Becoming Unshakable: Healing in the #WokeEra
Let’s get real.
Healing isn’t a glow-up.
It’s not the curated “I healed and now I coach” narrative.
It’s not the perfectly filtered yoga pose or trauma-dump-turned-inspo reel (although those are super cute) —
Healing is daily discipline.
Healing is structure.
Healing is showing up when no one’s clapping.
If you’ve ever wondered why your affirmations stopped working, your crystals feel dusty, or your nervous system is screaming despite the self-care...This post is for you.
From Choir to Chaos: A Life Tuned by Vibration
Before Shaolin.
Before personal growth coaching.
Before I became a holistic practitioner…I was music.
I grew up in Hoboken/Weehawken, New Jersey—Italian delis, Catholic church bells, and rooftop mischief. But my weekends? They were disciplined. I woke up at 4:45 AM every Saturday to commute to Westminster Choir College and train under Dr. Frank Abrahams, Associate Dean and one of the leading voices in the classical music education arena.
By eighteen, I had sung at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and The Kennedy Center, performing alongside legends like Seiji Ozawa, Kathleen Battle, and Yo-Yo Ma. I was the first female intern at Sony Music’s Sound On Sound Recording Studios under Multi-Grammy Winning Mix Engineer, Dr. Jan Folkson because I walked in and asked him if I could have an internship — he said yes. That was the type of person I was. That is the type of person I am today.
When I wasn’t singing, I was playing competitive soccer. I grew up surrounded by first-generation Italians, so the style of play I learned wasn’t American. This wasn’t ego-driven, jersey-tugging soccer where yellow cards were worn like badges. I was trained the European way—touch and distribute. Precision over performance. Strategy over show.
That mindset stayed with me as I moved through the music industry: touch and distribute. Unfortunately, my lack of appetite for chaos and trauma drama made me an easy target in a world addicted to both. My simplicity was mistaken for stupidity. My kindness, for weakness.
What I didn’t know then was that my life was a training ground for energetic mastery.
Choir taught me harmony.
Soccer taught me embodiment.
Together, they gave me the sensitivity and strength to recognize vibration as its own language.
When Words Traumatize, Sound Heals
The first time I lost my voice wasn’t poetic.
It was clinical. I experienced speech disassociation after an ex-partner broke into mental illness during our relationship. It caused me to have PTSD and scars to prove my war battle.
My partner at the time was in his early 30s when he had a severe mental health crisis. According to NAMI, 75% of all lifetime mental illnesses present by age 24, with many conditions like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia surfacing between ages 26–32.
I didn’t know that. I just knew I was trying to help. And it nearly destroyed me.
My nervous system collapsed.
My voice disappeared.
My life shattered.
But vibration? Vibration saved me.
I discovered sound healing through now dear friend and college, Roger Anasanelli. Through his work, I was able to start to get my life back. It was an experience that forever changed me. Why this was so important was because for the first time in my life, I would not apply that “touch and distribute” mentality. Spirit had made me surrender to the fact that I needed to recieve help from another and from something that didn’t really make logical sense to me. This became the beginning for my spiritual awakening.
Welcome to the #WokeEra
We are in what I call the #WokeEra — a global spiritual awakening cleverly disguised as crisis.
But let me be specific: America is going through it.
We are a young country. Spiritually immature. Emotionally underdeveloped. I often describe America as a privileged teenage white boy — one who thinks he knows Hip-Hop because he listens to Drake, plays women like a sport, and talks generational wealth off his grandpa’s money and a little luck in Bitcoin. Loud. Reckless. Lacking accountability.
In that adolescent chaos, we forget who this land actually belongs to. The United States was built on stolen land and stolen labor. And yet, the people who should be centered in this country — Indigenous communities — remain marginalized and erased from the dominant narrative. There are currently 574 federally recognized Native American tribes, each with their own sovereign history, sacred culture, and spiritual systems that predate the Constitution by centuries. Their erasure is not accidental — it is systemic.
And that erasure — of history, of spirit, of truth — is exactly what’s crumbling now.
What I experienced on a personal level is known as The Catalyst — the event (or series of events) that disrupts your sense of identity and initiates an internal collapse. It’s the trigger that begins what many call a spiritual awakening — when the ego starts to dissolve, the illusions start to fall apart, and the soul finally speaks.
In short: your old life starts crumbling so your real life can begin.
Let’s be clear — this isn’t some “woo-woo” excuse to bypass responsibility with mysticism. This is real. It’s grounded in trauma science, neurobiology, and spiritual traditions across cultures. Carl Jung called it individuation. Joseph Campbell called it the Hero’s Journey. In somatic therapy, it’s part of the nervous system’s path to integration.
And now? It’s happening on a collective level — a mass initiation we weren’t prepared for. Burnout, cancel culture, existential dread, political chaos, social collapse — these are symptoms of a culture being forced to wake up.
P.S. This has nothing to do with religion.Religion is a byproduct of spiritual seeking — not the origin of it. Please don’t confuse the two. One is institutional. The other is experiential. One demands obedience. The other demands honesty.
I’m not here to convert you to anything — not even Shaolin. (Although, I still believe everyone should practice Shaolin martial arts — wink wink.)
Why Millennials + Gen Z Are Feeling It the Hardest
Let’s talk facts.
Over 50% of young adults aged 18–25 report anxiety or depression (CDC)
1 in 4 Gen Z adults is prescribed psychiatric medication (Harvard Health)
Gen Z reports the highest stress levels of any generation (APA)
We’re the guinea pigs of real-time healing.
We are praised for resilience—but punished for emotion.
Told to “be real”—but only if our trauma looks good on a Canva template.
So we post. We filter. We say we’re okay.
But behind the screens?
We’re silently breaking.
And that’s exactly why structure, devotion, and inner discipline matter more than ever.
Why I Chose Shaolin
Most people assume Shaolin is about punching things. It’s not.
Shaolin Temple is a sacred training ground for mind-body-spirit mastery. And when Shifu Shi Yan Ming told me “Train harder,” he wasn’t just talking about push-ups.
He meant:
Train your focus.
Train your presence.
Train your heart to stay open in the storm.
Shaolin gave me structure when nothing else made sense, just like Roger introduced me to sound healing when I lost my voice. And that’s why I train—not for fitness, but for fortitude. (The fit bod is just a plus!)
Final Word: You Don’t Need a Platform. You Need a Practice.
If you’ve been posting while mourning...
Filtering through fear...
Scrolling through spiritual advice, yet still feeling stuck...
Let me say this clearly:
You are not broken.
You don’t need fixing.
You’re being tuned.
This is not your downfall.
This is your initiation.
Welcome to the #WokeEra —
The Age of the Divine Feminine.
Where the do-gooders will lead…
And the shamans, healers, starseeds, and lightworkers will become the new cultural icons.
Kim K, watch out.
Because frequency never lies.
If you want to survive this era — not just spiritually, but soulfully —
You don’t need more followers.
You need to understand frequency.
You need devotion.
You need to understand your core values and what it means to have integrity.
You need to learn to forgive and let go.
You need daily practice that recalibrates your nervous system to your truth.
So:
Start breathing.
Start listening.
Start tuning your own damn violin.
Because you are an instrument.
We all are.
And the world needs some serious sound healing (Hey Roger! Are you ready? I am! lol)
So…when the world shakes you— and it will —
You won’t need applause to stay standing.
You’ll be anchored in your sound.
And me?
I know mine.
I am Trust In Love.
I will teach this until I have to.
It’s what I live.
It’s how I rise.
And it’s why I’m unshakable.
I get the Kung-Fu, ha — the Kung-Woo lol (See what I did there?)
👉 Join me for "Trust In Love" — my weekly spiritual practice class starting Sunday, April 6 at 4 PM (EST) on Google Meets.
This is where we integrate. Where we come back to our heart. Where we anchor love into action.
Register now at https://www.alexandriatava.com/trust-in-love
Choose Love.
Amituofo 🍊
