One and a half months.
First and foremost I have to get the following off my chest:
To the glorious, loving people that make it possible for me to feel at home without owning a home.
Thank you Nico, Dana and Daniel.
Thank you for opening your home and heart to me. You three are magnificent people that inspire me each and everyday. The way you make your choices, work on yourselves, work with one another, in every way you are precious, sparkling souls wandering this Earth. Thank you for having me.
To Sophie for connecting with me on a level of artistic free-spiritedness. So openly, freely sharing with me your perception of this world and life itself. Thank you for the sweet, calm, tranquil moments of enjoying nature and her grace. I could get lost with you in the woods and be grateful for it- it means a lot to me to have you as a friend.
To Sabrina and Thorsten. The tranquility on your farm is graspable, healing, stirring, moving me deeply. Health on an abundance of levels is what made the days spent with you an everlasting source of freedom and growth at the same time: Nourishing food, talk and rest. Thank you so much for sharing your paradise with me.
To Sarah- the amount of introspection, energetic wisdom, restoring and rejuvenating time within your four, treasured walls have given me true peace of body, mind and soul.
To Kerstin, Alexis and Leslie for showing me that there is beauty in expressing the soul and being safe within a friendship of kindred souls. There is a never-ending river of wisdom, support and appreciation flowing and the effortless ease with which you tackle all life brings is nothing short of marvellous. Thank you for inspiring me to grow and become the kindest possible version of myself.
To Amy. Thank you for giving me your time so freely, selflessly, unconditionally. All the feedback, all the valuable inputs, the ideas, the communication, thank you. You are a rock to me, helping me stay above water and keeping me focused on the way ahead of me. All the while never forgetting the reason why, always knowingly seeing the future appearing ever so much closer on the horizon.
To Jasmin, Raffa and Jara for the pure bliss of witnessing the nest of abundance you have created within your life, as a family unit and as individuals. I am in a state of wonder while being in your midst and soaking up the balanced wealth of emotional and spiritual abundance emerging from your generosity, kindness and love.
To Sonja for reminding me of the fragility and gentility of a soul on the journey to healing. Every seed has to fight its way up through dark, dense and moist soil to come out into the true Light of its existence. You do too.
To Aarau for letting me breathe in gratitude and breathe out kindness, showing me the part of my life that I loved and cherished, reminding me that it is also places that make a home, providing me with a flow of creativity day in and out.
To Seimen for letting me heal in accepting my apologies for prior behavioural patterns born out of hurt and pain, for being as good a friend as ever, for teaching me that dreams and aspirations are there for a reason and whether it takes a decade or a couple of months- sooner or later, if you continue to work for them, they’ll become your reality.
To Teresina, Milena, Sereina, Tamara as well as Cesare and Michi. Being able to reconnect with all of you brought joy to my life and so much encouragement, I am amazed and grateful to the core. If people that work as hard as you all do, believe in my dreams and my journey, my abilities and my skills, I am inclined to trust your judgement and keep on going regardless the obstacles that might appear in the future. Thank you for your strength and guidance.
To Kristina for being the most enriching example of unforeseen events and how strangers are never really strangers, bonding over open minds and hearts, connecting through simply being human.
To those I left behind on my Isle of Freedom. Thank you for providing me with a reason to yearn for the far away, thank you for giving my Marjorie a loving home, thank you for being family from afar.
To Priska and beautiful Samira, seeing you thrive within a life of giving to others, encouraging others, supporting others- it is inspiring and I can only wish to pass on the amount of generosity that you bring to the world every single day.
And now on to the more material concerns that were born out of these past seven weeks in this beautiful country:
The relation between money and happiness- is there true contentment and security if you are broke? Is the perception of abundance and lack really the tool that can absolve one from existential threat? Does your perception alone enable you to have done with the pressure of attending to human needs like shelter and food?
As most of you know, I am currently trying to establish myself as a freelance web designer and copywriter. The majority approaches a career change like this from the healthier, mature end of quitting their day job only and when they are able to make comparable income through freelancing, juggling the first chapters of the new career as a side hustle in their free time to build the future life they envision for themselves. Obviously that introduction announces the very special approach I took: I quit my job, went travelling and figured out in February 2022 that I most certainly need to find an income stream soon.
I know- it does not really speak for an advanced degree in being an adult.
Reasons range from not having even contemplated this way of making a living as a possibility as the thought simply hasn’t occurred to me before.
I more or less stumbled upon the possibility of creating websites from a few lovely people in my environment and they happened to pay for this skill of mine. And there it suddenly was: A possibility to continue my rootless lifestyle, continue to travel and experience the total freedom I so crave in this moment of time.
From projects that just landed in my lap, so to speak, to establishing your own business is a totally different story though. Which in the past weeks has not only been honey streams and rainbows.
I suffered from impostor syndrome, from hopelessness and existential angst (as mentioned in my earlier post). Then the opportunity came and I went through a healing session. Now, I was freed up to not succumb to breathlessness and being caged by emotions that primarily are valuable (securing your survival), secondarily really take a turn on you if you cannot channel them, acknowledge them and work with them to find a solution on how to cope.
Watching the figures sliming down on my bank account without any new client work coming in truly is intense. Yet, if you are caught by loving, generous, welcoming people that provide a bed and a meal once in a while- is it that threatening anymore?
Is it ok to accept selfless friendship and support?
Don’t I have to maintain balance?
Is the balance maybe provided by simply being myself, is that enriching for people?
Does that equal out what they gift me with?
Does there even need to be a balance?
My whole life I never thought I was welcome, truly and genuinely welcome, somewhere. I defined my worth through what I can bring to the table for them. I doubted that people were interested in me as a soul, as a being. I doubted that I ‘gave’ people something worthy.
This situation though somehow shifted that mindset… or more precisely is slowly, gradually shifting that mindset to another one. Without having a say in it as this is my situation right now.
What if I am worthy of all of it?
What if people found my presence to be something valuable?
What if it is not what present I bring with me, what if I suffice?
What if all of this is only possible because of my financial situation?
And what if my financial situation is simply about this specific experience?
What if I drop the collection of data, accounting, balancing out and just be?
Does that make me less or more valuable as a human being to connect with?
A lot of questions have begun to form in my head over the last couple of days, that were filled with the ups and downs that I am so used to. Days filled with deep connection, safety and certainty. Days filled with utter despair and an exhausted kind of surrender, because if not surrendering what was I supposed to do anyway?
Of course, I took step by step, never loosing sight of the goal that I want to accomplish. Always getting back up into the saddle, if you fall eight times- you get up nine!
And there really is no other thing to do than keep on trying to find clients, right?!
But the base of all of these days was some form of consistency in thought. There is no other option but to take it day by day, even minute by minute at times, to stay on track. Where I set my focus, energy flows.
And emerging from this experience is born a never before known contentment.
With a bank balance of 240 Swiss francs.
Is that even possible?
Is this real?
Or does my brain cloud my judgment by spending bucketloads of serotonin, as I would die of angst otherwise?
It does not feel that way, honestly.
My bank account doesn’t matter.
External things cannot bring me what I aspire to have.
Deep, genuine, dancing-in-the-moonlight, joyously-screaming-from-the-top-of-a-mountain, preparing-delicious-food-with-loved-ones, refreshing-summer-rain-upon-my-face-while-witnessing-thunder-and-lightning-in-the-sky experiences do.
Life itself.
It is about the small things, only that the small things become the big things that all of it is about.
Yes, I’d fancy a carefree, few thousand in figures- obviously I would not say no to that.
But in choosing my path the way I did, consequences arise.
The way you deal and cope with those consequences might just be the life lesson, self-growth inducing way of getting to know you in depth.
Enabling you to rearrange your values.
Questioning your attachments.
Redefining yourself.
There is no end to self development, and at times that takes all you have got. Still I would not have it any other way. Each and everyone of us is born free, born to choices, born to evolve and become whatever we aspire to be.
I believe. More, I know.
My choice was impulsive, still I am treading lightly and am still on my chosen path.
With all consequences that arose from that consciously made decision.
And maybe this is why I am able to still enjoy my life even though the numbers in cash that just weeks ago would have me be in despair, don't mean a thing now.
My life’s choices, my life’s consequences.
And it brought me closer to each and every person I met, even strangers became kindred spirits within hours. It made me open up in unforeseeable ways, it made me able to connect with the essence of humanity. It made me experience generosity that I will never ever in my life forget. It brought me emotional wealth.
And emotional wealth, for the first time in my life, became the reward, the safety net, the calm within the storm. Thank you all, beloved souls, thank you from my heart to yours.
Thank you all so very much.
Love and light,
Nadine
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