When the World Finally Listens: Reflections on the Nervous System, Justice, and Collective Grief

If the news feels heavy lately, you’re not alone. For many survivors, this year has been more than headlines — it’s been a remembering.

The body recognizes what the mind might try to dismiss. When stories of harm and power fill the air again, when someone’s truth is debated, questioned, dissected, your body knows that terrain.

The heart races. The breath shortens. The old ache returns — even if you thought it had quieted.

That doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means your body remembers.

For many, this moment holds both heartbreak and relief. Heartbreak for the lives that will never get to see full justice. Relief that — even if too late, even if partial — someone finally heard.

It’s complicated to feel hopeful and angry in the same breath. To feel grief for Virginia Roberts Giuffre, pride for her courage, and frustration that her truth had to cost her so much.

If you’re feeling any of this — or all of it — your body is doing exactly what bodies do when they witness the world shifting, however slightly, toward truth.

For some, these “small wins” don’t feel like victory. They feel like exhaustion, like wanting to cry but being too numb to start. And that’s okay.

Justice on paper doesn’t always translate to safety in the body. The nervous system doesn’t measure progress by court rulings or revoked titles — it measures by tone of voice, by breath, by felt safety.

So if you can’t celebrate, if your body is trembling instead of cheering, that makes sense. This is what collective trauma feels like when it stirs — a mix of memory and hope trying to coexist.

You’re allowed to turn off the news. You’re allowed to not read the comments. You’re allowed to protect your peace without losing your compassion.

Bearing witness doesn’t mean watching everything unfold. Sometimes it means whispering, I remember too, and then choosing to rest.

Even in the smallest act of recognition — a headline, a conversation, a quiet breath of truth — something shifts. The world becomes a little less silent. The nervous system takes note: perhaps safety isn’t as far away as it once was.

If you are shaking, if you are crying, if you are angry, numb, or just so very tired — please know: you are part of something larger.

Thousands of bodies are moving through this together. Grieving. Remembering. Holding space for one another across distance and time.

And that collective trembling — that shared pulse — is how the world changes.

You don’t need to be louder to matter. You don’t need to be over it to belong. You only need to keep being real, to keep existing in a world that once tried to erase you.

You are still here. You are still healing. And even now — especially now — the world is finally learning how to listen.

With tenderness,

Jen