Category: Personal

  • The “Tsch Tsch” of Enlightenment


    Last year, I mocked a billboard for grilled meats. “Tsch tsch,” it read, trying to seduce me with the sound of sizzling. As if I was Gordon Ramsay. As if I had a Weber collection in my non-existent backyard.

    Every time I walked past it, I rolled my eyes like the world’s most judgmental art director: “Really? That’s the best they came up with?”

    And then… this summer, during one of my grilling evenings at the park that I ever so look forward to, just around the time the billboard ads had made a come-back, winking at me… I heard it. Tsch tsch. Suddenly, it wasn’t an ad anymore. It was a cosmic truth. I had been enlightened by a sausage.

    That was the moment I realized: most of life’s great understandings sneak up on us like this. They sit right under our noses – which, ironically, we literally can’t see without a mirror – until one day, something clicks.

    Until then, life hides its answers in plain sight, just out of reach. And no matter how many people point at it, explain it, or warn you about it, you won’t see it until your moment arrives.

    So I began to wonder; how much of life do we silently judge in others, dismissing what hasn’t yet clicked for us? And how much compassion could we hold if we remembered that everyone’s “click” has its own timing?

    And maybe that’s the point: we all learn differently in our own different timings. Some people can just take advice. I, apparently, need to be charred in the fires of direct experience.

    So maybe the secret isn’t to roll our eyes at other people’s “not-yet-clicked” moments, or judge situations through our own limited perspective; the one that might only make sense to us later. Maybe it’s not to form such strong opinions in the first place, since half the things we swear by today will sound either naïve or too harsh tomorrow. Maybe the secret is to accept that enlightenment can sound like sizzling meat, look like a bad breakup, or arrive disguised as a metaphor we never asked for.


    Maybe the real wisdom is this: life isn’t a straight line of lessons. It’s a series of sizzling sounds, waiting for us to finally hear them.

    After all, one person’s “Tsch tsch” is another person’s “Ah-ha.”

  • When the Unexpected Shows Up

    Vacations are supposed to be a break from reality. Sun, sea, slow mornings, coffee at the beach whilst the dogs go on their morning walk. But sometimes, reality doesn’t get the memo.

    Take Alex, our sweet, beach-loving dog. He usually runs straight for the sand like he’s auditioning for Baywatch. This time? After his attack, he’s limping, in pain, and suddenly the beach – his favorite place – doesn’t interest him anymore. And because he’s not going, neither are we, and neither are the other doggos (sorry sweeties, it’s not fair to him.) 

    It’s funny how one event, one accident, can shift the entire shape of an experience. The vacation stopped being about me unwinding and started being about him healing. And oddly enough, I don’t resent it. Not even a little.

    Because maybe that’s the real truth: when things are going great, life always sneaks in with a test. An interruption. A flare-up. Something to remind us that bliss isn’t about nothing going wrong; it’s about how we adapt when it does.

    Instead of the beach, there are quiet mornings. Instead of salty swims, gentle cuddles with Alex. Instead of our plan, life’s plan. And honestly? It wasn’t worse. Just… different.

    So maybe vacations, like relationships, aren’t about chasing the perfect picture. Maybe they’re about holding space for the unexpected, and still finding joy in what remains.

    Because sometimes the universe cancels your beach day. And sometimes it replaces it with healing love in Alex’s resting spots in the garden. 

  • The Flare-Up

    Just when you think you’re healed – your body, your heart, your everything – life has a way of handing you a little reminder: not so fast.

    My hip injury, for example, has had more comebacks than a boyband from the 2000s. Six cycles of healing, six flare-ups. Every time I thought I was done, every time I dared to live a little beyond walking on flat surfaces; skateboarding, balance board, surfskating, mountain biking, hiking, climbing trees, windsurfing… or, you know, simply going up a couple flights of stairs more than usual… boom. Flare-up.

    It got me thinking: how many times have we all believed we were “healed,” only to find ourselves sucked right back into the same old loops? The dynamic you swore you were over until you see their name pop up. The family dynamics you thought you transcended until you’re back at the dinner table. Healing, apparently, has stages. And sequels. And re-runs.

    The thing is: you don’t really know you’re healed until you try. Without external stressors, you look peaceful, zen, maybe even enlightened. But throw in a couple of triggers and suddenly you’re limping, metaphorically or literally.

    Maybe the point isn’t avoiding flare-ups. Maybe the point is doing things differently. Swimming doesn’t hurt my hip. Diving doesn’t either. So maybe the solution in life is the same: stop climbing trees with people who shake the branches. Change the type of people you interact with. Change your reaction. Notice the pattern. Rewrite the script.

    Spending extended time with family recently reminded me of how much I’ve outgrown certain dynamics. And yet, every now and then, I still catch myself reacting in the old way, like muscle memory. Only now, it’s not a failure. It’s an experiment. A test run. Proof that healing is less about being perfect and more about practicing differently.

    Maybe life is constantly showing us what works and what doesn’t, so we stop chasing triggers like amateur treasure hunters on the beach; combing the sand with metal detectors, hoping to find gold, when really, all we’re unearthing are old bottle caps and rusty nails.

    It’s often not what we say, but how we say it. Most conflicts don’t come from the words themselves but from the nervous system delivering them like a faulty mailman; frantic, dysregulated, and late. I know because I lived there. I researched. I thought. I rewired. And now, I get to practice showing rather than telling.

    Because here’s the secret: people rarely change because you tell them to. In fact, tell someone outright what to do, and odds are they’ll do the opposite. (Guilty as charged. Stubbornness was my brand.)

    But if you quietly model a different way? That’s when people learn without even realizing they’re learning.

    So maybe flare-ups aren’t setbacks at all. Maybe they’re reminders: proof that we’re still alive, still practicing, still human.

    And in my case, still learning not to sprint up the stairs like it’s an Olympic event.

  • Blowing Out Candles (and Other Traditions We Can’t Seem to Quit)

    How many things do we keep doing simply because… we’ve always done them?

    This year, I had my birthday with my parents. Lovely day, lovely cake, the kind you buy from the store that still insists on plastic decorations nobody needs. Then came the candles. And for the first time in my life, I thought: why am I doing this? Blowing out candles suddenly felt pointless. Last year, it felt like magic, like one strong puff could carry my wish straight into the universe. This year, I did it out of tradition. As if the wish would expire if I didn’t.

    It made me wonder how many other things I keep alive purely because of habit.

    Take photoshoots, for example. Growing up, we always had them. My mom loved them, my dad, the family photographer, took them, and I adored them. It became our thing. My love for photography grew from theirs; I graduated from family portraits to hiking landscapes, and eventually, architecture, just like my dad. But this year? The thought of a photoshoot feels… meh. And yet I know we’ll probably still do it, because it’s tradition. Because “we always have.”

    Is that growth? Or un-conditioning? Or just me rebelling against ancestral programming like it’s a Netflix subscription I never signed up for? Most of my early twenties felt like a crash course in breaking cycles my parents never broke; and somehow, that growth rubbed off on them too. Turns out, learning doesn’t stop at 50. Or 26. Or ever.

    Life’s ripple effect is funny that way. I’ve learned my biggest lessons through love and romantic connections. My parents? Through me, their only child. And somehow, our growth overlaps. Like a family group project none of us asked for, but all of us are in.

    And then there’s how love multiplies. Once, I bought someone a massage gun for his sore hips. I would have never thought of getting myself one. But I tried it, liked it, bought one for my parents, and then we got one for my grandparents too. One thoughtful act snowballed until suddenly everyone’s muscles were happier. That’s love for you: powerful, exponential, and sneakily practical.

    So here’s to traditions we outgrow, lessons we can’t skip, and love that multiplies like a group chat you never leave.

  • Born to Be Connected

    on connections that don’t need logical explanation.

    Apparently, I was born to have nature follow me everywhere, even when I live in an apartment. City life, check. Tiny black spiders hopping around like they own the place, orbweavers spinning their chaotic art just where I walk, jumping spiders with more personality than most people I know. Toads chilling at my apartment entrance like they’re waiting for the elevator. Birds casually getting friendly wherever I am, like we have an unspoken brunch date scheduled.

    Fast forward to the countryside: finally, no makeup, chill vibes, stargazing, moon-watching under the dark, magical sky away from city lights. And yet… my little city friends are still here. Nature doesn’t care about ZIP codes. Heart-connections don’t dissolve just because your surroundings do.

    Enter my parent’s doggo: gentle, healing from her traumas here with the humans that are nice to her, ridiculously sweet, and somehow my spirit twin in fur form. First sight? Instant deep eye contact that doesn’t make sense to the mind but does to the soul. Miles apart? Doesn’t matter. Same look when I return, same instant connection; like a Wi-Fi signal that never drops.

    Maybe it’s woo-woo. Maybe it’s magical. Maybe it’s both. But soul connections? They don’t need species boundaries, or city/countryside borders, or explanations. Once bonded, always bonded.

    So here I am, surrounded by spiders, birds, toads, and a very wise dog – plus the other two – thriving in my urban jungle and countryside alike, and somehow, it all just feels connected. 

  • Little Nudges, Big Love

    I used to “complain” about how, whenever my energy dipped, it was on me to raise it again. No random nice surprises. No someone magically fixing it for me. Just me. Alone. Picking myself up, brushing off the low vibes like crumbs from last week’s cookies.

    Since March, that’s changed.

    It started with a tiny male bee. A little creature, seemingly tossed from his hive, struggling on the sidewalk while I was rushing home, fifteen minutes earlier than usual. I picked him up. Gave him sugar water. Found a resting spot on my balcony. While I was lounging on the couch, a gentle nudge told me to check on him. And then he flew away. Free. And somehow, watching that little rescue soar, I felt alive again.

    Since then, the universe has been dropping love-coded breadcrumbs everywhere I go. During my solo trips, gentle nudges lead me to things I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise: a ring and a white rose from the Aare, a mustard-yellow backpack, a playful dinosaur postcard, a 9 of hearts card, a pink rose, the moon rising behind the Alps during sunset. If I hadn’t followed the little voice inside me telling me to go to Kirchenfeldbrücke, I would have been wandering around Altstadt missing the most beautiful moonrise I have seen yet. Bern has this way of loving me back. 

    Sometimes it’s dragonflies dancing around me, landing on me. A cricket hopping onto my pinkie. Spiders weaving their tiny, intricate homes across my swimsuit, my phone, me. Occasionally, it’s a lost subway insect I release, or a stranger I stumble upon who needs help at the exact moment I’m there to give it.

    Other times, it’s quiet moments: a baby smiling on the train, a dog locking eyes and wagging like we share a secret, crows getting strangely friendly.

    The last one? A spider landing on me right as I sat on the ground, followed by the discovery of a great horned owl down feather. A tiny reminder: look. Pay attention. Be open.

    Often, we don’t need grand gestures to lift ourselves. We just need to notice the little things. The universe whispers, we just have to listen. And sometimes, it’s these tiny nudges that remind us: yes. You are alive. You are seen. You are loved.

  • Intuition: Not for the Faint of Heart

    Some men are natural liars, manipulators, attention-seekers. And that’s fine… as long as they know which territory they’re entering.

    Intuitive women? We don’t miss much. We feel it. We see it. Sometimes we say nothing. Sometimes we’ll call it out. But most of the time, we keep our silence because we’ve seen how that story ends: gaslighting, accusations of being “crazy,” our own intuition turned against us.

    We’re learning to trust ourselves. We don’t need your chaos to doubt our clarity. We know when something is off. We feel it in our bones. And if you try to gaslight us… well, congratulations, you just picked a battlefield where the other side has radar.

    So here’s a tip for lying, manipulative men everywhere: if your superpower is deception, go find someone who can’t see through it. Because with us? We’ll be anxious, and the drama will always be on you. And honestly… we’ll still get on with our lives, lessons integrated, peace intact, while you scramble to explain yourself to the only person who actually matters: you.

    Intuition isn’t a weakness. It’s a shield. And if you don’t respect that, you’ll be watching from the sidelines while the women who feel everything from miles away thrive anyway, with the universe backing us.

  • The Joy of Not Rushing Anymore

    On the spiderweb of life. Everything is connected, and change is inevitable.

    There it was. The simple sentence mumbled under my breath as I was walking into the bathroom to escape a long-winded misunderstanding. The kind of circular conversation that solves nothing, the kind only two people-pleasers can have because neither of them wants to face the consequences of actually saying what they mean.

    “I hope I never turn into someone like you.”

    Fast forward through a few intense middle-of-the-night soul surgeries (you know, the kind where you feel like the universe is performing open-heart energy work on you while you’re wide awake). The metamorphosis began.

    Now apparently I am the last person to board the plane, when once upon a time, I’d be queuing anxiously twenty minutes before they even called my row. I thought being first in line meant I was efficient, responsible, likable. But really, it just meant I was volunteering for extra stress, breathing recycled airplane air longer than anyone needed to, and giving my energy away like free peanuts.

    These days, I don’t audition for stress anymore. I don’t even show up to the casting call. If something is stressing me out, I don’t rise to the challenge. I just say, “Not for me,” and move on. And if it’s a responsibility I am obligated to deal with, I know how to regulate myself.

    I reply to texts when I want, not on the old “five-minutes-or-less” timer I used to guilt myself into. Sometimes it takes a week. Sometimes longer. And I used to hate him for doing that. Now? I get it. And somewhere deep down, my old self feels guilty for all the times she made such a big deal out of it.

    I stopped making other people’s problems my problems. I stopped drowning myself in sympathy just because my empath wiring told me to. Turns out, you can opt out. Who knew?

    And on top of everything, which was something I had to learn for myself, I learned to be independent. I learned how to manage and regulate my nervous system and emotions without escaping them. To sit with them. To let them flow. To not hand them to someone else and hope they’d fix it for me.

    And honestly? It feels amazing. My peace, my zen mode, my sanity… All intact.

    Turns out some of the things I resisted in him were the things I actually needed to learn for myself… not because I turned into him, but because I turned into the real me after life peeled off the layers until I was back to the core, and funny enough, some of those traits I once criticized in him were actually part of the unbothered, self-honoring version of me all this time.

    I called him selfish at the time, maybe even to his face, though I don’t quite remember. Now I get it. And I’m not going to let myself feel guilty about that. I didn’t know any better then. But now I have resonance, and that resonance changes everything. It makes it easy to make peace with the past.

    So here I am. The last one to board the plane. Calm. Collected. Feeling my emotions instead of them letting them control me. Carrying only what’s mine. And for the first time in a long time, I like where this flight is going, middle seat or not.

  • Congratulations, you raised your vibration. But how do you keep it?

    In the spiritual world, “raising your vibration” sounds like a permanent prize; like once you’ve done the yoga, the therapy, the shadow work, and maybe bought the overpriced sage, you get to live in eternal bliss. Birds wake you up. Candles glow just right. Everyone smells like bergamot.

    Except in reality? You wake up not to birdsong, but to a jackhammer outside your bedroom window. Your zen is blasted away by your neighbor’s LED floodlights, or the teenager upstairs practicing his nightly setlist of Italian R&B. Suddenly, your highly-tuned “spiritual gifts” (like being sensitive to smell) feel less like a blessing and more like a superpower no one asked for, especially on a sweaty, un-air-conditioned metro.

    And just when you think you’ve found a way to cope, every song, every TV show, every random conversation reminds you of that person. The one you do not want to remember. The universe seems to have gotten the memo wrong, and instead of delivering signs from your soulmate, it’s recycling reminders from someone you’d rather delete from your memory. 8 months in a row now. Seriously? I thought I did all my processing, healing and purging universe, what more do you want from me?

    They say you can’t control situations, only your reactions. Which sounds easy in theory, until your “reaction” involves getting annoyed out of your zen mode into your noise-canceling earplugs at 2 a.m.

    So what do you do? You adapt. You buy the eye mask. You turn up the music. You learn that keeping your vibration high doesn’t mean floating above it all like some celestial goddess – which by the way, I did at some point. Floaty had become my middle name, until even that reached its expiration date as I found out one cannot chill at the spiritual lounge forever. It doesn’t mean grounding yourself right in the mess of it either. It means balancing it all out and meeting in the middle; the heart. 

    And how do you live from your heart, when you just cannot – for the love of all that’s good – like the city you live in? Do you buy more house plants and surround yourself with the things you love? 

    Because even if you ran away to your favorite city, where you’d see almost everything you love daily, eventually the honeymoon phase would end, and you’d still find something to complain about: the rent, the taxes, the neighbors, the bills, the weather…

    And maybe that’s the point. Raising your vibration isn’t about avoiding the noise, the smells, the ghost of a person who is still haunting you, or the construction workers with no mercy at 7 a.m. It’s about holding your frequency in spite of them.

    And as I lay in bed, wrapped in earplugs, eye mask, with my calcite under my pillow and possibly mild resentment, I couldn’t help but wonder…

    Isn’t maintaining our vibration less about chasing peace, and more about choosing it, even when life gets loud?

  • De-Virgoing: Learning to Flow Like the Aare

    on learning how to go with the flow

    Last year, I saw all the parts of myself that weren’t working. The parts that planned too much, controlled too tightly, and tried to bend life to a neatly written to-do list. I hated them. And honestly, I hated myself for them.

    I met someone who embodied all the qualities I wished I had. Not in a “he’s perfect, I’m broken” kind of way, more like a mirror showing me the rigidity I’d been living in. And slowly, I realized: my obsession with control, my relentless need to plan outcomes, was suffocating me. I’d find things to stress me out. I thought that was living. No, it was being on “survival mode.” 

    I saw how he put himself first, do things on his timing (if he could), and how he wouldn’t get too bothered about things, unless it was work related I guess. It was annoying at first. But the more I grew, the more I realized how beautiful and amazing that way of living was. I saw he didn’t create problems out of the blue by thinking himself into knots, which I had spent my early twenties doing.

    Later, the more the “person” disappeared, but the louder the “energy” got… I realized how magnetizing and attractive that energy was to me, because it was still reflecting something back to me; something I was always meant to embody. I wasn’t born to overthink, stress myself out… I hadn’t always been that way. There was something undeniably familiar about him, and it took me quite a bit to figure out what it finally was to close that chapter out for good.

    So I started to let go. Now stress has become something I offer solutions to, not something I create out of the blue. 

    Solo trips became my laboratory. I booked the dates based on my intuition, and then… nothing. No itineraries. No agendas. Just me, a city, and whatever the universe decided to throw my way. Each trip had a theme; sometimes healing, sometimes curiosity, sometimes surrender. I adapted. I flowed. I learned to trust that the world wouldn’t collapse if I didn’t micromanage every step. I learned to trust the flow.

    And slowly, I noticed something strange and wonderful. I felt relief. I felt light. My rigid, controlling self… died. And from that, a new me was born.

    I call it my “de-virgoing”; shedding the old armor, stepping into spontaneity, learning that life doesn’t need to be perfected to be lived beautifully. The to-do lists? Gone. The endless plans? Out the window. And in their place? Flow. Freedom. The joy of trusting my own instinct, my own pace, my own rhythm.

    Sometimes I wonder why it took me so long to realize that control was just a comfort blanket, and surrender… is the real luxury.

    “Take it easy, chill, life’s good, no stress, no need to hurry” became my motto. 

    Because if life is a river (and oh, the Aare has taught me this) you don’t swim against the current. You let yourself glide. You let yourself be carried. And sometimes, you leave your overthinking and worries in the current, letting them drift away. Mine probably floated all the way to the Rhine… and out into the North Sea by now.

    And suddenly, you’re not just surviving. You’re living.