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My Story
The story behind
The TrueSelf Method™
I was born into a family of five children as fifth. My mother gave birth at the age of 44, so the kids around me thought she was my grandmother. My mother once told me she never wanted to have kids and never wanted to get married.
My parents had a traditional division of labor, she raised the five kids, managed the household and basically the lives of six people. My dad was in charge of bringing home the money from the leased gas station. Most of the time he was on his own, never a day off, never on holiday for most of his life. On Sundays, when he took a short break, he was ashamed to go for a walk because then the neighbors could see he wasn’t working. He suffered from regular migraines and never took a single pain killer. My mother always said "your dad doesn't know so much, he didn't go to school for very long". Her behavior was characterized by her frustration and self-anger at feeling trapped in a life she never wanted. She blamed my father for her unlived life and for us as children. Harmony was very important to her, but that was only the outer layer of her inner distress. One can describe her as the emotional disruptor of the family, talking bad behind everyone’s back, playing her husband and kids off against each other. From the outside you would never have guessed what she was capable of, especially when reading the Sunday lecture in church. She was the friendliest person in public.
My father was very good at heart and a choleric patriarch with regular anger burst-outs, which I was never prepared for as a kid. One Sunday, I didn’t want to go to church, and he almost smashed my wooden bedroom door. Apart from his unpredictability, my dad was the person in the family who always had my back. Most of the qualities I value most in myself today, are the ones I learned from him.
I loved the way my dad grabbed my hand every time he sat next to me.
Communication in my family meant either not talking or yelling. Showing emotions that didn't conform to the expectations of an obedient child was not allowed. As a kid, I was told I had to behave or I wouldn't be loved.
Emotional and physical torchure was part of the parenting concept. I'll never forget how my head felt after I got slapped in the face, or how much my arm hurt when it was burnt by a hot iron. Or how I was bitten by the neighbor's Rottweiler and my mother apologized to the neighbor for my misbehavior.
In school I was the outsider. The degradation from home continued as bullying throughout my school life. After all, my mother was my closest person, especially as kid I considered her the smartest woman on earth. I tried to talk to her about how much it hurt me when school mates called me names, made fun of my ears and teeth, or chased me around the playground. She believed that I had done my part. I coped with developing an eating disorder.
I left home at 14 and never returned for more than a week. It was the first milestone out of that toxic environment.
In my late teens, I fell in love with my first girlfriend. Despite all these amazing feelings I struggled because me being gay was not part of the family-made life plan. When I came out to my mother, she sought help from the Catholics and tried to find a way to heal me from my lesbian illness. This marked the second milestone on the path to a life filled with self-love and joy. It was the first time I considered that something might be wrong with the family I was growing up in. Until then, I had never considered that my upbringing was any different from that of my schoolmates.
The next 20 years I spent on and off with my family of origin. I forged my own path, filled my desperate need for belonging and love with increasing abuse of alcohol, and learned what it actually means to break with the family rules. I got myself a new position as black family sheep, the spoiled, ungrateful lesbian brat who left her homeland for the enemy - Germany.
Perhaps you are still reading this and thinking: When will this tragic pattern finally transform into something beautiful and good? So, stay tuned.
First turning points were me quitting alcohol, leaving my one-sided partnership, starting therapy, freezing my eggs and beginning a second training course as Systemic Positive Coach.
The third milestone, by far the hardest one to take, was breaking away from my family of origin. When my daughter was born, I was finally strong enough to take this step — a step my shrink would have prescribed for me, if she could.
And now here I am. More and more becoming the person I've always been and living the life I've wanted — being a mom to the sweetest girl and the loveliest dog, living in a country where trust and community are possibly the most important values, and having created work that truly fulfills me. The relationship part, however, is still a work in progress.
I have spent much of my life adapting myself to others and their needs in the hope of being appreciated and loved for who I am. What I've learned from my story, though, is that adapting myself never really made me feel more loved or that I belonged. But the more I live as my true self, stand up for who I am, and consistently live my life the way I want to, the more whole I feel, the more self-confidence and self-trust I have, and the more I meet people who make me feel appreciated, cared for, and valued.
Following my own path and setting boundaries have brought me closer to myself and deepened my relationships with others. It has been a difficult road, and staying true to myself has often come at a very high price. Looking back, I am deeply grateful I had the courage to make those choices. My life’s topic, belonging, will always stay, but it has evolved.
The purpose of my work today is to help others live true to themselves and flourish from their own identity to get closer to the life they desire.
Thanks for reading my story.
We are shaped by our stories.
They make us who we are today.
What's your story?