Heart of the Beast
Journal #1: When the War ends, but the body does not know it’s over
Some of life's most important moments happen before we have language for them.
Recognition
Some stories entertain us.
Others find us.
Heart of the Beast found me.
On the surface, it's a story about survival and the soldier’s relationship with his dog, Odin. The dog connection can be another blog. For today, the focus is on a soldier who survives war only to find himself in another life-threatening ordeal. But what stayed with me wasn't simply his resilience. It was watching how a second survival experience seemed to awaken survival responses from the first that had never fully resolved.
His body was fighting today's battle while still carrying yesterday's war.
As I watched, I realized I wasn't only witnessing his story.
I was watching something profoundly human.
Sometimes our bodies recognize the truth before our minds have words for it.
The Body
I've sat with people whose bodies found safety long before their nervous systems did.
Years ago, I lived through my own season when life unraveled in ways I never expected.
That's why this film stayed with me.
As a therapist trained in Somatic Experiencing, I couldn't stop thinking about how often this happens—not only for people living with PTSD, but for anyone carrying anxiety, depression, attachment wounds, grief, betrayal, or chronic stress.
The details change.
The nervous system's language doesn't.
I've seen this in survivors of combat.
In survivors of emotionally and physically abusive relationships.
In adults who grew up around unpredictability and later wondered why their bodies still braced for danger years after life had changed.
And I've learned something that extends beyond trauma.
The first time we feel safe.
The first time we don't.
The inexplicable pull toward someone.
The instinct to protect ourselves.
Even attraction can happen before words.
Our bodies are constantly gathering information long before our conscious minds explain it.
The Truth
One of the reasons I believe so deeply in Somatic Experiencing is that healing isn't only an intellectual process.
We can understand our story and still feel trapped inside our body's reactions.
Those reactions aren't evidence that we're broken.
They're evidence that our nervous system did exactly what it was designed to do.
It protected us.
There's profound compassion in recognizing that.
The body isn't betraying us.
It's remembering.
Becoming
Here's where I think Heart of the Beast surprised me most.
The second ordeal didn't erase the first.
It revealed what had never been fully integrated.
Life often does that.
A relationship.
A loss.
A movie.
A song.
Something opens a door we didn't know was still closed.
But recognition isn't the end of healing.
It's the beginning of becoming.
Healing doesn't ask us to forget what shaped us.
It invites us to become someone our past no longer has to define.
To me, that's what transcendence really means.
Not escaping our history.
Expanding beyond it.
The battlefield may become part of our story.
It doesn't have to remain our identity.
Invitation
Maybe that's why certain stories stay with us.
They're not telling us who we are.
They're introducing us to the parts of ourselves that have been waiting to be seen.
So I'll leave you with the question Heart of the Beast left me with:
What has your body known long before you've had words for it?
Because sometimes healing begins there.
Not after perfect understanding.
Before words.
Why Before Words
Some of life's most important experiences happen before we have language for them.
Before memory.
Before explanation.
Before Words is a journal exploring how movies, books, music, relationships, and everyday moments help us understand what the body has known all along through the lens of Somatic Experiencing, trauma, PTSD, anxiety, depression, attachment, and becoming.
Because the body often knows first.
And healing is what happens when we learn to live beyond the stories that first shaped us.
Jennifer Goggin, LPC, LMHC, SEP
Providing Somatic Experiencing, PTSD therapy, anxiety therapy, depression therapy, and trauma therapy for adults in Palm Beach Gardens throughout Florida, and virtually across Connecticut.
