When Healing Means Losing Everything—and Finally Enables Freedom

A year inside a biological marathon where retraumatization moved in, and this community became my anchor.

Episode Description

A year ago, I sat in the same grey, snowy town of Einbeck, Germany, carrying an ache in my chest and a debt that was never mine.

Today, I am 58. And the reckoning has arrived.

This episode is a first-person account of 2025—a year where retraumatization did not pass through, but moved in and unpacked its bags. It traces assaults of blame, family betrayal, institutional stripping, medical collapse, bureaucratic exposure, and the slow return of sensation after decades of dissociation.

It is also a testimony to collective witnessing—how being seen at the right moment prevented another trauma from taking root.

I speak about language as a trigger, the body’s refusal to comply, the cost of obedience carried across generations, and what it means to stand inside uncertainty while two life-altering decisions remain unresolved: the sale of my home and the verdict of a disability pension.

This is a record from the threshold—between countries, between identities, between survival and whatever comes next.

In This Episode

- The physical reality of blame and betrayal

- Insolvency, debt, and the collapse of professional identity

- Language as a traumatic imprint- Leaving a medical rehab to protect one’s life

- Social Welfare and the experience of bureaucratic exposure

- Losing health insurance, banking access, and financial ground

- A medical assessment that confirms what the body already knows

- Severe retraumatization and prolonged dissociation

- A final Christmas in a house that remembers too much

- Collective witnessing as trauma prevention- Intergenerational obedience and the moment it ends Read it here

- Living inside uncertainty while waiting for institutional decisions

- Imagining a modest future shaped by food, creativity, and connection

Content Note

This episode contains discussions of trauma, retraumatization, institutional harm, medical and bureaucratic stress, family estrangement, and financial precarity. Please listen with care.

Where I Am Now

- Finalizing the sale of my home and real estate shares

- Paying off approximately €90,000 in debt

- Awaiting a disability pension decision with no guaranteed outcome

- Preparing to leave both the house and Germany

- Living inside a pause, listening to a body relearning presence

Closing Reflection

There is no map yet.

Only attention. Only movement. Only a body learning to stay.

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