Find MORE through LESS

The year I first thought I „hardly survived“ – turns out to be the most precious gift I ever recieved ❤

Here we go again, at the end of another year in life: indulging in reflections, processing & assorting the experiences, learnings, realizations we were lucky enough to be given. This year was the most intense, turbulent and course-changing I have ever lived through. At times, I wished it could just stop, if only it could be over, if only I could finally cut myself off of my realities and cuddle up underneath a warm blanket, in total silence, to digest everything that has happened so unexpectedly. This year I lost almost everything I considered to be a consistent and unquestionable part of my life:

• a partnership, that was supposed to last for a „lifetime“, carry a new family and children I thought I still longed for,
• an appartment, a home I have chosen and prepared to be our new family nest, and the showplace of many warm memories in the future,
• a job, that was waaaaay more than „just a job“ for me, one that I viewed and lived as my second family, my safety net, my tribe, MY passion, MY company, my creation of the last 10+ years,
• my father, whom we had a very challenging and transformative relationship with, making the end of this chapter exactly as demanding and heartbreaking as our whole story was,
• and last but not least – my whole identity, sanity, confidence, my center, my self-perception, the assumingly solid ground underneath my feet.

By summertime, I was ripped off almost all these parts of me. I watched the whole scenery of my life go up in flames, piece by piece, without any regard or consideration, how much of the change I can deal with, how much of it I can hold. If I had any saying in the in scripting and staging, I would have screamed STOP after the first few acts. I would have argued: there is only so much one can bear, so please, be gentle and let me deal with each topic one by one. Let me digest the first hits, let me find orientation and adjust my attitude and actions accordingly. I tried to argue my way out of the tsunami that was already in motion in front of my eyes. Just like I always did before: stiffen up after the first battle and power through the war. Fight is what we know, baby.

I needed the space, the silence, the „not-sharing“ more than ever before. Actually, I never felt like I needed space, withdrawal or turning inwards as the primary solution for any challange before – wanting to escape the world, not talking to anybody, spending hours and hours in the woods, only listenning to the wind and the birds. Walking around for half the day, only to feel my body moving, to believe that I am still breathing, alive, a part of this reality. All those times before, my words were my remedy. Talking, sharing, writing, putting it „out there“ were my relief, my reliable outlet for everything that felt too intense on the inside. Not this time. I was so full of impressions, feelings and pain, that no word could have expressed it properly. I was even tired, worn out of talking, of words, of my thoughts, my head. It all cut so much deeper, as if I didn’t even have the right vocabulary to address it. I got so desillusioned, so broken, so lost in transition – I literally lost the ground under my feet. I only had my concepts and theoretical constructs for the dimensions I knew before. I felt like a newborn human being scanning the world around, trying to find meaning in all the sensations, experiences and feelings inside. I almost couldn’t hold my will to stay. Nothing made sense, nothing felt safe, nothing felt stabel around me anymore. It is an excruciating feeling to lose oneself on the road to this extent. But – and thank God, there comes a ‚but‘ in the story – if we hit the ground so unambigous, we might be lucky enough to learn something fundamentally new.

I never really liked change, I never really knew how to surrender, how to trust the bigger plans to unfold. Which might have been the whole reason for this years lessons in the first place. I must have needed the all-in offense to grasp the most needed learning: let the f*ck go and breath. Cry, scream, grieve but not with resistance, not in denial – do so in understanding, that everything is exactly the way it is, and the way it is supposed to be. That the hurt, the fear, the unknown is here with a purpose, that there is a bigger plan in motion underneath the surface, beyond your imagination. That sometimes the bravest course of action is to stand still midst of the storm, looking those monsters right in the eye saying: I do see you. I fear you, I wish to outrun you, but I won’t. I won’t run, I won’t hit back, I won’t argue, I won’t discuss my way out of this. I am scared, I am confused, I feel lost. But I will keep standing here anyways. I am strong enough to watch the fire burn down almost everything around me, I will find the courage to hold it all together, experience the losses, and find that tiny spot in my heart to remain curious: what is this all happening for. What is the teaching, what is the meaning, what is the win. Because I trust the most precious values I hold from life: there is no flower without the rain, the „good“ and the „bad“ always walk hand in hand. Where there’s light, there is also shadow. So, where there is shadow, there must also be light. Even if I don’t see it coming yet, it is my deepest belief, it must be true this time, to

I have never ever been able to surrender to this knowing. There is that vicious moment in the process, when you feel to pain coming and you close off completely. No matter if the pain is a physical one or an emotional one – you hold your breath, you close your eyes, clench your teeth and hold so much tension in the hope that it will spare you from the waves rolling over you. Well… I guess that never works out eventually. You might „survive“ the hits but at the same time, you don’t grow with it. You don’t learn from it, you don’t allow yourself to experience something new about your depths. You do what you always practiced: you survive, you overcome. But you do not allow the transformation, the rewiring to take place. And as it often happens, you actually feel that strange disappointment, the disattachment afterwards: you know there was a window, there was a chance, there was a hidden lesson waiting to show you more of what you could know about yourself. But you decided to close yourself off of it. You didn’t accept the invitation, you didn’t trust yourself to look behind the curtains. The more intense the experience, the more sure I am that we actually all feel the daunting loss of a chance. We fight it, we push away, we talk our ways out of it. And we rarely manage to act differently – because new courses of action always take more courage, more faith, and most of all: the trust in something bigger than us, bigger than our „ego“.

So, about this ‚graceful BUT‘. I am forever thankful that I finally met an „enemy of this scale“, so undeniably superior, that I couldn’t even consider fighting back. Not for long, at least. 4 months into this year I already watched my home, my partnership and my work swim away on the horizon, accompanied my father in his recovery after an almost fatal car crash and realized that his mental and physical health are way worse, than we believed it to be. I woke up day after days and told myself: I can’t hold on, I can’t breath, I can’t push through this. So, scary as it was: I didn’t.

I stopped pushing. I stopped pretending, I stopped smiling and playing it down. I could literally feel my body soften up, my walls crumble, my armour break. I felt like I was bleeding out, without resistance, giving in to the pain and stepping aside the whole masquerade. As if I got out of the carousel and started watching the ride from the sideline. I felt the weakest ever in my whole life. I felt like I broke, I failed, I lost, I got thrown out of the play, not being able to keep up with the pace. I felt lonely, deeply sad, frustrated, disillusioned, and furious. I was not used to failing. To giving up, to stepping aside. I considered and seen myself as a fighter, a powerhouse, a survivor, someone, whose last resort has always been her spirit to not break in the storms of life. I did not, I could not allow myself to be soft, to be weak, to be humble before. Besides all the other coping mechanisms I tried and mastered before, being tender and accepting where not even in my vocabulary. Up until this year. Thankfully.

NOTHING else worked, helped, saved me from what was coming. Other than the radical and heart-wrenching accenptance, that things ARE the way they are. That too much is sometimes just too much, and instead of re-negotiating the terms with life, there come moments, when accepting them is the healthier and braver option. When admitting and allowing yourself to fall is the stronger statement than the fighting. When holding space for all the emotions: the sadness, loneliness, frustration, hopelessness, confusion and tiredness IS the bravest thing you can do. Standing still and allowing all those sensations to come and move through you. Letting your tears flow as long as they need to: for hours, days, weeks or even months. Trusting yourself and that power hidden deep inside you, that it has a plan, it has you covered, it can and it will carry you – even if your head, your conscious being can’t do that anymore. Trusting the process of grieving, of loosing, of breaking and rebirthing – that every living creature on earth goes through transformations like that. The more mature ones do not even question these becomings. They just walk through them, as if they knew it deep down: there is a start as there is an ending, there is an input and there is a new version of themselves throughout and after the process.

I did know this before. I knew the concept of change very well in my mind, I understood its dynamics and at times I also praised its importance. But I didn’t „know“ it with my heart what it means to gracefully surrender to it, soften up to take it in, to let it flow, to let it do its work. I tolerated change to the extent I felt control over it, I felt like I am stearing the wheel, I am co-creating the process. Looking back today, it seems like I had my terms in all those transformative phases: I was in for it, but… And those ‚but’s were / are massive signs of control – as I see it today. Control – the attempt to keep the extents of what was happening in my life within my reach. Depending on how strong-minded a person you are, that can already go for miles. But it also misses the point: because there is only so much we know…

The real transformation, the real learnings, true change starts, where we end. Where our knowing ends. Where we leave the realm of our understanding, control, our „reality“. Where we face the unknown, the parts of us we didn’t even know exist. It can only happen, when we loose all the conscious control, the steering, the wanting. When life gets hard enough to push us off the edge. When we find ourselves in free-fall, having absolutely no imagination, where it will lead us to.

2023 – THANK YOU for being that transformational push for me. I will never forget your blessings.