There are seldom days that don’t fly by…you wake up, turn around, and it’s already time to unwind for bed.
Time passes by…
There are many weeks where the Monday started and within the blink of an eye it’s Friday afternoon.
Yesterday was January and now it’s already the end of April.
A short time ago I was 25 and this year I hit the 45.
Years pass by and if I don’t realise it for myself, I see it when I look at my son who was just born and now starts school in summer.
We can’t go back, but what we can is to enjoy!
Cherish the time we have, do the things we love, stop and breathe and smile.
Oftentimes I want to write away my thoughts but in most cases it stays „I want“ because the dishwasher beeps or it’s time for the kindergarten pick up.
This time I write above the clouds. Arrival in Boston is scheduled in one hour and fifty-two minutes. After two years it’s my first business trip and it brings me right on the other side of the ocean. Which is nice, don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining, I’m just torn apart each time.
To wave goodbye to a six-year old who tries to be strong and fights his tears is hard!
Motherhood is hard!
I’m so proud of him and I care more than I would have ever have been able to imagine. He is the greatest achievement of my life. No work career can be better than raising this wonderful little being.
When his tiny arms squeeze me tight and he tells me that he loves me to the moon and further, that’s all! There’s nothing to top it!
Now he’s strong and will sleep four whole nights in my bed next to my husband until we are back together.
Everyone is telling me to enjoy, time alone is something mom’s rarely have, to have fun. But honestly, you know what? I am strong too! I wiped my tears away at the airport too. I also will count the nights until I am back in the plane which hasn‘t even landed.
When I was still at the airport, waiting for boarding, my husband texted me from home what to prepare for our son to eat. Even there, I already told him, I would have loved to be back in our kitchen to prepare a plate for him with what he likes most.
This weirdness is called motherhood too. It is weird because day in day out I don’t see how precious these simple mundane moments are, but just knowing that I won’t have them for only a short time shows me the truth.
Life is precious…
Every single simple moment means the world to our children! Hearing us moms around is their safe haven and that’s exactly what they deserve!
I will check how many things I can buy here for him, half of my suitcase is empty to be filled with clothes and toys, hoping that the next chance to come over is far in the future and not coming too fast. I don’t want to think about another goodbye, I want the daily chaos.
But you know, no matter how much I will buy, the most important will be to hug one another again as soon as I’m outside of the security area.
I know that we moms are bears and that we can move mountains when needed. But please take care! Let go of the unimportant and focus on what makes lasting memories.
It won’t be the long cooked dinner where you were hidden in the kitchen for hours, the forgotten spaghetti which glue together because you were playing on the floor will last in your childrens memory.
…our world seems to be upside down and still so normal.
People are buying flour and oil and pasta, as if they want to be prepared for a starvation period while others lose their homes.
It is so ridiculous to see…
As if Covid is not enough we face one tragedy after the other and still, instead of being kind to one another there’s a slightly boiling diversity under the surface.
Equality is what we are asking for but instead once again humans are not treated the same. Haven’t we learned? Shouldn’t we know better?
What worries me most is the disappearance of natural common intelligence paired with the rising greed of wanting it all, preferably at once.
Germany declared officially the pandemic does not need any more regulations and it is insanely called freedom day in a country, that has been free all along since decades.
Who says something else may check in their mental health because no, we were not living in a dictatorship during the past two years!
In Ukraine people are devastated and the word freedom is used with the real sense of it! They deserve a freedom lifetime, not only a day, and all what happened there has been caused by dictatorship and a greedy man who can’t get enough of what? Power? Land? Money? A man who is capable of this disaster for a whole nation based on lies is no man, he’s a poor little person unable to be himself enough. He belongs to a psychiatry but instead he traumatises others.
This world has so many similar stories and whenever you dig deeper you see that the suffering of many is caused by only a few. These few are having the power but why?
Why are we not able to stand up against this injustice? Why are we not able to stop this insanity?
There’s snow in April and the world outside my window looks calm and covered and peaceful, but I know that it’s not.
One neighbour will start to clean the walkway in front of his door, the next will put salt on it and the third will walk over it until it’s firm. Some will put little stones on to prevent others from slipping but not because they care about others but because they don’t want to be sued. What world is that?
Neighbour A will not go one centimetre into neighbour Bs area because you never know how the other person reacts? Is this a true story, indeed. But why don’t we just simply talk to one another? Hearing and listening instead of guessing seems to be out these days.
We are so free that for me it seems odd.
It’s like an overdose of freedom which turns out to be the opposite of good. We love sweet treats but if we eat too much we will be sick. You know when you raise a child that you should show them limits, mostly to prevent that they hurt themselves but also to understand how to use their freedom.
If that is properly done you hope that your child turns out to be kind, to be empathic, to help others and look after where needed. That’s the plan. But this plan didn’t work out for some and they need guidance and kindness and help instead, they don’t need power over something!
A Putin is a lost soul as are so many others, it will not help anyone if he’s in power. He’s like that child who destroys the toys of others when he’s not allowed to have it himself. And that’s the dangerous part, because a child can be guided, we can be there with all of our love and support. But this man should have developed responsibility and he didn’t, as an adult you can be held accountable, so why does this not happen?
Taking these people down is what we should do instead of celebrating them.
Everybody out there who celebrates tragedies needs to be taken down, how can we celebrate that fathers are separated from their families, how can we celebrate that children lose their homes, that women need to flee, that trains separate people by ethnicity, that political parties who clearly neglect human rights are existent, that unspeakably sick politicians rule countries.
How could that happen? Again and again and again.
Shouldn’t humans be wiser, shouldn’t we learn instead of making it worse?
Rosa Parks would be devastated as would be Sophie Scholl, Anne Frank would tell Martin Luther King that this world is lost.
Are you raising your voice to be heard?
I ask you to stand up and look around you, are you kind? Do you do good? Are you listening and hearing what the people around you are saying? Are you using your voice to go against injustice?
We are no longer the children who learn, we are the responsible generation to stop this madness for the sake of our children!
There’s injustice? Stand up and speak, don’t let it slip away because this short moment gives the wrong-doer the confidence to do it again!
And while doing good, take care too, there’s aside of all this war and madness still a virus out there, even though you don’t hear lots about it anymore. Kindness starts when you protect others, so wear your mask and take ownership if politicians won’t do it – because we are capable of being responsible and we are in charge! If not now, when then?
Just yesterday Ramadan started and these 30 days of spirituality should be used for becoming a better person, for being kind to one self and one another. Even though I am not religious I fully support the sense behind because every one of us needs time to reflect and to evaluate where we are and where we want to be. Who are we and who do we want to be. It’s never too late to adapt and change and become better, right? So what are we all waiting for?
This world get’s colder and I no longer wonder that there’s snow in April…
Travelling for work sounds fancy – but this is the real-life part of it.
It’s 4 am – I’m freezing and beyond tired.
Sitting on a Canadian air plane with hot black tea, as I needed something warm, and a bag of pretzels in front of me.
Thoughts are shifting from the purpose of life to let me finally sleep and back.
This life is crazy.
The full moon is following us all the way from Toronto to Raleigh, it’s shining brightly and is bigger than last time.
Somehow the moon is always earthing me, bringing me down to what really counts.
Being alone here isn’t it. I miss my family and try to shift the thought from missing to being thankful that I am loved.
It will be a firework of kisses and hugs when I return. How lucky am I?
That’s the essence, the purest kind of life purposes, family hugs, wet toddler kisses, husband hugs that feel like safe haven, unity.
I’m almost 20 hours awake now and after so many hours of travelling the only important thought is about my two men, snuggled up home deeply sleeping in our bed.
This is the second time that I travel alone since our son is born. I miss him like crazy, his tiny little hand searching for me in the night to sleep, assured that he’s safe. His hugs so tight and so full of love around my neck.
That is all that matters, he, my husband, my family. I needs sometimes a full moon night all alone to remember what is known deep inside. We forget too offen because daily life occupies and stresses us too much.
All the small wonderful moments, nothing more is needed to be happy.
Being so far away is somehow scary, as a mom you not only start to feel a love beyond imagination, you also start to worry in a way you never thought about.
Many of the worries are like an instinct and naturally good, they serve you and don’t disturb. But there are also worries which my husband would call ridiculous. Moms “What ifs” like “what if he falls and I cannot hug him and kiss the pain away as I always do?”. Yes, that one is maybe ridiculous because I know that his dad can take care, I know that I cannot protect him his entire life, I know he will handle it without me, but was someone ever thinking about me?
I want to be there, I am not ready to let go, I feel the pain deeper than anything as he’s the most important part of me. Oh my, did I write that?
Am I now a ridiculous helicopter mom?
No, I’m not and I can tell you why.
Because I am sitting on a plane on the other of the globe, I left him alone with my husband and I know that this is more than fine. Rational I know all of it! I let him discover the world and am not overprotective, even if I would like to be.
But emotionally, mentally, this is the hardest part of motherhood, letting go.
I put the pretzels in my bag. I guess my suitcase will be full of tiny things for him because he likes them. Apart from that, it’s 4:30 am – who eats pretzels at this time?
Ok, it’s 10:30 pm over here but I have mentally not arrived in this time zone. I could sleep standing now.
We prepare for landing and the thing what I want most now is rush as fast as I can to the hotel, jump into the bed and fall asleep thinking of how safe and sound he sleeps next to my husband.
As long as you are working, the missing subsides a tiny bit…
Its 3 pm – four days later. Bright daylight and with short sleeves on the plane to Toronto. You can’t believe how good that feels. These past days were great, tired, new, exhausted, successful, and so much more. I worked more than on normal days but staying in a hotel and evenings in restaurants also meant I had less to do after work than on normal days at home. No cooking, washing, cleaning. Many pros and cons, at the end, the cons definitely are more because everything I see while travelling is only my memory and especially when I discover new areas I want to share these memories. I want to tell my husband “do you remember that humid warm evening where we went to the Angus Barn in Durham and had a delicious steak?”. I want to ask my son if he liked all those big trucks on the street which are much bigger than what we see at home.
I can’t. I can try to capture as much as I want on photographs but at the end of the day it will only be my memory.
There is still a long flight ahead of me and many thoughts to come and words to write but for now I just stare out of the window, let my eyes be blinded by the white clouds we fly through, and dream away so that my soul rests. I’m getting closer to home, the place where my heart beats faster and feels more at ease, surrounded by my family and hugged and kissed. Soon.
It’s 11pm and we just departed – that’s 5am in Germany already and means we will surely not arrive as planned.
First we were getting a one-hour delay due to bad weather conditions, which I personally love so much. The incoming plane wasn’t allowed to land on time because of heavy rain. Great! And I’m sitting at the airport and wonder if we are allowed to start once the plane is there or if these weather conditions influence our start as well. I already thought about a bumpy ride back.
But – because of late arrival – our plane got an outside parking position to be fast ready to go (instead of waiting for a free gate). Sounds good, right? Our plane also got covered stairs for us! They care that we are not getting wet on the way from the shuttle to the plane, wohoo. Another plus!
Did I say stairs? I’d rather become wet instead after what happened then. It took the ground staff in Toronto over an hour to get exactly these stairs DEtached. It sounds like a joke but that really happened.
Means we are now in total 3 hours behind and I hate it.
But why do I hate it?
I could list several reasons why. I’m tired and hungry, it will take three more hours until I’m finally back home, this week was already long enough, all these things are annoying.
But, what if all of this happened for a reason?
What if we would have ended up in a thunderstorm when departing on time, what if?
There are a million things in life where we won’t be able to find answers, to know why it happened exactly the way it does. But what we know is what is now. Now I am sitting on a plane. I am fine, food will come soon and then I can sleep. When I wake up I will be much closer to my loved ones. All is fine!
Trust and focus on the good and all is fine.
The end of the story are indeed hugs and kisses. A tired mom who plays for hours, trying to catch up on the missed time, lots of stories to tell and a warm feeling inside of me to be where I belong. Looking back you may even say that all these thoughts were not necessary, but no, they were. And they will always be, because they are me, all of this is me. Reflecting, thinking, dreaming, listening, hoping, discovering, and so much more is within these thoughts that I will never stop cherishing these full-moon nights, these lonely moments where you are grounded even in a plane across an ocean. This is life.
If you want to read more from me – just jump into my archive and see what post it guides you to. Life is about trust, maybe you pick exactly what you need at this time.
A retreat is not only a fancy wellness vacation with a mindful theme like “open your heart”, “find your passion”, “release your inner child”, or whatever you may think of.
A retreat means literally “an act of moving back or withdrawing”.
Just now, I am on my personal, very own, retreat in our bathroom. There were too many tantrums to take in anymore, our parenting as a unity failed fully today and dinner was…let’s better forget it.
As a result I went away from both men, the big one who’s watching football as if nothing happened at all (except of a furious crazy wife, but this seems not of any concern) and the little one who’s watching kids tv (although the furious crazy mom told him that TV today will not be even a question after his behaviour… “but daddy will turn it on for me” – guess he had a point).
So here I am, sitting with my back against the heater – end of April – because I’m tired and freezing.
Scrolling through Instagram won’t help to feel better, neither does any other social media. What helps is to write it all down.
Get it out of my brain, release the tension, cry, let go, embrace this failure of today and accept that days like today are nothing to be ashamed of. Although I indeed was looking left and right earlier on the playground, when my son was the only one shrieking as if I cut off his arm, just because I asked him to stay out of the construction zone (clearly marked as such).
Retreat!
I retreat from being a mom and a wife, for a little while only of course. I retreat to survive this day.
I started into the day with an hour of Yoga, calm and breathing in and out like a champ. All this relaxation and serenity vanished, minute by minute, hour by hour, and left me exhausted on the bathroom floor.
Can you believe that this time spent alone, me and the heater, is a relieve? I am slowly back to the deep breathing, my mind focused and my body relaxes into the heat. A steam bath or sauna would be extraordinary, but for now the bathroom floor is doing a great job.
I still wear my yoga mala and touching the beads clears my mind.
I am fine!
I am myself!
I am allowed to feel all these feelings!
I am not a bad mom nor a bad wife!
I am human!
I am a woman!
I am who I am and all is fine.
My son will surely not learn his lesson today – he was behaving like a little devil and got the TV at the end of the day…
Of course this is not a shining moment in child’s education but it won’t influence his future irrevocable.
My husband won’t stop loving me because we disagreed almost the whole afternoon and evening. He thinks anyway that I’m not normal, so he got a little proof (this is what he thinks today has been, a proof for my insanity) and will not understand that he wasn’t a great support today. But there will be tomorrow morning, when he takes our son to the kindergarten. There will be millions of moments where he is the perfect dad and the perfect husband.
Just one nerve wrecking day will not destroy what we have, the family we are. It won’t harm the love we three have for one another because this love is stronger than anything!
But yes, it surely destroyed my mood and that’s not ok, but it happens. It happens everywhere and nobody is always happy, right?
Just now I am thinking what to do to get some food into my retreat hideaway. I know, as soon as I open the door my son will come to me. I am still mad and I still want my retreat, preferably with the rest of my salad wrap (which I left angry on the dinner table) or some dessert like a ton of ice cream.
A hot shower and cuddling up in front of TV would be a great end of my retreat, unfortunately only in my dreams.
It’s already late and I guess as the mom I have to chase my son to brush his teeth, change into his pjs and bring him to bed, right?
I just can hope that this will happen smoothly without another tantrum.
Cross your fingers please, if he is tired (what I would be after so many anger attacks) I may watch some TV, which means a few minutes, before I doze away fully dressed…
But in the end, all is fine!
Who can relate? Tell me in the comments that I am not the only crazy furious mom and wife, please!!!
This year started with so many hopes and dreams… And all of a sudden we reached the end of this year.
Two weeks until Christmas literally means that I would start now to run in circles. This would be the time to go to malls, into the city, do the Christmas shopping. But instead, instead I sit here and type patiently. A hot steaming tea on my left side, part of a chocolate Santa on the right side. My husband went outside with our son, it’s just me and my thoughts.
Two weeks – normally that sounds short and like not enough time left, but this year nothing is normal. If you ask people to go two weeks into quarantine it sounds for them like a lifetime.
What happened this year seems like a massive slow down
A slow down with different names. Call it lockdown, partly lock down, quarantine or light lockdown. In the end all had the very same effect, they slowed down our life. And sure, you can start now to complain. It took the economy down, many people struggle, that is correct. What is also correct is that complaining will not change that. I don’t want to focus on the bad and rather focus on the positive. There are lots of positive effects all this had. You need to open your eyes and your mind and I am sure you will start to see them.
This has nothing to do with a pandemic induced slowing down but it may help anyone to see what you can do to slow down in a healthy way.
Going from 100 to 0 is by far not an easy task and I can tell you from my own experience that it needs strengths. Sounds strange, right. Many people think as soon as you slow down you are completely relaxed. It would be nice but unfortunately it is not like that.
Slowing down is a process of learning.
Many people cannot let go of their routine, of their “how things should be” and doing nothing is harder than some can imagine. It’s also for a reason that many are falling into a depression once they are retired, life was busy and all of sudden there seems to be nothing. And this void needs to be filled, but how. Adjusting to a slower lifestyle takes time and exercise as everything else in life. Finding out what you need, what you want, what are the things that make you happy, all of this is new.
And one other thing just before I start to get comments on how privileged I am. Yes, I agree and I am fully aware of that. I know that my position here is not one which has been affected and shattered my life, but many who are able to sit down and read this blog are in a similar position, right. I don’t deny all the tragedies, but I barely believe that people who are affected beyond imagination will sit peacefully in front of a web device and read my words.
So, what are the positive effects?
Focussing on one self is something fully positive. Do you know who you are? Who are you besides your profession, besides your role as partner, parent, sibling, or whatever it is. Who are YOU? What makes YOU happy?
We all focus lots on what others expect from us, how we should be in this life. I think the first step is learning to let go of these expectations and focussing on your own self.
Once this is accomplished as first step you may surrender into the slow pace of your life and find out what you want. Mindfulness and gratefulness are two big words, and they are so important to find your way. See what you achieved already, be thankfully for all the opportunities you had in your life so far. Instead of running and starting something new take care of yourself. Self-Care is often so underestimated although it is definitely very important. Only if you are properly taken care of you will have the strength, the power, the endurance to start something new.
I’m at the verge of going into another stage and although I think that my prior job has been purposeful I am thirsty for something with even more depth.
These times are times where we all have more time than we ever thought to focus on where we are, what we want and how we want to move forward. The pandemic is a huge change in everyones life, why don’t we start to embrace the possibilities instead of focussing on the restrictions?
A mind can never be restricted, which is good and dangerous at the same time.
I would like to hear all the positive things that happened to you, what did you learn, what has been accomplished, what makes you happy?
For me, I can truly say we have such an exclusive family time – seeing our son growing is a gift and we can focus better as we don’t hurry from here to there. Our eating behaviour changed for the good. We always loved home cooked meals, but with less shopping and more planning it turned into a more local and sustainable direction. Neighbours are supporting each other more than before. We discover the nature around us with different eyes. We have time to read, to be creative, to do what we love together.
Everything in life has two sides – focus on the good! And of course stay healthy. Namaste
Why are conspiracy people so famous – help me understand
This pandemic brought up what I thought is long behind us. People who start to influence masses with their strange theories.
I can tell you upfront, I’m a realistic person, I don’t believe in conspiracy which doesn’t mean automatically that I trust 100% all systems in charge and walk blindfolded, surely not.
But between a healthy mistrust and a conspiracy are lightyears of fairytale authors.
How can it be that someone tells you we will all be chipped and you run after that person? As soon as we use smartphones, smartwatches, the internet, even old-fashioned land line phones, we can be tracked, we can be spied on…but seriously, how important are you that you believe your way to work and back would be of the utmost importance to any secret service?
We have profile picture on our social media profiles, we send holiday pictures over servers, we play games, do online banking and have chip cards for healthcare and bonus systems and the local pizza delivery – why you you think you need to get another “chip”, what for?
Denying a pandemic is also a very interesting part of all these conspiracy theories.
It’s a calculation, simple like that, to give a virus which spreads quickly the status pandemic. The probability of severe cases, actual severe cases, actual total cases, incubation time, spread and there we are, pandemic due to an unknown virus spreading really fast across the world.
Scientist love to do all these calculations and research. An unknown virus is something which isn’t happening very often (like every other week) and especially not with this speed. And one principle of science and research is “try and error” because with something totally unknown you have no other chance.
That means YES, they make mistakes, because that’s the only way to learn.
Each try can give a result which is great or not. With each patient something is learnt and one day they will know how this virus works, mutates, attacks, and unfortunately sometimes a minimal risk of the unknown will remain. That’s life, nature and human capability.
So everyone who criticises the scientists and all the doctors working with Covid19 right now, do you want to be in their position? Do you want to explain what triage means to the relatives of severe cases?
Politics – please help me, that’s a very wide field and I don’t even want to start with right wing, left wing, alternative, extreme, whatever.
Just a general statement – which politician could have the aim to ruin his country by stopping everything if there would be any other choice?
Are you seriously believing that countries want to stop their production, their exports, their trading, their alliances?
Seriously – what do these people think?
I just followed a few of the German conspiracy people on the platform “telegram” because that’s the “only uncensored platform” in the whole wide web, according to them. What I read there is beyond imagination. Not only that they ask people to break rules wherever possible and stand up for their rights – they talk about a German dictatorship, about supply chains outside of the web because all will be monitored, about forced mass vaccinations…they share wildly links to websites nobody ever heard of, not reviewed of course. Mass instead of class – scare instead of educate – call to action against the government, call to action against recommendations.
I honestly had to delete this app because you feel sick after a couple of days of these awful “news”. The people who call it dictatorship in Germany never ever lived in a dictatorship!
Who ever talked about a forced mass vaccination??? Nobody?
What had the whole election in the US to do with the German lockdown? Why are there links against the rescue of immigrants shared? Why do they use typical sentences which specially germans know from the darkest German history under Hitler?
Why are all of a sudden all the former celebrities, who weren’t in the news since felt ages, the leaders of this weird conspiracy clan?
You have the feeling as if you are watching the conversations between psychiatry patients from the schizophrenic department but the dangerous part is that all of them are spreading their news and people take it seriously, a quite large amount of people…
This says a lot about our society – this is scarier than the virus itself.
It’s their truth – you cannot convince them because they are so deep inside their spiderweb similar network that even if they would start to doubt the next would tell them we want to make them doubt with telling lies.
Psychologically a very interesting topic, but this is the job of others, not mine.
I just sit and stare and wonder how it can happen – how can someone drift in such a weird direction even though their families and friends give their best to show them all the lies he/she follows?
Many seem to be lost and I don’t judge this. These times are harder than we would have ever imagined. These times influence all of us.
I doubt, I agree, I follow, I overthink, I stay quiet, I speak up, I hide, I go out before I go crazy at home – all of this is Corona.
But what I don’t do, I don’t lose the realistic view, I don’t assume, I don’t follow blindly, I don’t blame, because who’s to blame? The virus is here (manmade or not, it doesn’t matter). Most important is to get the curve down as we did in March/April. It’s not helpful to gather for demonstrations, it’s not helpful to call for action against the use of masks, it is surely not helpful to use your own children as an instrument against the rules and I write this because it just happened yesterday.
An 11-year old girl on stage of a conspiracy demonstration. She states that she had to celebrate her birthday five times to have all guests at home not to exceed the number of allowed persons per meeting. She has to celebrate her birthday with her friends quietly as they were too many children and scared that neighbours may call the police. She had to hide like ANNE FRANK! (Is this seriously what an 11-year old girl thinks? The mom standing proud next to her and now I assume although I know I shouldn’t but the notes in the girl’s hand were obviously tweaked by her mother).
The next, a 13-year old is attacking the chancellor Merkel with “You are not even a mother or a grandmother, how dare you to tell us that we should wear masks in school? …. my friends are “deforming” me when I don’t wear one” – best example, defame is what she should have said, but she has no idea of what she is saying there!
What if Merkel wanted children but for whatever reason wasn’t able to conceive? Is this how you attack politicians who struggle, who try to make it right? Of course nobody will ever reach the whole population, but personal attacks won’t help in this Covid pandemic.
Parents should protect their children, I agree on that, and that doesn’t mean I use them when I have no other arguments anymore.
Thanks if you read so far – I hope you stay safe and healthy!
As a side note – this is my blog and if there will be comments pro conspiracy or rude I will delete them – sorry, not sorry!
Can someone explain to me why rents are increasing as if there’s no tomorrow?
I mean, honestly, I understand fully that a landlord is not giving away his house/ flat for free and wants to earn some money with it. Some money, enough money to be able to maintain everything plus money on top for their own, I got this. What I am not getting anymore is why people who rent are seen as a luxury income. Hey, and I’m not writing about deluxe apartments or big mansions, I’m writing about normal flats, houses for families.
You can argue now that it is my very own fault if I decide to live in Munich and yes, you are partly right with it. Partly because I accept that everything is a bit more expensive here than in a small countryside city, but what I do not accept is that you pay a fortune for nothing.
I am checking offers since a couple of years now and the market is truly insane. People offer for instance a house which is in the state of the 1980’s, the bathroom is a disaster, kitchen not available (means you have to bring your own), carpets everywhere also from the 1980’s, the garden not maintained at all. The size is 110 square metres and they ask for either a monthly rent of 2300 Euro (without gas and water) or if you want to buy the price is 980.000 Euro.
If only I could tell you that this is a joke, but they are indeed serious.
What should a family earn in order to have a nice family home to stay in?
As a family we are willing to pay entry for the zoo, we love to go and eat outside, grab ice-cream on the way to the playground, buy local and support smaller shops in our area, we love the “hood” we are living in. But all of this would be impossible when we move to a bigger place because of these ridiculous prices.
Our current living situation is tiny, our place is small but we live where we want to live. Of course we wouldn’t mind to have more place and a garden, not at all, but not if we have to cut our visits to the museum, eating out or summer vacations.
Are cities only made for the rich?
Are only the top managers allowed to live here? Is it the newly rich clients you are looking for to spend their money here? A city will lose its spirit like this and a city will not have any more stories to tell.
Apart from ‘normal’ families, has anyone ever thought about the elder people? A 82-year old widow who would love to stay in the flat where her husband died but cannot afford it anymore. A 90-year old man who is half blind but knows all the ways he needs for his daily life by heart. A couple married for 60 years and rooted exactly where they live. There is a saying that you cannot plug a tree out of the soil and plant it somewhere else, the same counts for many of the elder. It breaks my heart if I see them shattered because they don’t know where their life will go on. I even forget about all the young ones (us included) because we could make it anywhere, still.
Munich has a history, like every other city, there are biographies of people who lived here and brought something with them. There are statues all over the city and every single one of them tells a story. We will not write further history like this. A city lives through the personalities and if these are all forced to move outside the city spirit will slowly disappear.
Every even little personality surely was not rich and famous by the time they left their footprint in the heart of this city. Some where, some were not, it has always been a good mixture and that is how it should be.
Greedy is the new normal especially when it comes to living spaces within a city. Who has the newest building, who has the best view, who is in the most expensive area,… Shouldn’t it be: who can help neighbours when needed, who can support the homeless, who smiles at strangers because life is a wonderful thing?
Instead of greed let happiness rule because it doubles if you share – at the end of the day that counts more than the number on your bank account, does it not?
Day 1 – What kind of food are you most grateful for?
So many to be honest but if you ask me to break it down to one then (as a German) I would say dark bread. Fresh still warm dark bread with just butter is so simple yet delicious.
Day 2 – Who in your life are you grateful for?
My family and that includes literally all of them – every single one has a Special place in my heart and taught me something, teaches me something, makes me feel loved and enough the way I am – they Show me my best and my worst sides and with them I can be just me.
Day 3 – What recent moment are you grateful for?
These mornings when the first I see when opening my eyes is the smile on my son’s face.
Day 4 – Which skill are you grateful for?
Being empathic is one which is I guess more worth than being a good writer or cook. Showing emotions, listening to others, feeling their pain up to a certain level makes life more meaningful. But of course, I do not want to miss a good homemade lunch as well 🙂
Day 5 – What about your body are you especially grateful for?
Being alive and healthy – if you are alive your body is doing a tremendous job, I try to treat my body well and of course there are pizza-days and chocolate but in general I see it as my duty to treat my Body as my temple, because without it I would not be here.
Day 6 – What technology are you grateful for?
The world wide web – this is amazing how we can connect across the globe and if we use it mindfully the Internet is one of the greatest technologies ever.
Day 7 – What smell are you grateful for?
The scent of my new-born son. The most wonderful smell on earth.
Day 8 – What sights are you thankful for?
Right now, in a corona quarantine situation all sights I have ever seen. Memories of former vacations are so precious.
Day 9 – What books are you grateful for?
My all-time favourite because it opened my eyes during a difficult time is “Eat, pray, love” from Elizabeth Gilbert. Each time I touch it I still find something new and valuable for me.
The traditions I grew up with and am now able to show to my son, like Christmas cookie baking, painting Easter eggs, simple things which are lovely memories of my childhood for me and I hope my son can one day say the same.
Day 11 – What colours are you grateful for?
All available colours – without all of them life would be dark and sad.
Day 12 – Be grateful for your senses. Name what makes you grateful for each.
Touch / Feeling is the most important, without I would not know how soft baby skin is.
Sight to discover the beauty of this planet.
Hearing – the birds singing in the morning is music to wake up to.
Taste and smell are both amazing – the smell of freshly cut grass gives me a full summer feeling and the taste of so many things would be a real lack in life. Salty water, snowflakes in winter, the orange peel with his bitter-sweet taste.
Balance is a great sense in life and a great reminder of this question is that I need to focus more on balance in my life.
Body awareness is the last I guess and should be one of the first to be grateful for. Feeling good in your own body is the first step to a healthy self-acceptance.
Day 13 – What season are you grateful for and why?
Summer / late summer is my favourite season. These long evenings and nights where all seem to be possible. I cannot stand the cold even though I love some snowy days, but summer is the right feel-good temperature for me.
Day 14 – What challenge did you overcome?
There were some challenges and obstacles in life as for everyone – did I overcome them? Maybe. I think most I took as lessons learned not to step into them unprepared if they show up the next time. Life is a flow and maybe some parts of them swim next to me occasionally but most of the days I keep them behind me and remember how to treat them if they speed up.
Day 15 – What sound are you grateful for?
My son’s heartbeat – the sweetest sound I heard before I even knew he is a boy.
Day 16 – What places you are grateful for?
All the places I travelled so far – it is amazing to discover the world and every single place has left an imprint on my life.
Day 17 – What in nature are you grateful for?
What in nature am I not grateful for?
Day 18 – What invention are you grateful for?
Technology – especially now during this pandemic we can be incredibly grateful to stay in contact with family and friends on a distance.
Day 19 – What knowledge are you grateful for?
Everything has its time – even though I would love to stop the time sometimes to stay longer in wonderful moments, this knowledge is immensely helpful in times where I don’t feel well, as this will pass too.
Day 20 – What role model that you had are you grateful for?
My parents – and they still are!
Day 21 – What are you grateful for TODAY?
The laughter of my son and my husband in the background while I am typing here.
Day 22 – What attribute of yourself are you grateful for?
Being able to be weak and surrender to what is, nobody can be strong all the time.
Day 23 – What change are you grateful for?
The change which came with motherhood, being a mom is wonderful.
Day 24 – What part of the day are you grateful for?
I love the night when everything is still, but I also like long summer evenings.
Day 25 – Which character trait of yourself are you grateful for?
Being authentic is I guess the most important. You may not be friends with everyone but at the end of the day I stay true to myself.
Day 26 – What voyage are you grateful for?
Oh so many, our Tuscany trip when I was pregnant, our Cyprus trip which was the first vacation together, the first family holiday when our son saw the sea for the very first time, the clear blue water of the Caribbean on the Turks and Caicos Islands, I could start to list all now.
Wow, we made it already to week 10 of this crazy corona quarantine and more than 3 weeks now additionally with a fasting husband at home.
If you ask me how I feel – a mixture of insanity, being tired, running out of ideas for our son, trying to move forward with my yoga teacher training, keeping the mood bearable, when will this be over???
As I know my husband since 2011 we are I guess one of the lucky couples who knew each other already well enough to “survive” a lock-down and a quarantine with no real end in sight (why has this virus to be so greedy – it’s enough little covid, time for you to disappear, please!).
As parents we were put into the situation to be…yeah, to be parents still, right? I need to admit that we are currently in the very fortunate situation to be at home, so no worry about how to get work done while having to take care of our son, this helps immensely and I remember my home office days with him around me too – if you are able to complete 50% of your tasks with your child at home then kudos (it’s like reaching level 200 in Super Mario I guess). I can’t say thanks often enough for platforms like pinterest to give us idea 196 for DIY projects with a 4 year old but also need to mention one book which gave us lots of inspiration and great times already.
Recommended so much (and no cooperation or link where I earn something) – I bought it just because I discovered Laura Brand on Instagram and her ideas are indeed magical!
I’m not lying – there are days where I want to hide under the blanket the whole day watching nonsense on Netflix uninterrupted because I cannot face this world anymore. But then a little hand reaches out to me and I know I cannot. These times are scary and uncertain but my fear is nothing to teach my son – his childhood lays on us and we are the ones to build memories for him. I want him to remember this as a very intense family time, a time we spent happily together, walking through the forest, discovering snails, searching for flat stones to draw on at home. This is our destiny, isn’t it? So we have to make the best out of it!
And writing about destiny – today is day 71 of our quarantine and tonight is the night of destiny in Ramadan. My husband told me last night and shame on me, he tells me each year the meaning but I often forget the whole story behind. As a short explanation:
Allah the Almighty states in the Holy Koran: “Surely, we sent it [the Koran] on the Night of Destiny. And what should make thee know what the Night of Destiny is? The Night of Destiny is better than a thousand months. Therein descend angels and the Spirit by the command of their Lord with their Lord’s decree concerning everything. Peace — so will it be even at the rising of the dawn.” (Surah al-Qadr, Ch 97: V 1-6)
So tonight will be the night of great blessings where god (Allah the Almighty) showers his mercy upon faithful believers. In the Koran it’s said the revelation of the Koran began on this very night. Especially in its last ten days there has been the a showering of blessings and mercy in the month of Ramadan.
If you want to read more in depths you can visit this site:
When you know my blog you know that my husband is muslim whereas I am not – we live very well with these different beliefs but of course we discuss lots. But what we also do, and that’s I guess is the most important, we support each other in what we do. So when he is fasting during the month of Ramadan I adapt (not always to his mood 🙂 but to the schedule) and I like some of the rituals. We should spend a peaceful night tonight and there’s nothing wrong with that. Maybe there are angles, a spirit, a higher force – I am not the one who judges that. Especially when you raise a child together you need to treat each other with full respect and that’s what we do.
As yogi I believe more in destiny in general – not linked to a certain religion. There surely are shifts and I very often use the sentence “it was meant to be” and that’s what I belive in. The choices we make are made for reasons and they guide us to where we should be. If it turned out to be a direction we don’t feel fine in then we take it as a lesson learned and move on.
This is also the way from my perspective to treat this quarantine. Of course I made plans in the beginning (10 weeks ago), we can do so many great things as a family together. And of course this didn’t work out. There were days where I was struggling so so much with anxiety and panic, there were days where our mood was only enough to stare at the TV in disbelief of what’s going on, there were days where we stayed in our PJs from dusk till dawn and that’s OK. If it already taught me one thing than to let go. Letting go of trying to be strong when I feel weak – both are vaild and both are essential in life. Only when you know how it feels to be weak you can be strong.
Tell me, how do you experience this quarantine? I’d love to hear stories from around the globe because one thing is for sure:
A whole new year lays ahead of us and I’m excited.
Excited and positive, anxious and scared.
Life is unpredictable which makes it interesting but scary at the same.
As a perfectionist you are going to hate it not to know what comes next but the truth is, we will never know what comes next. Neither planning nor wishing will bring us to the point that a life is going as smoothly as we would like.
I just need to look around our home and since we have a child it looks sometimes as if a bomb of Lego and toy animals exploded.
The wonderful part of these “explosions” is that there is life! I admit that I would sometimes which for this old home where you don’t have to clean 24/7 without an end in sight, the times where I just sat down on the couch with a book because nothing else needed to be done. Nowadays there is no “nothing else needs to be done”. This wishing back the old days are only short moments because reality quickly sets in and I’m so grateful for this reality.
Life is far far far away from perfect and this imperfection is so lovely. We are the happiest when we three are together (my son, my husband and I) because indeed, that’s life, that’s reality, that’s all to wish for.
The perfectionist in me is almost crying because I have no idea how this year will go along but what I know is that we can manage all as long as we are a family and love each other like we do.
Is it wisdom that comes with age? I don’t know. Is it what you learn through motherhood? Maybe.
I cannot tell you when exactly this thinking was setting in for me-The more I think about life and what matters most the more I realize that there are profound things like love, trust, emotions, feeling grounded, mindfulness, thankfulness for what is, appreciation of what we have. These are what matters most.
The NOW of our life.
Tomorrow can be anything but if we manage to be happy now we reached a lot!
I’m not a spiritual teacher nor a motivation guide but the more I read and the more I do some research the more I see that many seem to seek happiness and fulfillment.
Our life has far too many choices to reach this stage and we get lost. We lose focus due to the amount of possibilities we have.
Nobody can have it all! I think this is the first and most important step towards an inner satisfaction of what is.
We need to stop ourselves along the way, take a step back, and start to sort. What are our personal priorities, what makes us really happy.
Social media are great, if used properly, and at the same time our personal nightmare, if used as a comparator (in both directions).
As long as we are realistic enough to know that we never ever see the whole picture on social media the usage may be utterly inspiring, we can learn lots and get input. There are some influencers out there who are really showing lots, their raw authentic self, but careful, for the majority we will never grasp the full picture and this is completely OK. We ourselves would also not expose our most vulnerable moments or dark sides to strangers. Just be sure that everyone has these sides (just not visible). The trick is to get inspired by the exposed good stories but don’t feel less worth because of our own failures.
The same goes for news – I barely read them nowadays because I feel more and more depressed, it seems as if there is no peace on earth at all but that’s wrong. Nobody will write a headline about a country at peace. We are responsible to filter all of this for ourselves because no news agency and no influencer and no person besides you is able to see what you need or what you can take at this moment.
You are the first responsibility for yourself and afterwards you decide what you watch, listen to, hear, read, where you step in, help, work, etc. This sounds selfish but it isn’t. Only if you feel at ease with yourself you will be capable of taking the rest.
My husband’s country is in a war state since we met. It won’t help if we start to site here each day and cry and complain and talk about how blessed we are to live here and what an injustice it is that his family is there and and and – it simply won’t help! We need to make sure that we are fine, we are parents, we have a responsibility. And when we are fine we can work, we can try to support, we can be the realistic part on the outside as we are not within, we can be the uplifting part when things go wrong again and try to soothe, we can only give our best in these moments. It is hard but that’s life – unfortunately – we cannot change the world but we can change our approach to our “small” circle in this world and try to be good examples. If everyone would be the best version of him or herself we would make a step in the right direction.
And at teh end of the day my biggest mantra for this year will be nobody is perfect and new ways are always possible – these sentences from a perfectionist are a big step.
My lessons learned from the past years. They may be an inspiration or just a small hint in which direction to think.
Being grateful for what we have and never taking anything for granted is one of the biggest epiphanies ever.
Living in a country without knowing war is not my achievement, it was simply luck of being born here at that time. Thanks!
Having met my husband was such a coincidence, this could never have been planned. Thanks!
Having a really full fridge is a blessing. Thanks!
You could go on like this but you know what, waking up each morning, feeling my heart beating should be reasonenough to be grateful for this life.
A whole new year…lays in front of us.
Let’s focus on the good.
Let’s try to ease the pain.
Let’s help where we can.
Let’s do what we can to make this a better place for all of us.
This question popped up just this morning when I opened Instagram.
I must confess, I like Instagram and I often go in and check and find inspiration and ideas how to live more sustainable, I see great campaigns against many injustices on this planet, I follow people I adore like Deepak Chopra or Ram Dass and this is great.
But what I also see is that there are thousands of women who call themselves influencer, mom blogger, whatever name you want to give them, who expose their whole families, grandparents and neighbors of neighbors to the world wide web. They literally “sell” their life and feel like kind of a celebrity.
I mean, seriously, I show my home, my sacred place and start to tag everything from the lamp on the ceiling to the rug on the floor, I give away shopping codes and link web pages while hoping that people love me and follow my life and at the end of the day BUY.
This kind of commercializing products is not only weird, it’s also going into a direction where being unique seems to be outdated.
Every mom blogger account has the same brands (at least for what I can see in Germany), the wear the same jewelry, call themselves even designer because they put their name on products they designed? To be a designer for you normally need to attend classes in a design school, university, whatever, but hey, this is the easy way, right? They eat the same, the drink the same tea, they own the same coffee machines in their stylish mainly white colored new built homes and their kids have the same toys and clothes and prams. All for the price of inviting people into their life on a daily basis, day in and day out, from morning to bedtime routine, being healthy or not feeling fine.
I’m honest and especially the ones who build up their life like this will not agree on it, but filling the washing machine with the camera in my hand or making a time-lapse of how I clean the kitchen is NOT real life and is far away from what we should do with our time.
As wonderful as all these technologies are, as careful they need to be handled. What do we teach our children when we document every step we take, inside and outside? What do we teach them if mommy is putting on her make up each day in front of the phone while she’s talking to the phone instead of talking to her child?
Did you ever check your screen time per day? I know that it hits you once you start to focus on it, at least it hit me when I checked it, because this screen time means that you spent the time with a phone in your hand instead of being in the real NOW.
Eckhart Tolle wrote this wonderful book “the power of NOW” and I can recommend this to everyone – we are all right now here and we should spend our time wisely.
If it’s your job and your income to advertise and to sell, that’s great, but do it need the 24/7 exposure to the whole world? Isn’t it enough to create good selling content and pictures and tutorials?
I may never understand but wanted to share as I feel we are heading to a time where personal contact starts to be rare and real life exists only in form of a hashtag.
Go out, meet friends, take your children to the playground and just sit there, watching the leaves dancing in the wind with the sound of children laughing and playing, that’s real life, at least for me.
There is no correct answer to this question! But there are many examples of where we indeed expect too much or have wrong expectations.
Life is not a fairy tale and even if many are dreaming of a big love story lots of them are disappointed in the end.
The question is why.
You meet the person you fall in love with and luckily this person falls in love with you as well.
What else can we wish for?
But there it starts – we start to expect.
The romance should stay a lifetime.
I want to be treated as a princess.
The butterflies should always be there.
That won’t happen!
Do you know that you are one of the luckiest persons on earth if you fall in love and you are loved back?
So many long for this experience and will never know how it feels like!
Why do we start to destroy this love by expecting it to be like this or like that?
Our love is unique as our fingerprint and once we feel our heart beating in the same rhythm as the heart of our loved one nothing will be like it was before.
This pure luck will change us forever!
Change – yes, we do change! But we don’t change to be part of a movie romance story with a happily ever after, where everything falls into place like we wish and smells like roses and candy.
We change as we start to balance between who we are, who we are as a couple, where we want to go (alone and as a couple). There are so many questions and some of them are asked while some are considered answered already because we love each other, don’t we?
Here the first wrong expectations start to set in.
I love but how strong is this love?
Am I able to go against anything if I would have to; to save it or not?
Do I know everything about my partner or do I guess?
Just because I want to spent the rest of my life with this person and have children doesn’t mean my partner wants the same. Or maybe he wants the same but not within the same time I wish for.
Guessing is feeding my wrong expectations.
Of course “we” want to marry – that’s what couples do. Can you answer for your partner? He may have no idea that you think this way and will never ask you because he’s happy just like it is.
Love is happening. That’s correct. So why don’t we take it like it is and instead put this precious love into a time-schedule? And what would be the time-schedule?
If you feel that the love you feel is not making me happy – that’s hard but that happens because of different expectations.
The hardest is to let go!
Once you have the strength to let go and acknowledge that this love is wonderful and all you wished for, but that it wasn’t meant to be for a lifetime; only then you are able to make peace with yourself and with the person who wasn’t fulfilling what you wished for.
It’s not the task of somebody else to fulfill your desires. You are responsible to live the life you want to live. So don’t make the mistake to attach your “happy” to a person. Instead be happy together with that person as long as it lasts!
Life is never black or white. We are so unique and have millions of different thoughts and wishes and hopes; there is no right or wrong when love sets in.
Be thankful!
Be thankful for this fast beating heart and the butterflies in your stomach.
Be thankful for the memories you have, for this warm feeling in your heart when you remember how love feels.
Be thankful for the time, for the emotions, for the heartache.
Be thankful for raw pure moments of total bliss.
Be thankful for a heart wide open, letting love flow as if there’s no tomorrow.
Also be thankful for the heartache, for the grief and tears when a love ended.
Only the one who loves deeply will understand what love is.
You know what love is and you are able to love, that’s a gift.
Every love has its uniqueness – if you loved once it doesn’t mean that you will experience the same again.
I can assure you that it won’t be the same. Not because I’m a love expert but because it can never be the same.
You are a different person and the person you love is either a different one or a different person like you due to experiences made before.
I’m not talking about a certain kind of love. Even if we distinguish between the love for a partner, the love for family, the love for a child or the love for friends – they all will never be the same.
Be even more thankful when you live with your love and tell them! Go ahead and tell them how happy you are to be around them, how love is surrounding you.
Happiness in first place is always something inside of you! It can take a million people who love you, they won’t make you happy if you are not able to accept this love in your life.
I wish you a life full of love, a heart warm and happy and with lots of memories and a stomach full of butterflies. But always remember, you are the first person you need to love truly before anyone else has a chance and don’t expect them to love you in a certain way. Take them as they are and be happy!
Nobody will tell you to take care of yourself! Your life – your responsibility
Why being an egoist isn’t always bad
We are growing up learning to take care of one another and to share, which in general is great, but what nobody is telling us along the way is that we will face times where nobody will take care of you.
We should not act egoistic, being an egoist is bad – we are bad if we are an egoist. While I partly agree, because I’d love to see non-egoists everywhere, I partly disagree quite strong.
To put myself behind is something which is valuable in many ways, if I stand up for elder persons and offer them my seat for instance. I can start and collect many examples why it’s good to think about others. The main problem is that it will not work out 100% because nobody is perfect and social and caring like I would like them to be.
To be a caring person is wonderful as long as it’s not affecting my own sanity and here the egoist has to step in.
Only if I take care about myself, if I give myself enough time to rest, to recover, to grow, to meditate, to move, to think, to whatever makes you feel good – only then I have the strength to be there when others need me. Center yourself exactly where you are!
We are often truly exchangeable – which is not nice but sadly the reality.
If I just think about work-life, be it my own or everyone else’s, every single one of us can be exchanged within the blink of an eye. The world isn’t stopping just because I’m not there anymore. Even if many think that they are very important especially in their professional life, I can assure you, YOU ARE NOT!
A waitress is kicked out and the next is starting right away, of course that can work, you think if you are the vice president of a large traditional family business and nobody can replace you? From whom did you take over? There will always be someone coming after and that’s life, nothing is permanent.
Knowing this and knowing that I can only be the best version of myself if I take care of myself taught me to step back if I need to. I worked through many “just a small” colds instead of going on sick leave and recover properly before being back at work. NOBODY will say thanks for that and that’s good because only then you learn what’s important.
No work is more important than my health. Only if I’m healthy I can work.
So here we are – if I answer the phone with a croaky voice being obviously not healthy not many will ask you to go to the doctor and stay in bed. Many will ask you with the pity in their voices if you don’t feel fine but will switch in the next second to tasks that need to be done.
Be an egoist and RECOVER properly, long-term this is the only possibility to stay healthy and maybe to reach the change you want to see in this society.
What about invisible problems? A croaky voice, ok, but if you have mental illnesses it’s not even visible. You will tell me now that you are happy about that fact but that’s wrong.
I would love to invent something like a face turning pink-striped when having mental health issues not to put the spotlight on that person but to raise awareness of how many people are affected. This taboo needs to be broken and people should be treated properly as if they have a broken leg. It may take longer, yes, but it’s as important as any other illness to be cured!
I seriously don’t want to stamp persons as sick but I am sure that many are not asking for help or are going to get help themselves because this stamp “crazy” is still so active in our society. If you are not visibly ill then what? You have a day where you don’t feel fine, that’s normal. If it’s more than one day, then pull yourself together, it’s easy like that, isn’t it?
No, it isn’t and everyone who thinks it is has luckily never experienced mental health issues!
So please, don’t be shy, don’t be ashamed, don’t feel ‘not normal’ or crazy – there is help out there and please reach for it!
There is slowly a re-thinking on it’s way in our society but it needs people to go out and to show their pink-striped faces, people to say “Yes, I have problems”, people to assure that it is nothing to be afraid of! I promise you, if we really would put stripes in our faces the ones without would even be in the minority.
That’s your starting point – being aware of where you are right now is the most important to start moving.
If you want to go into the Yoga tree you need to make sure you know the floor you are standing on. Is it uneven, do you stumble, are there stones, is it possible to slip? Only when you know where you stand you can lift up one leg and still stand steady.
The very same counts for everything in your life – only when we are fully aware of the NOW we are confident to step forward.
Center yourself, listen, feel, breathe – all that you are right now is important. This brings you not only mindfully into the present, it grounds you and makes you completely aware of what you need right now.
If I know where I am I can start going without being afraid to get lost – I will find my way back if needed. But if I’m lost I may not find what I’m looking for because I have no idea where to head to. This may be fine, we all know that often out of these lost times something great emerges. BUT to grasp the greatness that approaches I need to see it. Most probably I won’t realize what’s in front of me when I am not centered and grounded.
When we want to drive somewhere with our car we need to make sure each time that we have fuel and that we have the keys to ignite the engine – without we won’t go anywhere.
When we wake up in the morning we need to ignite our life flame. What are we burning for, do we have enough energy (fuel) for what we want to reach? These questions are important to stay sane.
In my lowest low period I may not start to move mountains but I may be creative and work in silence. On my highest high I may be overflowing with energy and may not bundle it to quiet my mind for something that needs lots of concentration but I may be able to physically work on something, flow through a powerful day or lift other up in being full of positivity.
We have all in us, from the lowest low to the highest high and so many stages in between that we need to adjust.
If we try to go against the nature of our being we will long-term ruin ourselves. That’s why it’s important to check on ourselves and even if our day starts powerful we may slip into a low throughout the day, then take a moment and re-adjust.
The power of mindfulness is so so so damn important if we want to stay healthy and sane! We are workers and doers, we are mothers and fathers, wives and husbands, cleaners and cooks, drivers and guides. We are so much and nobody will tell you to take a minute and listen into yourself while doing all those tasks day in and day out.
We are responsible to be mindful with our life, with our body and soul. We need to listen and accept, the accepting part is often the hardest. We listen, and we know it’s time to stop. But we often ignore this inner voice and risk our well-being instead of adjusting to what we are right here and right now.
Self-care! At the end of the day it’s our own responsibility to take care of ourselves. In low and in high times, in happiness and in sadness, all these times are important; only if we embrace the low and trust that we will be fine again we will be able to embrace the high.
There is no always happy life and even if it seems sometimes so from an outside position we need to trust that all that happens is important. We only grow, and we even grow more during the low times than during the high ones. Many creative minds worked on their masterpieces while being deeply sad or broken – this doesn’t mean that we need to like these times, but we need to love ourselves even more then.
Only if we accept that we are all, all the emotions and feelings that run through us, only then we will be able to create a life we want to live. And even then we will have times where we would like to bury our heads under the blanket and that’s OK! That’s what life is all about – learning, feeling, growing, loving, enjoying, crying, teaching, sharing. Take all and embrace the whole.
Center Yourself exactly where you are…
…because you are worth it, you are deserving it and you are in charge of your life. Take care!
…and write down new year’s resolutions, we think what we could do better than last year, what we could change, what was good and what wasn’t a masterpiece at all.
And every year I am wondering why we are doing it…
I never set new years resolutions for myself – the typical ones are to eat less sweets, stop smoking, loosing weight, etc. and I have seen to often that all those weren’t met anyway.
Are we too weak or do people just set the wrong goals? I believe it’s the later.
When I want to reach a goal it doesn’t matter if I write it down on 31st Dec or on any other day. If I want it desperately then I will work on it.
If I don’t want it desperately, then no date will help me to reach it and that’s why so many great resolutions never become real.
Why don’t we change this habit to reflect each day on where we are and what we want. This is a routine with more depth than a once-per-year kind of deep thought. I take a certain time just for myself and reflect the past 24 hours.
Am I happy?
What was good today?
What was not so could and how can I change it?
What’s my plan for the next days?
Do I need something that can help me?
Am I treating myself with love?
There are so many questions I can ask myself at the end of the day or in the morning of a new day – these are just a few examples.
Life is complicated enough so we should not start to make it more complicated with setting goals we are not able to reach, this is just frustrating and will bring us down. What we need are things that lift us up, goals which are realistic, people who support us, dreams to catch…
I miss my Yoga and instead of writing down that I want to take 15 min. per day to do some Yoga I stand up and do some sun salutations right here and right now. I can write in my journal “8 sun salutations” and that feels good!
Yesterday I wrote on Instagram the following: Be simply happy is often the most complicated
This sentence has so much to say and but is also so simple to follow. It’s saying nothing more than be simple and live now! We tend to over-do, over-plan, over-think, over-write, over-talk instead of doing what we want to do.
I am one of them, I’m maybe the best worst example for that because I over-think literally EVERYTHING. I try to reach a perfection instead of just taking the moment and that all with knowing very well that nothing is perfect and that imperfection is even more interesting than something that seems to be perfect. I struggle as we all struggle and that’s why it is even more important to remind me and all that we are not here to be perfect.
We should be happy, we should love and smile and enjoy and treat us well.
At the end of our life nobody will remember the perfect house, the neat clothes, the combed hair, the clean windows or the success at work. At the end all that counts are all those imperfect happy moments we spent.
Instead of running after imaginary goals start and live now!
Stand up wherever you are right now, look up, breathe, reach your arms up high and embrace all the beauty around you. This life is wonderful if we let it be…
I am a summer person so I should say summer, shouldn’t I?
But there are days in winter I like as well so here I already have a tiny problem to define my most wonderful time.
And if I think further I gave birth to my son in spring, so this time would be supposed to be mine.
Our wedding in August, we are going on summer vacation in August as well, August has long warm summer evenings and we wake up because the bright summer sun is lighting up the bedroom.
What about the golden September days, the end of the summer where we enjoy the still warm sunshine.
In October the first real autumn days are approaching us. Leaves are falling and make funny sounds when we walk through the park.
In November I’ve been born, winter is slowly showing us its face. Nights are starting to be colder and the air in the morning already smells snowy.
In December we like the snowflakes dancing through the cold air, the kitchen is warm and we start to bake Christmas cookies and look forward to spend the Christmas days with family and friends.
In January a new year just begun. We feel as if we have a million possibilities of things we can do throughout that year, we plan, we hope, we look forward to what it has in store for us.
In February my parents have their birthdays and a snowy Phase often starts before we will see the first signs of spring. We settle slowly into the still new year and wait for the warmth to return.
In March the spring feeling hits us, we drink coffee again outside, still in warm jackets but the outside season starts after we were inside for a long cold winter.
In April some days can we really warm already. Our son was born and lights up our life each second since. My sister and best friend are also having their birthdays in April.
In May everything blooms, this time of the year is so wonderful, I start to hear people outside in the evenings and this “life” in the city raises my mood. Almost everyone seems to smile because the dark days are over for a good while.
June is always my busy month to plan our summer vacation. I know there are early booking advantages but somehow I am the last (very last) minute person. However, we spent great summer holidays so far so it doesn’t seem to be too bad.
July is packed with sunshine. We try to spend as much time outside as possible and enjoy this summer atmosphere in the city.
Vacation time starts mid August and ends always with my husbands birthday followed by our wedding anniversary ❤️
So now, how should I decide which time of the year I like most?
If I would ask my son he would answer NOW, simply because he does not have this time feeling yet. If he wants something he wants it directly, not in 5 minutes and surely not tomorrow or next month or even year.
He lives NOW and this is one of the biggest lessons he teaches me day in and day out.
Now is the best time of the year, now is the best time of our life, now is all that matters.
Everything I do now will influence my tomorrow so if I complain the whole day long I may think the next day that I wasted a whole day for nothing, which will make me mad again – this is a vicious circle, it draws me into a life of complaining.
But if I cherish what I have and start to make the best out of even the darkest moments, then I wake up the next day and I will be grateful for what I have.
Be here now and love your life the way you want to – we only have this one!
Much love to you, you are in the most wonderful time of the year now, tomorrow and every day after!
Night thoughts are creative, sometimes blurred but still strong enough to survive the night, they are anxious from time to time and vivid, oh yes how vivid they can be.
When everyone is asleep but me and the world outside silent for a few hours they appear.
These thoughts wake me up and they are annoying in the beginning because I need my sleep but in the end they are truly amazing.
The night is the only time when I am as calm as I can be and where thoughts can flow uninterrupted for a while, thinking something through without disturbances.
The best ideas I had appeared during those nights.
I worked hard, I still do, and sometimes I work even harder and when I think I will fall into my bed and sleep will come over me before my head even rests – then, exactly then, these wonderful thoughts will be there like a never-ending fountain.
Listen to the silence of the night and create a whole new mindset – these nights form your being.
I never was scared of the night setting in and being awake when everyone else is asleep is rest for my soul. Specially when days are busy and breaks rare these nights are needed – every one needs silence and when it’s quiet around me my soul has time to be loud, to finally express what needs to be express, to communicate with being heard.
I’m a strong believer of intuition – my brain may want to talk me back into sleep because the next day will be busy and I need rest, but my intuition tells me that I will feel much more relaxed if I dive into this sacred space of the darkness and listen, just listen and feel.
When do you truly feel connected, connected to yourself but also to this big whole universe? In an open space, be it under a gigantic dark sky with thousands of stars above you or be it surrounded by darkness and silence when all you can hear is your own heartbeat and breath.
Listen – listen – listen and feel the depth of your being!
You are so much more than the outer layer, so much more than the visible, dive into the invisible and embrace all that you are!
I start to go mad more and more – as a mom and as a woman and as a human – why the heck do people tend to be pretenders?
I mean, seriously, there are tons of face filters in social media nowadays and yes, it’s sometimes fun, but as soon as someone is not seeing it like a fun gimmick anymore but seriously thinks that we need them it’s weird.
Where are the real sunsets, where are the real wrinkles after long nights, where are the real bad hair days, where are the real people?
I’m afraid to meet people I know only from their social accounts as I would expect flowers in their hair or ears from dogs on their head (how weird is that in between?). If the face has no softener applied, would I even recognize them in real life?
Also, the #eathealthy hash taggers, would I recognize you sitting in the fast food restaurant with a huge burger in your hand?
And I can confess that under the apples there is a drawer full of chocolate – this is what life is about! The balance! I don’t have make-up applied, just a filter – why? Besides , I’m not even perfect at using these filter things as my hair still stands up on both sides and I cannot help it 🙂
Are there yogis with picture where they just are normal standing without striking a pose?
I’m happy there are! But I’m not happy that these are still a minority.
There’s a trend now to go back to more reality because life isn’t perfect – there are lots of perfect moments but the majority of them went by too fast to even take a picture and that’s good – only then we start to realize the importance of those moments.
But even for the hashtags #reallife or #morerealityon… I see thousand of pictures where I ask myself where the reality is visible.
I said I’m mad and I can tell you why – we are adults, we are leaders, we are teachers, we set expectations and if we keep it like it is we will have generations of insecure people who never feel good enough in everything they are doing. They feel ugly because their face isn’t lit up by a virtual rainbow in the morning, they feel incapable because their so delicious meal doesn’t look delicious at all regardless from which ankle they try to make that picture, they feel boring because they don’t have each day five really exciting pictures to post.
Do we want the next generations to be like that? Do we want to teach our children that life happens in these devices?
NO – I don’t want this!
I absolutely love my online, virtual communities, but I want to see a shift there, I want to see what’s really going on.
Nobody needs to pour their heart out in public, unless you want to, but can we stick to what is instead of what I want it to be?
I’m tired, my hair isn’t perfect, I look pale due to a lack of sleep, but my eyes shine when I see my son learning something new. These moments are visible if you focus on what counts – no judging but loving.
I slowly get back to my yoga – one step at a time, sometimes two steps back, yes, that’s real! I would love to send each day a great yoga pose out on Instagram to impress, but that’s simply not me. I struggle to hold the crow that I could so perfectly two years ago. I will never go into a headstand (or at least I feel as if I will never manage that right now!). This NOW is my reality but that doesn’t mean that my NOW is not enough, not worthy, not something I like.
We all have phases where we accomplish more and phases where we are adjusting and phases where we are still and where we are loud, phases where we are beyond happy and phases where we are depressed – ALL of this is us and that’s PERFECT!!!
Be real – do it for your own sanity, do it to show others that this life is not a fairy-tale and that it’s OK to be … (however you feel right now)!
Rant over – enjoy this beautiful life and embrace every moment!
If you like – follow me on Instagram and let’s create a #BeREAL community which is uplifting and empowering! See you there 🙂
Yesterday was mother’s day, the day where mothers are cherished a bit more than normal.
Shouldn’t we be celebrated daily? I mean, honestly, aren’t we doing extraordinary jobs day in and day out?
Yes, we do and we know deep down in our heart. And you know what? All the people around us know this as well, they just don’t tell us daily.
There’s lots of sparkle and magic around us, we are just often too blind to see it. If we could once see ourselves through the eyes of our children we would know.
If I feel exhausted, tired and crappy I doubt that I would smile to my own face in the mirror BUT my son is looking at me and smiles, he’s kissing me and hugs me in the morning with a look on his face as if there’s nothing better than having morning snuggles in bed with me.
He doesn’t care if my hair isn’t sorted or if I have an imprint of the pillow on my cheek – he sees his mom, his shelter, his world, his universe – he see’s me with a childish purity and this purity is what we lost along the way while growing up.
For him I sparkle even on my worst days. For him I am surrounded by magic day in and day out (he is Crafted by Magic). I can blow away the pain if he got hurt, I can give hugs which save him from bad dreams, I can do so many things he sees as magic and I want to keep him in his little bubble of pure happiness for as long as I can.
We went out of the city yesterday and while being at a lake it started to rain heavily but instead of leaving we ate crepes and watched the rain.
We are the ones who show how life is, if I run and hide each time I see a raindrop my child will do it too. Why don’t we follow our children once in a while and jump into puddles simply because it is so much fun?
There was a thunderstorm in the evening when we were back home and we stood in the darkness on the window and were waiting excited for the lightning, counting the seconds until the thunder was following. These are the magic moments of motherhood, stillness, awe, magic, thunder and lightning, life in its purest form, scared hugs to realize after a while that mom isn’t scared so I can let go as well and enjoy the sound of the rolling thunder.
You see – my mother’s day wasn’t all sunny and pink and flower-ish BUT it doesn’t have to be to be a wonderful day. What makes my mother’s day perfect and any other day as well is the wonderful child I am allowed to raise and my husband who shows me maybe not daily how wonderful I am but who sees with his heart and that’s the magic we all need in our life!
