I still love to reminisce about the summers of my childhood. I see myself as a curious girl with dark braids, barefoot, wearing colourful shorts. No tree was too high for me – although I was by far not the bravest girl and still am not – and no river to deep to watch fish in the water or make the acquaintance of leeches on my naked legs.

But I also loved to draw, to paint, and to write. For days on end, I shut myself away in a small chamber in the attic and lived in my own world, which was characterised by fantasy trips, inner images and invisible friends.

However, over the years I lost this girlish light-heartedness. Surrounded by a conservative and biased society, I grew up in the understanding that men belong into the world and women into the kitchen.

I had my first child when I was 22, the second one was born when I was 23. When I was 28 years old, I thought: “If that was all life has to offer me, then I probably got off at the wrong station”. Back then I came across the book “Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype”, and it opened my eyes. My marriage – as was to be expected – reflected society at large. I felt trapped and was desperate.

It took another seven years until I was finally able to pull off that straitjacket and start over again. I devoted myself to alternative healing and treatment methods and started my own business as a kinesiologist, later as an author and seminar facilitator. The majority of my clients, readers and seminar participants have always been women.

I also discovered my spirituality as soon as I had freed myself and was allowed to be myself again. But that is another story. You can find more information on that aspect of my life on my second blog.