Tag: healing

  • Out with the Old

    Life has a sense of humor this year, dark humor, specifically. 2025 rolled in as a “9” year, and anyone who’s ever dipped a toe into numerology has been dramatically whispering, “It’s all about karmic clearance and endings.” Endings of what, exactly? Apparently, of my physical stability and ability to exist without wincing.

    It started innocently enough. Hip bursitis on the right side. Like an ex who doesn’t understand “it’s over,” that one just kept popping back up with new drama. Then my left hip decided to join the party because, you know, equal opportunity suffering. While I was busy nursing my hips, my lower back decided to herniate itself right into the mix. A real overachiever. But I wasn’t too concerned; I could still walk, hike, and skateboard, so it’s fine, everything’s fine.

    By September, my hips finally got their act together, and I thought, “Okay, back to normal.” So I picked up my old hobbies; hiking and swimming in cold water like some feral ice age cavewoman, and that’s when my left knee said, “Surprise, bitch.” Ligament strain. Round two. This knee already had its big main-character moment eleven years ago, but apparently, it missed the spotlight.

    At this point, I started to wonder if all these injuries were part of some cosmic upgrade. Maybe life’s way of forcing my ego into an early retirement. Every time I try to do something I want, the universe just smirks and says, “Nope, sit down. Inner work time.”

    Or maybe this is punishment for ignoring those “gentle nudges” I’ve been getting for two years. You know, the ones that start soft and spiritual: “Rest, slow down, nurture yourself” and now sound more like, “Stop resisting or we’ll take the other knee.”

    There’s also the possibility that my body just… caught up with me. After years of pushing it, maybe it’s finally staging a full-blown mutiny, demanding a self-care era instead of my usual “healing-through-suffering-in-cold-water” routine.

    I’ve always loved the cold: the sharp air, the icy lakes, the frostbite flirting with my skin. It’s harsh, yes, but there’s something satisfying about it. It’s like nature’s version of tough love. Except now I’m realizing… maybe I keep choosing the cold because it mirrors the emotionally unavailable people I used to chase. My soul is warm and nurturing, but I keep signing up for environments that make me fight for warmth. Maybe that’s been my version of “balance.”

    But one thing’s for sure: I’m not who I used to be. The girl who thrived on intensity and discomfort has packed up and left the building. And though I still try to hang onto her like she’s vintage, she’s not coming back.

    So here I am, knee-braced, humbled, and rebranding. Maybe it’s time for new hobbies, ones that don’t involve chronic pain or frostbite. A rebuild phase, softer this time, more aligned with who I’m becoming.

    Because apparently, “Out with the old” applies to bodies too.

  • Grief: The Skateboard, the Shopping Cart, and the Almost-Said “I Love Yous”

    Grief is weird. One minute you’re ugly-crying over your dog who just crossed the rainbow bridge, the next you’re staring at a €20 voucher wondering if it’s a sign from the universe to impulse-buy another skateboard. (Spoiler: it was only enough for a massage gun. Bank account saved. For now.)

    We lost our sweet doggo – the happiest little soul – and even though I knew it was coming, apparently nobody is ever ready. I still think he’s going to come bounding around the corner. But grief doesn’t just arrive with tears. It also arrives with random bursts of “YOLO.” Like ignoring your doctor’s orders and hopping on your board with a busted hip because apparently the Kübler-Ross stages of grief now include skateboarding.

    And then there’s the other kind of impulsivity. The kind where you suddenly want to call your parents and say “I love you” like some soft-focus movie montage. But the words stick in your throat as if you’re trying to confess a crime instead of basic human affection. We literally talk every day. They know I love them. Why is it so hard to say it out loud?

    It got me thinking: why do I only use “sweetie,” “dear,” and “honey” when I’m being condescending? Why do I find people who are emotionally constipated with words of affirmation so irresistible? (Probably because we’re both sitting there thinking “feelings are cringe” while simultaneously bursting with them.)

    I thought I’d grown out of that. But then I remembered: it took me nine months with one person to choke out “I love you as a person.” Not “I’m in love with you.” Not “I love-love you.” Just “I love you as a person.” It wasn’t even romantic. It was pure, universal, unconditional love. It was also about as emotionally risky as streaking through a board meeting.

    So here I am. One special dog’s unexpected passing away triggered a full-scale existential audit: an almost-skateboard purchase, an almost-confession to my family, and a Spotify wormhole that made me feel like I was watching the last five years of my life as a movie.

    And maybe that’s the weirdest part about grief: it’s not just sadness. It’s a mirror. It shows you the shopping carts you fill to patch the hole in your heart, the words you almost say, and the love are learning how to give without drowning the other person in it but somehow still feel.

  • Infinite Mirrors

    The universe is basically a very dramatic mirror. What you see depends entirely on the angle you’re holding your life at, the filter on your mood, and whether you’ve slept enough. History repeats itself – especially if you haven’t done your homework – and sometimes the echoes are so literal they feel like bad rewrites of a play you thought you’d left backstage.

    Case study: dogs.

    My grandparents had a husky. I named her Happy because, if you’re going to rescue something, you might as well give it optimism as a name. She arrived like an accident of fate, not a purchase. Later we had a tan hunting dog who refused to leave us that we had no other choice but to take him in. One Christmas, Happy nearly died. I was a teen, and in that small, ridiculous human way, I used my Christmas wish on her healing. Months of illness turned to recovery, and she got a third chance at life; rescued off the street, loved, and then loved again.

    Fast-forward years. Another husky rescue; Alex. He already had a name. Another tan hunting dog that successfully got himself adopted because he refused to leave. Alex got attacked. Untreated wounds became infection; he fell ill. It stopped being coincidence and started to look like a pattern; a repeating riff on a melody I recognized but had no sheet music for.

    At my parents’ place, another rescue who found us by herself, injured a leg during the same patch I was limping. This March, apparently, was Injury Season. Or perhaps it’s simply that the world hums in patterns, and sometimes the hum reaches everyone within earshot.

    Look at the weather. Stormy weeks mirror stormy moods. Clear nights feel like reconciliations with life. Stars pop on like tiny agreement notices, saying, Yes. You are still part of this. Nature mirrors our bodies, our feelings, our odd little crises. We borrow metaphors from it because evolution handed us the original instruction manual: watch a river and you’ll understand flow; watch a tree and you’ll learn rootedness.

    We are connected: not in a platitudey, inspirational-poster way, but in a slow, undeniable choreography of cause and echo. If you stop for even a minute, and you start noticing, you’ll find more mirrors than you have in your bathroom cabinet.

    Sometimes the reflections are gentle: a breeze on a balcony that makes you remember lying on your childhood roof naming cloud animals (fox! swan! very questionable whale). Sometimes they are cinematic: you feel like you’re watching your life from a balcony above it: a passive observer in a movie you wrote but forgot your lines for. Those dreamlike moments are not glitches. They’re the universe handing you a high-def still of the pattern: pause, study, understand.

    There are people who minimize mirrors in their life (metaphorically and literally, some of them hate selfies). I get it. Maybe mirrors are inconvenient if you’re not ready to adjust your hair or your narrative. But pretending mirrors aren’t there doesn’t stop the reflection. It just postpones the conversation.

    So what if we accepted that we come from invisible roots above and below that tie us to the soil, the stars, and everything in between? What if the planet is one enormous organism and we’re polite bacteria? (Philosophy aside: I like the imagery.) If we stop treating daily life like a to-do list and start reading it like a novel, there’s more meaning than we usually allow ourselves to see between the lines.

    The point isn’t mystical showboating. It’s noticing: the feather on your path; the way a dog’s eye holds you and remembers you months later; the way your limp matches other people’s (and your parents’ dog’s that lives 1’500km away) ; the way a chance conversation solves a problem you didn’t know you had. These are small miracles disguised as coincidences.

    So maybe the work is simple and impossible at the same time: observe more, judge less, and loosen your grip on the wheel. Float a little. Let life look back at you. If dreams have been whispering the script all along, perhaps reality is only waiting for you to show up and read it.

    And if you’re still unsure. Try the dog test. Rescue one, watch how history and heartbeat rearrange themselves, and then tell me the universe isn’t excellent at mirrors.

  • Labels and More Labels

    Twin flames. Soulmates. Lightworkers. Starseeds. DFs, DMs… The internet has turned into a spiritual alphabet soup. The deeper you dig, the more labels you find. It’s basically like googling a headache and suddenly discovering you’ve got a brain tumor.

    Humans have this relentless need to label everything. Introvert, extrovert, ambivert, and now ortrovert? Healers, psychics, mediums… At some point, it starts sounding less like self-discovery and more like an HR department from another galaxy.

    But here’s the kicker: some connections don’t need labels. They’re just it. I’m me, you’re you, we already have names. Do we really need to slap on a nametag too? At the end of the day, we’re all just particles colliding in the same human experiment.

    And then there’s the “one great love” theory. Some say you only get one. Some say two. Either way, it sounds suspiciously like the rules of a board game no one agreed to play. The truth? Great love isn’t always fireworks and epic ballads. Sometimes it’s subtle. A smile you didn’t expect. Healing you didn’t know you needed. Or finally knowing what you want in life after a five-year detour through chaos, heartbreak, and questionable decisions.

    So maybe the point isn’t the labels at all. We don’t call ourselves surfers after one wave, or hikers after one trail. Our hobbies don’t define us, so why should our labels? Especially when some people collect them like medieval kings collected titles “Duke of This, Lord of That, Keeper of the Gridlines, and Occasional Reiki Practitioner.”

    Maybe the real trick is to embody who we are, let it evolve, and not take any of it too seriously. To stop over-analyzing and start floating; like we’re drifting in a river, letting the current take us.

    Because at the end of the day, labels may try to tell us what we are. But only we get to decide who. And in the end, no label ever defined us better than this: human, just trying to figure it out. 

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • “Maybe this part of your healing is about facing yourself.”

    Someone told me that in a dream.

    He looked happy. Enlightened.

    That effortless kind of peace people write books about.

    He looked like he believed in me.

    And in that surreal, slippery space between sleep and truth, the words echoed like something I already knew, and didn’t want to admit.

    Maybe this part of my healing was about facing myself.

    The parts I’d been expertly avoiding.

    The parts I wrapped in distractions, in plans, in motion.

    But sometimes life – in its brutal brilliance – removes the exit signs.

    You stop running, not because you’re done, but because you can’t.

    I couldn’t even walk without pain.

    So what was left?

    Just me.

    And the uncomfortable realization that maybe I wasn’t escaping anything, except myself.

    That’s when surrender knocked.

    Not softly, more like a SWAT team breaking down the door.

    Surrender is funny that way.

    It doesn’t arrive with incense and affirmations.

    It drags you by the hair out of your old identity, while you’re still screaming “Wait, I wasn’t ready yet!”

    And somewhere in the mess, in the ache, in the disillusionment, I stopped screaming.

    I started listening.

    To my body.

    To my shadows.

    To the version of me that wasn’t performing for anyone.

    And I started talking to her.

    She was scared, yes, but she was trying to protect me.

    From being wrong again. From being hurt again.

    But healing isn’t about being “right.”

    It’s about remembering the path you were always meant to be on.

    A path that, ironically, requires you to stop walking for a while.

    And sit.

    And reflect.

    Not just in the mirror, but in your life.

    In your choices.

    In the version of you who got buried under ambition, validation, and fear.

    So I asked myself:

    What do I want to see when I look at my life?

    Who do I want to be when I can finally run again?

    And maybe, just maybe…

    This part of my healing was about not becoming someone new,

    but finally seeing who’s been there all along.

    And maybe, just maybe…

    this part of my healing wasn’t about chasing, or even changing, 

    but about learning how to stay.

    To show up.

    To hold myself steady when everything else shakes.

    Because for the first time, I wasn’t waiting for someone to come hold my hand. 

    I was already here.

    And I wasn’t going anywhere.

  • The Spider in the Bathtub: A Story About Goodbyes

    It was almost a year ago.
    A spider accidentally drowned in the bathtub.
    Not a metaphor. Not a symbol. A real spider.
    Small, delicate, curled in on itself. Its little body in the water puddle.
    I picked it up gently and laid it out on the coffee table, hoping maybe it was just stunned. Maybe it needed to dry.
    Maybe it would wake up.

    I left the room for a moment.
    When I came back, the spider was gone, thrown away.
    No ceremony. No goodbye.

    I felt the kind of grief that punches through logic. The kind that makes no sense to the people around you. The kind you can’t explain. I know because I had tears in my eyes when he said he threw it out, the kind of tears he could not relate to and didn’t even take seriously.

    But I knew this wasn’t just about a spider.

    Because I’m still not over it. After almost a year.

    This was about every goodbye I never got to say; laid in front of my eyes in the form of a bathroom spidey I had formed a mild emotional attachment to, whose accidental death was my fault, and it was thrown out by the person I loved.

    In my life, people leave.
    Not dramatically. Not loudly.
    Just… suddenly. Quietly. When I’m not looking.

    Loved ones pass away when I’m away.
    Breakups happen over the phone.
    Pets are gone when I’m away.
    Endings, real ones, never seem to happen face to face.

    There are no doors closing. No farewell hugs.
    Just empty space. A sudden absence. A vacuum that no one acknowledges.

    So I carry them.
    All of them.
    Inside.

    That spider cracked something open in me.

    Because I wanted to sit beside it.
    Watch. Wait. Witness.
    And if it didn’t come back, I wanted to give it a good goodbye.
    A sacred one.
    Even if it was “just” a spider.

    But I wasn’t given that chance.

    And that’s been the theme.
    The life pattern. The grief blueprint.

    “I wasn’t given that chance.”

    What do you do when life refuses to give you closure?

    You get it in your dreams at night.

    You get it in the wind that makes you remember a certain moment in your life.

    You get it by making new memories by yourself in the places you used to go together. In the streets you laughed, kissed, argued… Lived life. Even briefly.