Tag: healing

  • The Burn-Out

    I couldn’t help but wonder… How many cities are actually designed to destroy us… and why do they never send a follow‑up apology email? I feel happy for my girl friends who found home in Milano, and how this city that’s my training ground and zen-testing, is somehow their happy place. 

    Some places drain you without remorse. The noise, the density, the emotional smog in the air; suddenly your body is clenching every muscle like you’re preparing for impact and didn’t get the memo.

    And then one day… Your upstairs neighbors decide they’re headlining an Italian R&B World Tour. Your other neighbors are reenacting Parliament: The Musical. Your coworkers are collectively stress-breathing like a broken espresso machine.

    And you catch yourself thinking, “can noise kill you or just spiritually assassinate you?”

    Turns out: neither, but it can make you question all your life choices and consider becoming a hermit in the Alps for a couple of weeks.

    So naturally, your brain does what any responsible adult brain does: It dissociates. You escape to the reality you want in your dream: You’re wandering through a cheese expo, sampling Swiss cheese like you’re the Queen of Lactose. Life is good. Your cortisol is on vacation.

    Honestly? I crave cheese the way some people crave stability. My dream house? Made entirely of different types of cheese so I can nibble on the walls when I’m stressed.

    And when winter hits…? Throw me into a lake of fondue. Let me backstroke through melted Gruyère like a happy little raccoon. 

    But reality hits like a cold shower: Your neighbors are still loud. Your job is still loud. The planet is still loud. Where am I gonna go? Live on a star? Although that was a childhood dream of mine, even my inner child got educated on science, biology, and space. 

    So you retaliate with the maturity of a seasoned adult: You BLAST your own music out of spite. You slam on your Beats like you’re performing a noise exorcism. You decide that inner peace means “no outside noise. Just me, my playlist, and maybe God if He’s quiet.”

    Meanwhile, your little sneaker who wants to sprint to Switzerland on the next train, is packing her tiny emotional suitcase like, “Enough. Let’s go where the frequencies are civilized. And calm.” 

    But no. Not this time. Because this era is called “You’re Not Outsourcing Your Emotional Stability and Your Zen-Mode to Switzerland.”

    No Bernsie. No Aare river emotional support field trip. No letting Switzerland do 70% of the energetic heavy lifting while you pretend it’s your breathing exercises.

    This season? Is radical sovereignty. It’s me choosing to be zen here, not just in a country that feels like a healing crystal (not everywhere, just in some places, for me.) 

    So it’s me. My cozy-ass home. My emergency fondue stash (obviously). My music. My energy. Me, regulating myself like a tiny enlightened bouncer at the door of my own nervous system.

    And somehow… It’s working. Just not every single day. But guess who catches me when I burn-out? Me. 

  • Mercury Lemonade (served chilled, with extra chaos)

    November rolled in and, surprise surprise, five planets decided to moonwalk backwards. Mercury included. Because apparently the universe looked at our lives and said, “You know what this needs? A little confusion and emotional déjà vu.”

    I’ve been feeling it since the shadow period, which, by the way, is just cosmic slang for “the pre-party to the main mess.”

    Here’s what Mercury Retrograde really does: It opens the group chat of your past. You’ll get emotional notifications you didn’t subscribe to “Remember this feeling?” “Miss this person?” “Regret that text?” like it’s customer service from your unresolved emotions.

    If you haven’t closed a loop peacefully, Mercury will kindly reopen it like a wound with a Wi-Fi connection. Suddenly, it’s 2024 again, and you’re emotionally reliving scenes you thought were deleted footage.

    But here’s the twist: this isn’t punishment. It’s emotional composting. You’re not backsliding, you’re recycling. You’re being given a cosmic second chance to feel what you couldn’t feel then, and release it this time, for real.

    Eventually, those old memories will lose their emotional charge. They’ll just be… stories. No longer triggers. More like, “Ah yes, that was my character development era.”

    Personally, my retrograde rerun seems to be October–December 2024. Of course it is. The season of my life I still haven’t fully made peace with. I keep thinking, “Ah, I’m healed now.” Then life or some planet say, “Cute. Let’s test that.”

    So here I am again, remixing anger into clarity, chaos into closure. This is my Mercury Lemonade. Sour, slightly bitter, but surprisingly refreshing once you stop resisting the taste.

    So if you’re feeling it too: the emotional flashbacks, the random longing, the texting temptations to get closure from a ghost who didn’t take any accountability: take a deep breath. This isn’t regression. It’s integration. And if you’re feeling angry at yourself for bending over backwards for someone who didn’t deserve it, work on your boundaries, and give yourself that love. Multiply that love, and give it to yourself. Because you deserve it. 

    We’re just learning to sip the lessons life squeezed out of us. 

    Make your home cosier. Reorganize your kitchen. Give yourself a facial. Connect to nature. Go to the sauna. Jump in snow if cold’s your thing. Light your candles, turn on your cosy galaxy lights, play your favorite songs. We’ve got this. 

    Now go feel your feelings. Mercury insists.

  • Maybe Spirituality Was Never Supposed to Be a Practice

    I used to think I wasn’t spiritual at all. I couldn’t sit still to meditate, what I did to ground myself suspiciously looked like walking barefoot in the park, and every time someone said “visualize light,” my brain responded with: how about we just feel it instead?

    For a while, I felt guilty about that. Like I was missing some invisible membership card to the Enlightened People’s Club.

    But then, one day, somewhere between the flow of the Aare and the rhythm of a Swiss-German song I couldn’t stop humming with dragonflies landing on my body, I realized: I am meditating. Just not in the way people say I should.

    Maybe spirituality isn’t meant to look like sitting cross-legged with your eyes closed. Maybe it’s just being fully alive. Maybe meditative states happen naturally when your feet touch earth, not when your mind repeats affirmations. When you come across an animal, an insect, a bird and your heart’s walls melt. When you’re in a city that feels like home and you don’t have to do anything else but be. 

    Maybe alignment isn’t found in routine, but in recognition, the moment you notice how your entire being lights up in certain places, around certain people, under certain skies. 

    Maybe meditation is as simple as relaxing your body when its automatic reflex is to tighten up from cold. Maybe it’s keeping yourself calm in a sauna when your heart races. Maybe it’s balancing on a board or holding onto a boulder. Maybe it’s focusing on your breath to fall asleep, or on an ascent when your heart is racing.

    Maybe your flow state is when you’re going down a mountain on your bike. Maybe it’s hearing the sound of moving water. Maybe it’s being underwater. Getting kissed by the sun. Feeling the salt on your skin. Gliding through powder, or the waves. Carving on your skateboard. Whispers of wind that feel like freedom. Birdsong at 4AM. Morning red, evening pastels. Watching the clouds drift laying on grass. Smelling the air after rain or just before snow.

    Some souls don’t come here to follow the steps. We come here to remember that there were never any to begin with. We can find the spark in anything. We can turn anything into purpose. We can be anything our heart calls us to be. 

    We find divinity in movement, in breath, in laughter, in mistakes, in the way the world mirrors us back to ourselves. And when we stop trying to do it “right,” that’s when we finally realize; we’ve been doing it right all along. We don’t need a label for the way we choose to live this human experience we call life.

    So no, you won’t see me in linen clothing with crystals, affirmations, or with the wild eyes of the people who’ve spent too much time in Bali. But you will see me living my life with awareness.

  • Ice Walls

    My relationship with the cold began after I was mentally, emotionally, and spiritually destroyed. I couldn’t even stand the heat, my chest would tighten, my breath would catch, and the sun felt like an interrogation lamp I never agreed to sit under. I hated the sun because it was warm and bright and cheerful, three things I was not. I even avoided the sea, the same sea I grew up with, because water was too emotional. Too much flow. I needed the mountains instead. The heights, the rigidity, the stillness, the cold air, the quiet blanket of snow. 

    I became cold-resistant out of sheer survival. I learned to control my muscles, to reverse the involuntary flexing that comes with feeling cold. When you relax your muscles in the cold, you stop feeling it. Wild, I know. That little trick trained me to control my emotions too, especially the negative ones. I built walls. My heart became an ice fortress. Elsa would’ve been impressed. 

    Then he came along. (There’s always a he, isn’t there?) I remember the exact night my walls melted in front of him. With him, I started enjoying the sun again. I found peace near water again, like I used to. I remember floating, laughing, breathing. I was healing. I even lost my cold resistance, which at the time I blamed on his overheated apartment; meanwhile, mine was hanging out somewhere between 13 to 16 degrees like a polite fridge. Now I know it wasn’t his radiator. It was my nervous system feeling safe. Warm. Nurtured. 

    It didn’t last, of course. I’m cold-resistant again. But this time, I don’t hate the warmth. I can enjoy both the sun and the snow, the flow and the stillness. My apartment’s still cold, but I’ve got blankets. Layers. Tea. Balance. Orange and blue. The Moon and the Sun. The Feminine and the Masculine. Shadow and Light. Harmony.

    My walls are still down, but don’t get me wrong, the boundaries are very much installed. I learned them the hard way. I broke every rule I had for a person, stretched my limits into a yoga pose that didn’t exist. And that taught me everything I needed to know about myself. 

    So even if my ego still throws shade at him and says, “no forgiveness, not today,” my soul knows better. It sees the whole thing as growth. As healing. As my love finding its way back to me, even if it took the scenic route through chaos. 

    Someone once told me I needed to get hurt to learn. At the time, I thought, “that’s a terrible teaching method.” But they were right. Pain really is the ultimate life coach. And the sooner we accept that, the sooner we get to ride the waves of life instead of fighting them.

    Some waves crash you down, some you ride like a pro, but either way, the ocean always teaches you something. That’s probably why I want to surf so badly. My emotional body has been riding waves its whole life; it’s only fair my physical body gets to join the party, so I can master the act of Surrender in real time. 

    So maybe, just maybe, the point isn’t to stay warm or cold. Maybe it’s to live in that perfect middle ground; balance, harmony, integration. Learning to dance between shadow and light, and realizing you’re both the wave and the one riding it. 

  • Living From the Heart: The Real Kind

    I have been given several blueprints and templates on my journey. The concept is always the same: live from the heart. 

    I used to think “living from the heart” meant being endlessly soft. Always forgiving. Always open. Always the one who loves a little harder, gives a little more, stays a little longer.

    Spoiler: that wasn’t living from the heart. That was living from fear, fear of losing love if I didn’t overextend myself.

    Real heart energy is quieter. Cleaner. It’s not about chasing connection, it’s about being it.

    Living from the heart isn’t romantic or poetic all the time. It’s gritty. It’s saying, “I love you, but I won’t lose myself again to prove it.”

    It’s realizing that boundaries are sacred. That sometimes the most loving thing you can do is walk away. That being at peace doesn’t mean being passive, it means being rooted in your own truth.

    Here’s what living from the heart actually looks like:

    You give because it feels aligned, not because you want to be chosen. You listen deeply, not to reply, but to understand. You forgive because it frees you, not because someone earned it. You stop performing your softness for people who only understand power.

    You start realizing that the real power is softness, when it’s conscious.

    Living from the heart means your inner masculine protects your peace, while your inner feminine keeps your heart open. You stop waiting for others to balance you, because that balance is already built inside you.

    And by spending time in a city I love the most, one that amplifies everything inside me, I can recognize the “flow state.” The inner peace. What being in alignment feels like. What inner union feels like. I don’t have to do anything when I’m there: I set foot at the bahnhof, and my energy body starts opening. My energy rises. I feel safe. I feel home.

    Leaving that city is a different story. I feel the crushing ache of being separated from a part of myself. I feel whole when I’m there: like all of me is finally in the same place at the same time. But I only go when I’m called. The distance teaches me detachment. That I can be “whole” without a person or a place completing me.

    And that’s the secret no one tells you: When you’re truly in your heart, you don’t fall in love, you rise in it.

    Living from the heart isn’t butterflies. It’s balance. It’s choosing love without losing discernment. It’s being gentle without being blind. It’s standing in your truth and letting it be enough.

    Maybe “living from the heart” doesn’t mean giving yourself away. Maybe it means finally coming home to yourself, fully, honestly, and without apology.

  • Home

    I realized my hair grows twice as fast when I’m at home with my family. This isn’t some woo-woo cosmic hair growth secret, it’s just biology with a sprinkle of emotional stability. My nervous system finally goes, “ah, we can chill now,” and apparently, my hair takes that as a green light to thrive.

    We seriously underestimate how much energy it takes just to feel safe. Especially for women. If you’re living alone in a country that never quite feels like “home,” chances are your nervous system is doing overtime trying to keep you grounded. It’s like having an overworked security guard inside your body who never gets to clock out.

    So, I’ve been finding ways to tell that guard, “hey, you can take a break now.” My personal favorite? Ashwagandha. My nervous system loves that stuff. I swear the first time I took it, my brain sighed in relief like, “finally, she’s doing something right.” I’ve been off it for a while, and wow, the difference is noticeable. We’re getting back on that wagon, stat.

    Then there’s my apartment. My safe zone. My cozy fortress. Blankets are my emotional support system. I wrap myself in them like a sentient burrito. I love warm, dim lighting, the kind that says “you’re safe here” and not “interrogation room.” Candles, plants, essential oils, my holy trinity of comfort. Pine, cinnamon, lemon zest, rosemary. Basically, I’m trying to recreate my childhood olfactory memories. And yes, I still have my plushies. My inner child deserves companionship too. 

    When I can, I escape to nature. Sometimes it’s just sitting in the park after rain, smelling the earth and sharing walnuts with the local crows like a low-budget Disney princess. Sometimes it’s the mountains, sometimes the sea, because I grew up by the water, and apparently my soul still thinks I’m a seal with wi-fi. I go to the pool occasionally, not only to swim, but to play in water like a manta-ray, whale and a seal, and to sit at the bottom holding my breath like an aquatic philosopher. Chlorine ruins my skin, but honestly, that underwater peace is worth every flake. 

    Everyone’s version of safety looks different. The real trick is noticing how much energy our nervous system burns just trying to keep us okay, especially when we’re busy distracting ourselves with the emotional rollercoasters of unavailable people. If we could just sit with ourselves; with compassion, patience, and a bit of humor, we’d actually feel present. Safe. Whole. And when you become your own safe place, the magic happens. You stop grasping for safety in other people’s hands. You stop crashing every time someone leaves. 

    Because you finally realize, home was never a place, or a person. It was you. 

  • Life After Finding Out You’re Not, In Fact, Indestructible

    There comes a point in life where you stop watching videos of people surfing, climbing, or doing parkour and thinking, “Wow, I’d love to try that.” Instead, you start thinking, “That’s a lot of pressure on the knees.”

    It’s a subtle shift, really. One day you’re inspired, the next you’re calculating MCL impact. That’s when you know, the delusion of bodily immortality has officially expired.

    I used to love walking. Walking was my therapy, my meditation, my end-of-day cleanse. I’d walk an hour home from work just to clear my head. I’d hike on weekends, preferably uphill, because I thought flat surfaces were “too boring.” Now apparently, a flight of stairs feels like a triathlon. My hips protest like unpaid interns, and my knee sends sharp electric reminders that I am, in fact, not 19 anymore. I blame Milano’s metro system for its eternal elevator outages. Truly humbling.

    These days, I find myself noticing how most public transportation isn’t exactly designed with people who have mobility issues in mind. And that realization came with a generous serving of karma. I used to be one of those people who didn’t understand why someone young would need a seat. Now, I’m that person: silently praying for an empty one and getting side-eyed by elderly women with grocery bags. I don’t blame them. I don’t look like I need a seat. But I do. And it made me realize how much we never really know what’s going on with someone. Empathy is the ultimate plot twist, apparently.

    Having three mobility injuries within one year wasn’t exactly in my 2025 bingo. I was supposed to be in Portugal by now, at surf camp, finally learning how to wave surf. I even bought a balance board to practice. I had dreams. I still have those dreams, they’re just currently benched. And instead I’m trying to find comfortable sleeping positions where neither my knee, hips nor my lower back ache at night.

    This year taught me what my 20s never could: that your body is not a YOLO vessel. It’s a living archive of every time you said, “It’ll be fine.” And eventually, it comes to collect.

    So yes, this year has been humbling. My ego is in early retirement, my knee is on strike, and my hips have unionized. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe “slowing down” isn’t punishment: it’s the universe forcing me to sit down long enough to finally… focus on my creativity. 

    And if that means I won’t surf a wave soon but will master the art of sitting gracefully without feeling guilty on the metro, so be it.

  • 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.