Tag: life

  • The Art of Being Grounded

    Today, I accidentally grounded myself. Not in a “spiritual practice” kind of way, more in a “bureaucracy dragged me to Switzerland and I ended up on a random walk by the Rhône” kind of way.

    Normally, I’d call that walk “too flat, too boring.” I’m a mountain girl. I crave altitude, challenge, sweat, existential breakthroughs at 2,000 meters. But my body, still in recovery, had other plans. Apparently, she wanted flat. Gentle. Ordinary and yet with hidden beauty everywhere.

    And somehow… it was perfect.

    I passed quiet valley towns, waved at black nose sheep, spotted horses, crows, a shy eurasian jay, the all black crows I love so much, cure sparrows… Basically, a Disney line-up for introverts. The sun hid behind the mountains, the air bit just enough to remind me it’s November. I photographed the first frost of the season like it was a celebrity sighting. 

    And for once since my August Bern trip which I spent 9 days in a constant state of bliss thanks to the Aare; I wasn’t thinking again. Not about what’s next. Not about the past. Not about anything, just the occasional Swiss German grammar questions I came up with. And my new favorite song, Grüens Liecht playing in my mind on repeat. My mind was… empty. And it felt peaceful. Blissful. 

    Afterward, I did what any enlightened woman would do: blew too much money at Migros and Coop. My fridge always looks like a Swiss grocery aisle – chocolate, cheese, butter, salad dressing, zopf… I even bring pasta back to Italy. If Italians find out, it won’t be good for me. In my defense I buy it for the shape. They don’t have “hörnli” and I love that shape of pasta because it reminds me of my childhood. My taste buds definitely don’t care about geography. They like what they like. 

    Then, like the universe wanted to wink at me, I stumbled into Fasnachtseröffnung. The costumes, the brass, the wild joy of it all. I’d been thinking about 11.11 11:11 for a week, and suddenly there it was, three days early. Unexpected, and definitely brought a smile.

    My old self would’ve hopped on the next train to Bern, chasing the gravitational pull I always feel towards that city, my personal north star. But instead, I stayed grounded. I stayed here. And maybe that’s growth: realizing you don’t need to orbit the brightest star in your universe to feel illuminated.

    Today reminded me when you’re whole, when you’re present, the coordinates don’t matter. Peace travels with you. 

  • The Cloud

    I like to imagine the subconscious as an infinite cloud floating somewhere above us. Not grey and stormy, but pastel pink, soft blue, brushed with new leafy greens, flashes of purple and bright pink, orange glimmers, dusted in gold all drifting across a deep purple infinity that stretches forever. The cloud feels light, ethereal, alive. Like thought itself breathing in color. Stars flickering through it like neurons firing in slow motion. And inside that infinite shimmer, we’re all connected.

    It’s somewhere between a nebula and lucid dreaming. Weightless, infinite, but alive. 

    Loved ones. Strangers. Ancestors. Everyone who’s ever lived, and everyone who hasn’t yet in linear time. All just vibing in the same frequency field.

    Maybe that’s why love feels like the strongest force we know. Because love is the WiFi password. It opens the door. It lifts us to that cloud, where we remember what we had forgotten. 

    Maybe that’s how we visit each other in dreams. How the ones who’ve left can still find us. How we meet the pure version of ourselves before the the matrix conditioned us which shaped our egos.

    Somewhere in that cloud lives what spiritual folk call our “higher self.” The one untouched by fear. The one who doesn’t flinch, perform, mask, or shrink. The one who remembers who we were before the world told us otherwise.

    Every time we quiet the noise: the scroll, the hustle, the “shoulds,” we connect to that cloud, our subconscious. The static clears and the signal strengthens. And we start aligning with who we’ve been all along.

    Maybe that’s the real purpose of all this. Not chasing meaning, but remembering it. Not escaping the world, but syncing with the part of us that never left the cloud.

    Maybe, just maybe, that’s been the entire point of existence the whole time. Remembrance. 

  • 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. 

  • The Self Care Revelation

    I’m 27 now. And I’m not ashamed to admit that it took me a very long time to understand the concept of self-care. My upbringing was basically a cross between an endurance test and a renovation show. We didn’t “rest.” We tiled. We didn’t unwind. We rebuilt houses. We didn’t go to all included resorts. We worked on the boat. 

    My parents weren’t the “weekend spa trip” kind of parents. They were the “let’s sand the deck and live in the camper van while the house is being built” kind. Every summer had the faint smell of paint thinner, and at least one power tool soundtrack playing in the background. That was our version of a lullaby.

    In my youth-athlete era, my coaches carried the same torch of intensity. Rest days? Optional. Pushing limits? Mandatory. Up until this year, I genuinely believed that the entire point of exercise was to find your breaking point, and then casually jog past it.

    Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my family. But none of them seem to know what “taking a day off” actually means. My grandparents live in the countryside, which basically means their version of retirement is “working forever.” The women handle the house, the men disappear into their basements to “work on projects” (translation: aggressively drilling things for fun). Maybe that is their version of self-care, but honestly, it looks like cardio with tools.

    My mom talks to me about their days. I get tired just by listening about it. “Your dad worked on the staircase he’s building single handedly, and crushed some wood for the fireplace, and oh now he’s wiring some cables in the basement.”

    So, naturally, it took me a while to realize that self-care doesn’t have to involve sweat, sawdust, or physical exhaustion.

    Today, I had a revelation. I realized I had free will and could make myself crepes; just because I wanted to. No birthday, no brunch invite, no celebration. Just… me and a frying pan. I lit candles, put on some music, and even diffused essential oils like I was my own spa therapist. Then I whipped up a homemade Himalayan salt, oil, and rosemary peel because apparently I am now that person.

    Here’s what I’ve learned: self-care doesn’t need to be an all-inclusive spa retreat in Bali (though, if anyone’s offering, I’m in). It can be small, simple, and even slightly chaotic. Maybe your version is retail therapy and buying yourself flowers. Maybe it’s doing face masks while watching conspiracy documentaries. There’s no wrong way to love yourself.

    For me, self-care looks different every day. Sometimes it’s me half-asleep on the couch after giving myself a full massage with a gun that sounds like a small helicopter. Sometimes it’s me balancing on my wobble board, lights dimmed, downtempo techno in the background, my apartment smelling like palo santo and ambition.

    The point is, self-care isn’t about perfection, it’s about permission. Permission to rest. Permission to do nothing. Permission to light the candle, eat the crepe, and enjoy the hell out of it.

    Because it turns out, taking care of yourself doesn’t mean pushing harder. Sometimes it just means finally letting yourself stop pushing at all without a single thought. 

  • The Intuitive Person’s Survival Manual (A.K.A. How to Decode Signs Without Losing Your Mind)

    If you’re anything like me, someone who receives divine communication through signs, dreams, songs, repeating numbers, random strangers that look like your ex, and the occasional billboard that seems way too specific, then this is your manual. You know, for when your brain is trying to figure out whether that butterfly was your spirit guide, or just a butterfly.

    Here’s the deal. When something truly is a sign, you don’t question it. You just know. It lands with that internal ding! The one that makes you go, “Yep, that was for me.” But when you see something that grabs your attention and your brain goes into a full decoding spiral like, “Okay, but does this mean something!?” It’s not a sign. That’s your ego trying to play scavenger hunt with the universe.

    Premonitions, on the other hand, hit different. They come with a knowing that’s so obvious it’s borderline annoying. You don’t have to decode it, you just understand. You could be half-asleep, half-delirious, and still know what it means. Cleary. 

    Now, dreams are a special case. Some are cinematic masterpieces filled with hidden symbolism and emotional trauma disguised as plot twists. Others are just… weird. (Like that one where you’re eating spaghetti on the moon, no, that one’s not prophetic, that’s just your subconscious being weird again.) But even then, deep down, you know which dreams matter and which ones are just your brain cleaning up emotional clutter.

    The point is: if you find yourself confused and the message isn’t clear, move on. Don’t make a PowerPoint presentation out of it. Don’t Google “meaning of blue feather and broken shoelace together.” If it’s not landing with clarity, it’s not a message. The ones that matter always come with a clear mental download, like a spiritual push notification that just pops into your awareness. Every single time that’s happened to me, it matched reality. The vague ones? Never did. Not once.

    Sometimes the messages are tiny and seemingly irrelevant, like getting a song that randomly plays and later turns out to have predicted your next chapter. Sometimes they’re huge and life-changing. We don’t get to pick what we receive. Apparently, the universe is the one running the group chat. We just have to figure out what’s worth replying to.

    In my experience, the “smaller” signs often mirror the energy of the bigger ones that haven’t yet manifested. Think of them as sneak previews, or cosmic teaser trailers. Some dreams I’ve relived months later, sometimes five, six, even seven months after. Once, I was a year and a half early. I’d love to say that means I’m ahead of my time, but it’s really just the universe running on its own Netflix release schedule.

    Here’s what I’ve learned: when you do get guidance, just take the hint and do what’s needed. Don’t try to rewrite the ending. I’ve tried. Didn’t work. The outcome always came, just… delayed sometimes. Which, yes, makes me deeply question free will. Like, if I can’t change the ending, why am I even getting the spoilers?

    Maybe it’s less about control, and more about preparation. The universe doesn’t send signs so you can fix the future, it sends them so you can understand it when it happens.

    So, dear intuitive human, the next time you catch yourself overanalyzing the alignment of your morning playlist, take a breath. Not every cloud formation is a cosmic code. Some are just clouds.

    And maybe that’s the real wisdom here: If you have to ask whether it’s a sign, it probably isn’t. If you just know, it probably is. And if you’re still unsure, maybe just get a snack and let the universe text you back later.

  • The “I Love You”

    Lately I’ve been digging. Digging deep, not in the romantic sense, but in the “why can’t I say I love you without sounding like I’m confessing to a crime?” kind of way. I realized that I can’t say it out loud. Not to my parents, not to my friends, not even to my plants. Apparently, I can whisper it to a city, but even then it’s in this weird, baby-talk tone like, “oh I wuv you.” Which is… not the same thing.

    I’ve tried practicing it in the mirror. “I love you.” Nope. My throat tightens. My face does this awkward twitch thing. It’s like my vocal cords are on strike.

    I started to wonder, how many times have I heard that phrase growing up? Not that my parents or grandparents didn’t love each other. They did. They just expressed it in ways that didn’t require actual words. Like, “Here, I cut you some fruit.” Or, “You’re getting pale, eat more iron.” Apparently, our family tree has a generational allergy to saying “I love you.” Maybe it’s cultural. Maybe it’s trauma. Or maybe we just prefer our love medium-rare, served through acts of service, not syllables.

    That tracks for me, though. Acts of service? My main love language. I show love by doing things. Cooking for someone. Listening to their existential crisis without checking my phone. Helping them pick an outfit that doesn’t scream midlife panic at 25. But sometimes that turns into overgiving, which I’m… still unlearning. Learning to say no without feeling like I’ve committed a felony. Learning to ask, “Can we meet at 6:30 instead of 7?” instead of martyring myself at a bar for half an hour writing blog drafts like this one.

    Words of affirmation, though? That’s where things get tricky. I see people throw “I love you” around like confetti. Girls saying it to someone they met ten minutes ago: “I love your energy.” And I’m like: wow, that’s a bold move. I admire it, but I also needed a nine-month period before my “I love you”s left the mouth to the person I loved with all the cells in my body. No offence girl, but I think I need to complete my 3 years of getting to know you period before I get to say “I love you.” 

    But maybe, just maybe, the real work isn’t about blurting it out. Maybe it’s about making peace with the feeling behind it. Letting love exist in whatever form it wants to, whether it’s a whispered “I love this city,” a packed lunch for someone you care about, or a silent I love you said internally because your voice still cracks when you try.

    Because love isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s shy. Sometimes it’s clumsy. And sometimes it just needs a little practice before it comes out naturally, without the baby voice. And sometimes the people who don’t blurt it out, may be loving you the deepest, quietly. 

  • Laundry Day

    At some point this year, after months of unpacking emotional baggage, breaking generational patterns, and performing full-time spiritual shadow work without PTO, I just… stopped unpacking my actual baggage. Specifically, my suitcase. And my closet.

    I’d come back from trips and let my luggage sit there for a week, like an emotionally neglected roommate. Clothes piled up on top of it, a textile volcano of defiance. My neat freak Virgo self would’ve never allowed it before, but this year? I liked it. I was rebelling. This was my punk era: no rules, no folding. I even let dishes pile up in the sink for three days. It was exhilarating. My inner control freak had finally left the building. 

    But then came the guests. Spontaneous ones, of course, because the universe loves testing spiritual people when their place looks like a small-scale fabric explosion. I did what any rational person would do; shoved everything into the closet. Clothes, tote bags, a rogue pair of jeans that could probably stand on their own. They lived there, crumpled together in the dark, for three weeks.

    At first, it felt liberating. But then it started bugging me. Like a tiny voice whispering from behind the closet door: “This isn’t freedom, this is chaos.”

    So yesterday, I went full Virgo. We’re talking deep-clean-on-steroids Virgo. I cleaned out the fridge, reorganized my kitchen, threw out anything that didn’t spark joy (or was growing its own ecosystem), and finally faced The Closet. I color-coded, categorized, folded, and Marie Kondo’d the life out of that place. Three giant donation bags later, I was reborn.

    I reorganized my bathroom, too. Got one of those fancy little shower shelves that can actually hold all my products: shampoo, conditioner, existential crisis scrub, the works. Now my apartment smells like fresh laundry and essential oils. It feels lighter. I feel lighter. Mostly because I’m no longer living with a closet monster made of denim and emotional avoidance.

    Here’s the thing: for someone like me, who used to clean to control her emotions and alphabetize her life just to stay sane, letting the mess be for a while was actually medicine. It taught me to release. To live with a little chaos without falling apart.

    The last time I deep-cleaned like a Virgo on steroids was on New Year’s Eve; and back then, the motive was… very different. I washed every piece of clothing that had ever stepped foot in his apartment. I scrubbed my luggage like it was evidence from a crime scene, determined to remove any trace of his energy, dust, scent, or emotional residue. Then, in true dramatic fashion, I left that luggage 2000 kilometers away like a symbolic mic drop two months later. I saged every corner of my apartment to banish the ghosts of me crying in those same corners over something he did. I flipped the mattress, washed every pillow, and practically performed an exorcism on my sheets. Turns out, I really didn’t want my 2025 to start with any leftover “him” haunting my space, and we weren’t even officially over when I was doing all of this. 

    But now? Now I clean from a different place. Not to control. Not to cope. Just because it sparks joy. And because, let’s be real, fresh sheets are the closest thing to enlightenment.

  • When Your Cup Isn’t Full…

    Yesterday, a switch in my brain flipped when I found out about yet another change in a city I don’t even live in, but somehow remain emotionally attached to. I recognized the pattern from the last two months: blow after blow, change after change. I realized I wasn’t reacting to the removal of the golden elephant statue from that rooftop. I was reacting to everything else that’s been shifting underneath me.

    See, the thing is, we do this in our relationships too. We blow up at a late reply, but deep down, it’s not about the message. It’s about the dozen tiny moments we didn’t express: the disappointments, the unmet needs, the small hurts we let pile up like emotional laundry. Until one day, someone forgets to text back, and suddenly we’re folding every unresolved feeling into that one moment.

    Our cup gets empty sometimes. And most of us don’t even notice it happening. We’re too busy. Too distracted. Too busy being strong. Someone’s taking sips from it, life, work, people and we’re not pouring back in. Until one day, the cup runs dry. And with it goes our patience, our peace, and our ability to handle other humans existing.

    The trick is catching it before it hits zero. To notice when the water’s running low and pour back in while there’s still some left.

    So how do we pour back in? By doing the things that make us feel alive again. Joy. Peace. Rest. Laughter. By taking care of ourselves without guilt. By prioritizing our peace of mind, whatever that looks like. For some, it’s painting or walking barefoot in the grass. For others, it’s saying “no” more often.

    And sometimes, it takes a while to figure out what actually fills your cup. That’s okay. It’s part of the process. No one hands you a manual for this stuff, you learn it by noticing what drains you and what doesn’t.

    We can’t expect anyone else to keep our cup full. It’s our job. Our responsibility. Our act of self-respect.

    And maybe, just maybe, when our cup is full, we stop mistaking exhaustion for unhappiness, and start realizing that peace doesn’t come from life slowing down: it comes from us remembering to refill before we run dry.