Month: July 2025

The other day, I watched a documentary narrated by Natascha Kampusch, the girl who was kidnapped at the age of 10 and imprisoned for over 8 years. What she said stayed with me:

“What I have learned about people is this: no one is infallible, and anyone can find themselves in a position where they lose control of their lives. That is true for the kidnapper, and it is true for me. From the moment I was kidnapped, I still had control over my thoughts. But I couldn’t do anything about the world outside.”

That statement struck something deep in me. Even in a basement, even without freedom of movement, she understood one of life’s greatest truths: no one can take away your power to choose your thoughts.

Every person I’ve ever heard speak about surviving deep trauma has said the same: that inner strength, your awareness, your ability to direct thought, is untouchable.

Life can feel overwhelming. We can feel delivered into chaos, into heartbreak, into impossible situations. But the moment we believe we are just victims of what happens outside of us, we hand over our creative power.

What we are consciously aware of becomes our reality.

That’s not just a theory—it’s observable. Ever notice how when you’re thinking about someone, they suddenly call or appear? Or how you begin seeing a certain car everywhere the moment you decide to buy it? When I was pregnant with my son, I saw pregnant women everywhere. That’s not coincidence, it’s selective awareness. And awareness creates experience.

If I focus on lack, I will experience lack. If I focus on betrayal, I will find more of it. If I assume love must hurt, then pain will come wearing the costume of love.

We often think: “Once I leave this job,” or “Once I find the right person”, or “Once I move”, then I’ll be happy. But unless we’ve changed our inner assumptions, we will meet the same story in a different costume. Because the script is written in the subconscious, and it keeps running until we revise it.

I thought a new relationship would fix my pain. That he would be the one. The soulmate. The healer of my heart. But I was still the same version of myself, the one begging for love, waiting to be chosen, caught in a loop of old identity.

And so, the same chaos reappeared. Not because I was doomed, but because I was living on autopilot, reinforcing old beliefs. It was easier to point fingers, to say, “He’s the problem,” than to realize I was playing out a version of myself I hadn’t yet released.

I felt imprisoned in those relationships. Then I’d “break free” and feel powerful again, only to fall into the same pattern with someone else. It became a cycle: freedom, collapse, pain, repeat.

I had to stop identifying with the experience. I had to stop believing I was the person things happened to. I had to remember:
I am not the experienced, I am the one who experiences.

And that “I” is pure awareness. Consciousness. The source. The seed-planter.

My subconscious mind is the soil. What I water grows. What I assume becomes real.

So I asked myself:
What kind of garden do I want to grow?
Which thoughts do I want to nourish?

Because as they say,
“You live most of your life inside your head. Make sure it’s a nice place to be.”

And no, that doesn’t mean we don’t change jobs or leave relationships or move cities. Of course we take action. But we take action from wholeness, not from desperation. We change our lives by first changing the mind we’re living them from.

I learned that lesson the long way, but I’m grateful. Because now I don’t wait for peace.
I assume it.
And I watch the world mirror it back.“The Garden of Awareness: How I Learned to Stop Being the Experience and Become the Observer”

Each day, I grew a little bolder. It was like waking up to a world I had only seen through a window—suddenly, I was stepping inside. A new universe opened before me, filled with possibilities and pleasures I had never known. It felt like walking into a candy store.

For the first time, I had my own money. I was no longer completely dependent on my ex-husband. As I began spending more time with women outside the movement, my eyes began to open. They showed me that life could be more than just being a housewife, bound to daily chores and responsibilities. I didn’t resent caring for my son, I loved being a mom, but I had never been given the chance to discover who I was or what I was capable of. It was the beginning of a new chapter, one where I would finally begin to ask: what do I want from my life?

Back then, I confused freedom with rebellion. I thought the only way to be free was to cast off everything I had ever known. And maybe, at that point, it was necessary. I had to gather strength and take the leap. But in doing so, I often fell into the role of a victim—fueled by anger at what had been done to me, rather than focusing on what I could build from it.

So yes, I hacked my way out of the jungle with a machete—but I had no map. I didn’t know where I was going. And the same patterns kept repeating themselves. Without clear direction, I walked straight into another jungle of confusion, reencountering the same wounds again and again, just in new forms, with new people.

I wanted to break free, the wild woman in me had awakened. Although I had always loved my ex-husband, I hadn’t truly chosen him. He had become part of a past I was ready to leave behind.
I didn’t know how to make the change the “right” way, but I knew I needed it. I wanted a divorce. It felt like the right decision for me. My whole life, others had made decisions over my head. But this was mine. I had no idea where to turn for help or what the next step would be, it all felt like a painful fog. My then-husband didn’t agree. He said, “If you want a divorce, you leave. I’ll stay with our son. ”But that wasn’t a life I could live with, either.

I began an affair with someone outside our world—a desperate attempt to escape, to start over. But it only created more chaos, because inside me was chaos. My son was caught in the middle. I couldn’t give him the security he needed, because I didn’t know who I was myself. He felt all the turmoil of his parents, two lost souls trying to swim through rough waters. I loved him with all my heart, but without a connection to myself, I looked for stability in a world I didn’t know how to live in. I thought the answer was a new relationship. What I didn’t yet understand was that true peace comes only from within, and the most important relationship is the one we have with ourselves.                              As Albert Einstein once said:
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”_

I believed the solution was out there, a new person, a new romance, a new life. But the affair turned out to be destructive, and I ran into the next so-called adventure. I was still working at the confiserie, slowly gaining a foothold. But I was running on empty. I slept too little, and I chased every thrill, every party, every distraction.

I was rolling myself into a snowball, and the avalanche had already started. It picked up speed, and with it, people. And pain. And guilt.

My shame was immense. But my will to run from the life I had left behind was even stronger.

It would take me time to learn that I wasn’t responsible for keeping everyone around me comfortable. That it was okay to have boundaries. That I didn’t need to sacrifice myself to avoid conflict. I had done that too many times.

And the question is not just what happened to me, but why. Why did I keep repeating these patterns? Why did I sabotage myself? Why couldn’t I see a way out?

Because I was stuck in my story. And my story had become my identity. But here’s what I’ve learned: There is always a way out. Always. We just have to awaken. To recognize the dream we’re trapped in—and step out of it.

As I stepped into the chocolate shop at the airport, everything smelled sweet , a warm mix of sugar, roasted nuts, and something buttery in the air. A slightly round woman in her mid-forties, with curly red hair and a cheerful face, was waiting for me with a wide smile. She welcomed me and led me straight to the staff changing room.

There, she handed me a uniform, a fitted dress and a scarf I was supposed to tie around my neck. I was used to wearing temple clothing back then. It felt perfectly normal to me to wear a specific dress to express a sense of belonging, of serving something greater. But now, I was in a different world.

Standing behind the counter, surrounded by sweets, sandwiches, and glossy cookies, I felt completely lost. The fear of making a mistake was overwhelming, and I did everything I could to prove how willing and eager I was to learn. I honestly thought it was a miracle they didn’t send me home on the first day.

At first, it wasn’t easy to work the register. I didn’t know how to handle money, especially the different currencies back then. I couldn’t do mental math , not because I was stupid, but because I had never really learned it. The women looked at me as though I had come from another planet.

I was told to weigh pralines and cookies and wrap sweets into delicate little boxes ‘ and I didn’t even know what “tare” meant. It was all so new and overwhelming. I felt afraid, insecure, and deeply out of place.

But I knew I had to keep going.

When I received my first salary, it felt surreal. I had never earned that much money in my life, and I honestly didn’t know what to do with it. It made me uncomfortable, as though I wasn’t allowed to have it. I felt guilty and unworthy. It was all so unfamiliar.

The other women were surprised by me. I asked for help constantly. I was vulnerable, anxious, and ashamed. But I sensed that they were curious about me ‘ and to my surprise, they were kind. They helped me. Bit by bit, I became one of them.

I walked on eggshells. I had learned that to be accepted, I had to submit. I had to prove I was good enough. I feared rejection. I carried that with me ‘ this need to be perfect, to be pleasing, to be useful , in order to feel worthy of love. It made me rigid. I couldn’t afford to make mistakes.

What a small world that becomes ‘ when your sense of value depends entirely on whether others approve of you.

And yet, despite all of that, I felt something new: dignity. I had made a choice for myself. I had taken a step into the unknown. I was no longer just a housewife hidden in someone else’s life. I had started to become someone of my own.

Privately, things in my life were changing as well. Not all of it was easy. Out of fear of hurting others, I made some decisions I later regretted. I wanted to do everything right, but in the end, I hurt myself the most ‘ and, sadly, my son. But I say this with compassion for the woman I was. I had come from chaos. I was doing my best with what I had learned.

That job, that moment, was the beginning of me unraveling the old identity I had carried for so long. It was the beginning of seeing that the person I believed myself to be was shaped by the circumstances of my upbringing , not by my true self.

As Neville Goddard said, “As within, so without.” We experience our world through the lens of our consciousness , and that lens is shaped by what we believe about ourselves. If we carry fear and self-doubt inside, the world will mirror it back to us.

I hadn’t learned how to take up space in society. I didn’t believe I was important. I believed I had to prove my worth to be loved. And so I kept shrinking myself.

But that first step — the chocolate shop, the courage to say yes — was the beginning of something else. It was the first step into a wider life.

And so, the journey began — not just into independence, but into reclaiming who I truly was.

The moments we take risks in life can feel very scary. But I’ve had pivotal moments where I just knew I had to jump, no matter what came thereafter. The feeling of staying where I was felt harder than stepping into the unknown. So I kept moving, and eventually, the picture became clearer ‘ and good things began to happen.

There was a time I felt deeply stuck in my marriage. Today, I’m good friends with my ex-husband and grateful for everything we shared, especially our wonderful son. But there are times when life calls you forward, and the space you’re in becomes too small. We had been married for seventeen years. That’s a long time ‘ and I had never really discovered who I was as a woman or as an individual. I had been a housewife and a mother, which was beautiful, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to life than what I was living.

My ex-husband had always carried the financial responsibility, sometimes more successfully, sometimes less. But eventually, he asked me to contribute. The truth was, I had no experience working in society, no idea how to earn money, and no clue where to begin. I couldn’t even ride a bicycle in traffic or drive a car. My ex didn’t think I could learn ‘ and maybe, back then, I didn’t either.

But when I turned thirty, something inside me said: Now or never.

I was scared, but I began looking through the classifieds in the newspaper. I found a small ad . a well-known confectionery in Switzerland was looking for someone to sell chocolates. A place visited by VIPs and very wealthy customers. I called. The man on the phone said, “Let’s make a good date — it’s the 9th month of 1999, so let’s meet at 9 o’clock in the morning.”

I agreed. As the day came closer, I grew more nervous. I wore a long skirt and my hair in a braid. I told myself to be quiet and polite , to be the “good girl” I had learned to be. I sat down across from him, and he smiled kindly. “So,” he asked, “who are you? Do you have any experience working in a shop?” Then he glanced at my CV. “It seems you don’t have any references from previous jobs?”

My heart dropped. I thought, This is it. He sees right through me.

But I was honest. I told him I had cooked in the temple since I was young and had spent my time raising a child. He looked at me thoughtfully and said, “I like your courage. I’m going to give you a chance.” Then he added, “I’ll place you at the airport shop — you’ll be independent there, and the other women will show you the ropes.”

I had no idea what I was getting into. But it was the beginning of my independence. I had taken a step.

I walked out of that interview both relieved and terrified. Something in me had shifted. I had said yes to life , not just to the job, but to the unknown, to the possibility of something different. I still didn’t know how it would all unfold, or whether I could really do it. But I had taken the first step.

That Moment . simple and small on the outside ‘ was the beginning of my independence.

In the next blog post, I’ll tell you what happened on my very first day at work, and how each small decision helped me grow stronger, find my voice, and prepare for the biggest leap of all: leaving the life I had known, to discover the woman I truly was.