When I started coaching with Sarah, I saw my body and the way it functions primarily as a problem. As an object with hormonal problems that prevented me from achieving the worldly goals I was striving for.

I contorted myself to fit a thought pattern that I had learned would bring me acceptance and recognition. It all had to happen now or never. There could be no such thing as a bad day. “Let’s get on with it.”

My biggest fear was that the world would not accept me if I would be who I ‘really am’. That everything would not be good enough. That I would not be good enough.

I struggled with the need for structure and rest. Which I simultaneously rejected when it came from an external factor. I wanted to find stability in myself, not in something/someone else. At the same time this task was very hard for me.

During the coaching with Sarah I chose self-love. I learned to choose radically for myself and to make choices for what is good for me. I learned to empathize with my body and to listen better to its signals. I learned to see her again, to recognise, respect and honour her.

I learned to use the nature that is in me and that moves around me as a source for the structure I so longed for. And that is a very different kind of structure from the one I had always known. I still find it difficult to explain exactly what cyclical thinking is. In any case, I can feel it and recognise it when I think “Oh, if it doesn’t work now, I’ll try again tomorrow”. Or when I am panicking and a little voice in the back of my head is whispering to me that this is a ‘transient state’.

It feels like an act of resistance to train myself to adopt a different sense of time than that of the dominant discourse. A sense of time that can allow society to rediscover and celebrate its unexplored feminine qualities. The world would be a much different place.

I learned to recognise and revalue the feminine qualities in myself. I discovered anger and sadness in myself about what we as a society have done with those feminine attributes. I felt for the women in my family line who were humiliated, abused and taunted. The coaching with Sarah showed me that I can break through this line and am actually already doing so.

The darker sides of life became more visible and I felt amazingly at home in them. I developed activities that help me to get in touch with this dark side such as colouring, drinking tea, picking and drying herbs, and working in the garden.

One of the most important things I learned during the coaching with Sarah is to allow myself a context that promotes my sense of wellbeing. This instead of squeezing myself into a context that doesn’t suit me.

Today I can look at my ‘problem’ and move around it like water, instead of fighting it. I regained the distance between myself and my feelings and restarted a grounding process that I had lost somewhere along the way.

Above all, I found the playfulness in myself again and a depth in life that has already given me a lot of pleasure and enthusiasm. I am less afraid of the future and have expanded my toolkit for dealing with imbalance.

Many of these processes had started a long time ago. The coaching with Sarah made me look inwards, which gave me insight into what I wanted to let go of and develop further. I got the chance to harvest the fruits of what had been sown long ago and planted new seeds with new intentions. That made me proud of myself and set a positive vicious circle in motion.

What I especially take away from the coaching with Sarah is the fun and lightness it set in motion in my life, the warm feeling that someone is always there for you with good advice and the large amount of tailor-made exploration tools I received. I am sure that I will carry this journey with me much longer than just the three months we spent together.