartbreak you carry is not only yours.
So I'm sharing my story so you can connect with all the wars we have now on our planet.
Just look around.
Not only what we have,
But what might happen.
What might happen if we don't wake up.
And this heartbreak is not only yours,
It is ancestral.
Because something in the DNA wakes up and begins to weep and mourn.
Your body becomes a mourning place where all your ancestors grieve inside you,
Not in words,
But in sensation.
You carry this field of grief around you.
More sensible people can feel that.
That weight in the chest,
In the collapse of breath,
In the ache that has no language.
Usually people in exile,
They don't use many words.
It's very quiet.
It's deep quietude.
And I longed to belong again.
I longed for my friends,
For the ordinary sacredness of time together.
I longed for the privacy of my home,
Which was detonated,
Taken,
Confiscated,
Like something out of World War II.
And these were the 1990s.
And still history repeated itself in different uniforms on the same land,
On the same land.
Same people.
And I longed for my bedroom,
Where I jumped on the bed and screamed happiness with my friends.
I longed for my desk,
Where I wrote my thoughts and kept my journal like devotion.
I longed for the giggles with my friends,
For the dreaming about the perfect boyfriend,
Who would be the best boyfriend ever.
I longed for the innocence that assumed certainty and continuity.
My body longed for streets.
My feet knew without my brain memorizing new curves.
For the same stores,
The same displays,
The same salespeople.
For a place filled with certainty,
Where the body could navigate without scanning for danger.
And I didn't understand the privilege of predictability until it was gone.
To know your buildings,
To recognize the same parks,
To walk the same trails,
And know exactly where the muddiest splash is that you need to jump over.
Or to have a memory of graffiti on the buildings,
Or in a bench,
In a staircase,
In a river spot where your friends waded.
And that familiarity was not only comfort,
It was identity,
And it is identity for everyone.
Because belonging builds confidence without ever noticing it was being built.
And I remember I walked relaxed,
Sometimes shy,
Mostly sure.
Curious,
My mind had space,
And I did not yield to anyone except elders.
And I walked with a quite rite of passage I never knew I had.
And then exile arrived.
Displacement,
War,
Homelessness,
Immigration.
And that's a life of unchosen movement.
It's a life of forced movement,
Exodus with others,
Where thousands of us were moving into unbelonging.
As it does right now.
And no matter where you settle,
Even temporarily,
You become intruder.
You feel like invasion.
You feel like invasion just by existing.
You feel as you disturb the harmony of the people who belong.
You feel like discomfort follows you,
Like this shame is stitched into your skin because you intrude someone else's place of belonging.
And then in another war I lived through,
In Sarajevo,
In Bosnia,
I was expelled again from a bomb shelter because of ethnicity.
And after that I stopped trying.
I would walk the parking lot,
And there the universe to kill me.
Because I refused to feel like intruder again,
Just to save my life.
And the reason why I'm sharing all of this is to,
If you are exiled now,
I want you to know you are not only one.
This is a feeling and state many of us have.
And I do get you.
I do see you.
And also for you,
Who is observing news and is so worried about what will happen,
To see the reality,
What it means to go through the war and the impact.
And also that you might not be spared.
I pray you will.
And this might be also your reality.
Or wake up call.
To do any type of advocacy you can do for peace,
For humanity.
To go back to the reflections,
This is how exile,
Displacement shapes you,
Not only through loss,
But through the internalization,
You internalize unworthiness.
Suddenly you're an intruder inside someone else's belonging.
Just like that.
You can be immigrant and feel the same.
And in exile,
In displacement,
In war,
In forced displacement,
Everything shapeshifts.
You shapeshift and you simply you don't recognize yourself.
On SOMA level,
So I'm somatic experiencing therapist for PTSD and trauma recovery.
Today in Toronto,
I am a founder of Somatic Trauma Recovery Center,
Where I work with the victims of displacement,
War,
Genocide,
And gun violence.
So what I observed with many,
Many clients,
And what I know from my lived experience,
On SOMA level,
On your body level,
Your eyes stop looking up.
When you're exiled,
This is how you shapeshift.
Your movements,
Your body,
Your body speaks the volume.
Observe people around.
Observe your family members.
Curiosity disappears.
You look down,
Glued to the pavement,
Trying to become the smallest target possible.
As a young adult,
I had my hair covering my face,
But ears are always hypervigilant,
Waiting for insult.
That's the life.
That's a real life.
And I remember standing in a long line for food in front of charity.
So it was a long line for food and sanitary pads.
I was 15,
Waiting with my mother.
And at that point,
We had been homeless for two years.
And I stared so rigidly at the ground that my neck hurt.
And I truly believed at that young age that teenager Anna believed that I was stealing.
As if the toothpaste and pads were coming from someone else's table,
Not from humanitarian aid.
And nothing felt humanitarian in those years.
Nothing felt human.
And you still had that belief as you're taking things from the people who belonged around you.
Because you're taking your intruder.
And when you move into a new city,
Everything changes.
Right?
If you're moving through your life.
Everything changes not just where you live,
But how you look,
How you listen,
How you move through space.
You stop exploring.
And your eyes shift from wonder to assessment.
Your ears shift from hearing to tracking.
Your body becomes a strategy.
You look up quickly,
But only with your eyes,
Not with your neck.
This is what we can see absolutely in the war zones.
Or there is a hyper-vigilance around safety.
If you're under the threat of tyranny,
Authoritarian regimes.
You can see this in civilians,
How they move.
Eyes are moving,
But not neck.
Your neck stays stiff.
Your nervous system is trying to become invisible subconsciously.
And you choose the smallest sounds,
The smallest movements,
So you can literally become the smallest possible target.
Subconsciously,
It's absolutely amazing innate instinct we have.
It comes out of your bones without even thinking.
You also scan for hiding places,
Or you pick spots no one wants,
So you will not inconvenience anyone.
That was very common for me.
I remember in the bakery,
You wait,
Timid and alert.
And you notice how others take their time,
How they chat,
How they linger,
How they go back to their homes and tables,
Like you once did.
This is the memory.
When I was refugee,
I wasn't in a war zone.
And then when it's your turn,
You speak with accent,
And then you have to repeat yourself.
And your eyes are looking.
They are looking to catch the surprise or disgust in the salesperson eyes.
This is how hypervigilant body is in exiled.
And in that moment,
Your body remembers immediately you're unbelonging.
Or if you enter a coffee shop,
You don't sit at the central table.
No,
You know it's not for you.
And no one says it aloud,
But you yield anyway.
You choose the back corner,
The table of the unbelonged.
And no one instructs you to do this.
Your psyche does it for you.
Your nervous system tucks you away,
Just like a wounded animal that knows it cannot rejoin the pack.
And what is terrifying is that this behavior can last for years and decades.
Long after the war is over,
Long after you remove yourself from abusive home,
Long after your displacement.
And I call this yielding trauma.
Yielding trauma is when you give away space before anyone asks.
You offer advantage to those who belong.
You shrink in elevators,
In stores,
On sidewalks.
It's almost like you walk at an angle so no one has to move around you.
God forbid you inconvenience someone when you're walking on the street.
And you make yourself less,
Less,
Less.
Until you forget what your full size ever felt like.
And then from your corner,
You watch people who seem to live in a fantasy of ease.
You observe how they take up space without thinking.
They just own the space.
You see how that life sparkles from them.
And then heart breaks because you recognize that this used to be you.
It used to be you.
And absolutely you try to get back that memory again,
To recall that in your body.
With whatever survival energy you have left,
You do attempt to fit in.
And you work harder than those who belong because you think you must earn your worthiness.
You need to prove your capacities.
Not even for your humanity.
Because humanity didn't protect you.
In exile,
Humanity wasn't enough.
And it's not enough.
And then you add more.
You add more working hours.
You add more labor.
You add more of your services.
More kindness.
More overgiving.
More obedience.
More loyalty to the something that doesn't deserve your loyalty.
It's always extra,
Extra,
Extra.
Until you are so exhausted and still unsure you have earned a place.
If you're a child of an immigrant,
Not even of a parent who has been exiled,
You absolutely witness that.
If you're a minority,
BIPOC communities,
You know that place.
And exile drops you into new life with brutal speed.
It's so brutal.
You go from loud and bold to muted and small.
From carefree and daring to cautious and terror-filled.
From chatty and silly to timid and somber.
From surrounded by friends to friendless.
From steward of ancestral land to homeless.
From dreams and ambition to hour-by-hour survival.
From claiming space to yielding.
From belonging to unbelonging.
And not by your will.
Not by your choice.
And this is reality for many of us.
And the grief of it is not only that it happened.
It is that you cannot go back.
Memory keeps dragging you toward what was.
And reality insists it will never be exactly that again.
And here's the thing.
With all of this,
Something in you moves forward anyway.
Even when you're stripped to the bone,
The soul,
The will,
The drive does not stop wanting life and belonging.
On almost nothing,
It continues.
It continues on so little.
This is how resilient the soul is in exile.
It doesn't want to give up.
It's so sometimes so tiring because it doesn't want to give up.
When the body wants to resign,
Something deeper keeps walking.
Something keeps moving your feet,
Opening those doors,
Facing that uncertainty.
It's a miracle.
And one day,
One hour,
It's a singular moment.
And another shift begins.
A different kind of unbelonging.
This time,
This is the pivotal moment in our lives.
And I want you to really remember those moments or to drag that moment because if it didn't happen,
It will.
There is a different kind of unbelonging.
This time,
It's chosen by you.
Where you consciously unbelong yourself from the people,
Places,
Systems that made you feel unbelonged.
You don't long to be taken back into spaces that required your disappearance.
You stop negotiating for your dignity.
And that comes from your choice.
You start to unbelong yourself from the mistreatment,
From inhumane treatment,
From self-sabotaging yourself because someone said how unworthy you are,
Someone.
You unbelong yourself from those thoughts.
You unbelong yourself from any behavior,
Pattern which wasn't well for your well-being,
For your health.
And this is the paradox.
In choosing unbelonging,
You begin to belong.
And belonging returns slowly through ordinary moments,
Through micro moments,
A casual chat at the bakery because someone will ask you,
How was your day?
Something so simple,
Your body in that moment will receive it as a nourishment because it's human.
A trail becomes familiar because your feet learn the stones and new splashes of mud.
You want to jump over.
Your eyes recognize the same graffiti on chipped stucco.
Your fingers trace the same grainy textures.
And certainty begins to build again in those micro moments of again and again,
Same and same,
Again and again,
Same and same,
Until your nervous system can finally collect this new bank account of safety,
Of repetition,
What comes with the same and again,
Which makes you feel safe.
And your gaze lifts from the pavement,
Your neck softness,
You take a fuller breath,
Your shoulders rise.
And one day you sit at the center table,
Not because you have been granted permission,
But because your body remembered,
Recall the old memory of you are allowed to exist,
You are human.
A new home rises,
Not as a replacement,
But as a restoration,
Not as a denial of what was taken,
What was done.
We are not forgetting that,
But as a proof that belonging can be built on your terms,
On your choice.
When you,
Your soul,
Shapeshift unbelonging into belonging,
When you decide and say,
I will unbelong myself from this,
What caused me to unbelong,
On your own terms,
With your choices,
With people who welcome you with safety and kindness,
With dignity,
With respect,
Your pack that makes room for you,
Not because you had to prove an effort,
Your worthiness,
But because you're human.
And this is what I felt in Canada,
For which I am so grateful for,
Deeply.
For all my Canadian soul brothers and sisters who welcomed me,
Who made me feel safe,
Who made me feel I belong here.
This is all for today.
Pause,
Take a moment,
Reflect on your life.
Take notes.
And until next time,
I am Annamarie,
This is Exiled and Rising.
Be gentle with yourself,
You are not alone.
Much care,
Much care.
