12/01/2026
The guilt you feel for resting?
That's not your neurosis. That's capitalism living in your nervous system.
The shame around your anger?
That's generations of women being told to be sweet while they or the world around them was burnt.
The way saying 'no' feels dangerous?
That's not an anxious attachment style. That's the legacy of people who learned that having boundaries would lead to abandonment.
Your individual trauma is wrapped in collective trauma.
Your nervous system carries the stories of your ancestors… their battles, their terror, their pain, their suffering, and their desperate hope.
You can't heal what lives in your lineage all on your own.
This type of healing happens in the spaces between us.
In storytelling circles where your pain finds company. In communal rituals that remember what was lost.
In acts of solidarity that build the world your nervous system can finally trust and feel safe within.
When the wounds are collective… so is the medicine.
~ Ailey Jolie
Art by Tijana Lukovic
