Healing isn’t linear. It’s layered.
What happens to us rarely stays in one place. Healing the Layers explores the connections between what we experience, how it affects us, and who we become along the way.
Not sure where to begin?
You don’t need to understand every layer at once. Start with what feels familiar.
I’ve gathered a few pieces that tell the story of Healing the Layers: where it came from, what shaped it, and the ideas underneath everything I write here.
From the Layers
Essays, reflections, and inquiries from wherever the thread is leading now.
I Don’t Think Too Much. I Perceive in Layers.
The healing is not learning to stop seeing the layers. It is learning to stop carrying…
Crystals and Skin Healing: My Thoughts on an Alternative Approach
While not backed by scientific evidence, crystal healing has grown in popularity over the past several…
Skin as a Boundary: What My Body Taught Me About Protection
A reflection on people-pleasing, chronic illness, and the healing work of learning where I end and…
I’m not here to give you a formula.
If you’re looking for a set of steps that promises to tell you exactly how to heal, I’m probably not the person to give them to you. Not because I don’t care, but because I don’t think healing or the evidence we have about it supports that kind of certainty.
What I can offer is something different: years of lived experience, reading and research, questioning my own assumptions, following the evidence where it leads, and learning how to stay curious and human, even when the answers aren’t there yet.
I’m Nina Ajdin, a writer and the creator of Healing the Layers.
My work brings together lived experience, personal essay, research, and advocacy, following the threads between chronic illness, trauma, identity, and healing.
Where are you right now?
Healing the Layers begins with orientation rather than answers.
What layer is loudest? What threshold are you in? How are you relating to what’s happening?
Where Am I? is a free reflection guide designed to help you explore those questions and locate what feels loudest right now.
You can return to it as things change, or bring a different part of your life to it: your health, a relationship, your work, your identity, or simply whatever is asking for your attention now.
There are no right answers. Each time, the questions are the same. What you notice may not be.
Keep walking with me.
I write slowly, over time, about what I’m living, learning, questioning, and still trying to understand.