Show Notes
Ana’s own history as a genocide and war survivor roots this episode in lived experience, offering not abstract theory—but guidance forged in lived pain.
What if the hardest parts of your life—the pain, the silence, the survival—taught you a wisdom more powerful than any degree?
In this episode, Ana Mael calls it Terrible Knowledge—the kind of embodied truth that only trauma survivors carry, and the world desperately needs.
This is not about minimizing your pain. It’s about reclaiming the deep, lived expertise born in survival, silence, hyper-awareness, and loss. Ana challenges the dominant narratives that label trauma survivors as broken and instead honors their embodied intelligence.
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What You’ll Learn:
- Why trauma survivors carry “terrible knowledge” no university can teach
- How your lived experience holds value in healing, leadership, and social change
- Somatic practices to begin honoring your body’s wisdom
- Why “making space for the truth” is a radical act of healing and resistance
- How reclaiming this knowledge rewrites the story of your identity
Key Insight from Ana:
“50 PhDs can’t accumulate the knowledge you gained by living with trauma.”
Who This Episode Is For:
- Survivors of trauma, war, displacement, or systemic oppression
- Anyone who’s ever been told they’re “too sensitive” or “too much”
- Therapists working with complex PTSD and marginalized clients
- Listeners seeking real trauma healing—not surface-level fixes
- Communities reclaiming ancestral, cultural, or embodied knowledge
Research & Therapeutic Framework:
- Neuroplasticity in trauma survivors (Teicher et al.)
- Somatic Experiencing & titration (Levine, 2010)
- Embodied resistance as a social justice practice
- Radical visibility & post-traumatic growth theory
- The role of narrative and identity in healing
Takeaways You Can Use Today:
- Make space for the “terrible knowledge” your body carries
- Begin witnessing your lived wisdom without minimizing or dismissing it
- Use Ana’s journal prompts and somatic practices to reclaim voice and presence
- Join a trauma-informed community where truth is honored and healing is embodied
Trauma Type Explored
Complex Trauma (C-PTSD): Ongoing exposure to neglect, control, or abuse—especially in childhood.
Systemic & Political Trauma: Exile, genocide, censorship, surveillance—often dismissed by Western therapeutic models.
Cultural Displacement: Having to survive in environments that erase or invalidate one’s truth, accent, heritage, or resistance.
Ana’s own history as a genocide and war survivor roots this episode in lived experience, offering not abstract theory—but guidance forged in lived pain.
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✔️ Therapy-ready takeaways for journaling or sessions
✔️ Research-based trauma tools & nervous system insights
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From Wounds to Resistance, from Trauma to Resilience.
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For YOU. For clinicians. For anyone ready to rise.
Meet Your Host – Ana Mael
Ana Mael is a genocide and war survivor, somatic trauma therapist, and founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center. She has dedicated her life’s work to helping survivors reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust after war, displacement, systemic oppression, and complex trauma.
Her podcast, Exiled and Rising, is not about surface-level healing. There are no platitudes, no quick fixes—only deep, uncompromising truth about what it takes to move from wound to resistance, from trauma to resilience, from exile to rising. Ana’s voice is a powerful force in the trauma field, bridging somatic therapy with real-world survival.
She is also the bestselling author of The Trauma We Don’t Talk About, a book that has reached #1 in over 10 mental health and personal development categories. Through her research, clinical work, and lived experience, Ana is redefining what it means to heal from trauma—not just intellectually, but in the nervous system, in the body, and in the very essence of self.
