Exactly Thirty Years Ago - A Somatic Reflection on War, Survival, and the Body

Exactly thirty years ago, I got on a bus leaving a war-torn town, with a burgundy suitcase, two sandwiches, fourteen years of life, and twenty German marks in my pocket. I had no plan. I had a mother who stood watching the bus for a long time, a father on the front lines, and a brother who was completely alone— but safe. I had hope. And a body that carried it all.

I remember the crowded bus, the heat, the suffocating air. Women. Children. Crying.

I don’t remember feeling afraid. I remember a frozen stillness in my body, but I didn’t recognize it as fear— only as a pause, a place where I tucked away my emotions until it felt safe enough to feel them.

Now, as I write this, my body suddenly begins to cry. I’m not sad. It’s not even about the memory— it’s about a feeling that has surfaced, asking to be seen.

The body remembers— not only what we lived through consciously, but also what we had nowhere to put at the time.

Even though we’re taught that presence is formed in the now, the body sometimes takes us back— not to punish us, but to show us the forgotten parts of ourselves that never got the care they needed. The unconscious. The untended. The unwept.

In this case, it was the uncertainty of a journey through war. The questions: Will we make it across the border? Will they stop us?

And also that moment when I arrived— stepping off the bus into a crowded station, and no one was there to meet me. A sharp sense of loneliness and uncertainty. But also the realization that I was no longer in a war. That I had survived — but didn’t feel like I had arrived anywhere.

Today, as a coach and somatic practitioner, I know: this was a living feeling—simply dormant. A life story the body still wanted to tell, fully.

That’s why we practice. That’s why we breathe. That’s why we listen, gently, to ourselves.

All I can do for myself now is to acknowledge that feeling, to notice it, to fully experience it, and to let it soften and dissolve.

And to let it go. It no longer needs to protect me. I am here now.

31 May 2025 Nana ♥