To Nina.

All I know today is because of you. You gave me the gift of understanding. Because of you I know of life. I understand so many more. I know of darkness, I know of hurt. I know of a heavy heart, of immense loneliness. I know of not being enough and of being too much. You carried a burden far bigger than your size. You were strong enough to let me see the other side of life. To begin from darkness.
And to rise.

You are now looking at me proudly, your smile peaceful, your eyes glittering of "I told you so". You always knew we would make it. And in you I see I am ready now. The moment we have been waiting for is here. And you and me - together we are ready to say goodbye to what was. We are ready to change. To embrace the light. To accept the warmth that has been coming. To touch life. We have overcome our biggest fear, defeated what we once shied away from. To be bare. To allow intimacy. With arms and heart wide open in front of another. For another.

The eyes we once knew, they are here now. And with them has come my turn to carry you. To free you from the burden I once gave for you to bare. Now is your time to play. To be careless. To feel accepted. To giggle relentlessly. To shine and revel in the light that is you.

I am now taking your hand and never letting go. We're moving into the light. We are now ready to be the woman we always were supposed to be. Our new life has arrived. Infinity was brought to us in an instant. You can breathe now, my darling. You are safe to love. To feel happiness. To show yourself. This is true. You are free now. And I've never been prouder. You have done your part. You've walked a long road. And for all you've done, I thank you.

You are free now.



Love,

Carolina

Castaway.

If you've ever had a cast, you'll know how it feels when that cast finally comes off. You'll know how fragile the skin is, how tender and awkward it feels. You'll know the tingling feeling of when the hairs on your skin start to rise again. You'll know how a small breath of air can feel like a giant just brushed up against you. How vulnerable your skin is to any outer contact and how you need to be aware of the right pace, of not exposing yourself to too much too soon.

It's the same exact experience when you make the conscious decision to finally reveal yourself. Your vulnerability. When you decide to remove the cast you've so tightly held around yourself. It's the same sort of awkwardness. You feel as exposed, as fragile and exactly as scared of being touched. And left at the complete mercy of your sensitivity to change.

I'm at that point now. I've removed the cast. I'm starting to feel the wind of fresh air reach me. The tenderness of another touch my core. I've felt how a gentle stroke can carry the force of fire. How waves of kindness wash over me, asking to carry me out to sea. And I'm feeling all the fears that go with it. All the reflexes that want me to shy away, to cover up again. To protect myself. Those reflexes - they're strong. But I've led a life where I've protected myself. And therefore, I've led a life where I've wondered if this really is all there is to it. It has been a life where l haven't allowed another to take a part of all there is to me. The truly vulnerable me. The exposed me. And I've come to the conclusion that I don't want to live my life protected by a cast. I don't want to find all my safety in solitude anymore. I want to accustom myself to the fire. To not shy away when warmth reaches me. I want to go out to sea and experience all there is to it, not only what I hid under my cast from before. So no more castaway. Now is the time to cast the cast away.



See you on the other side.


Love,

Carolina

Together forever.

It might seem easy to write a Facebook update. And yes, in both theory and practice, it is. It's no more than putting one word after another and publishing it - and there you have it: one of trillions of updates put on a FB wall. But sometimes they aren't that easy to post. Sometimes they take an enormous amount of courage. Sometimes behind two lines stems years of losing oneself and months of finding one's way back. I remember my first update of this kind. It's quite hard to forget, since I started living my dream thanks to it. It was January 16, 2013, and it went as follows:
"Will paint a painting out of the first theme anyone of you comes up with. Give it to me! :)"
Seems so simple. But in order to write - and post - this tiny little two-line-plus-one-smiley update my life first needed to fall apart completely.

I can be stubborn. And if you combine that stubbornness with fear - well then you have a winner. You have a person who will do anything to keep things the way they are. Even sacrifice themselves. I had become this person. I had become the person who had started to sacrifice herself for the good of a relationship. For the good of a family in the making. For the good of a stable life. A safe life. I had devoted myself completely into making this relationship work. And then - in one night - it was all taken away from me. In one night what I had been working on for seven years to be my life, became the life of another woman. It literally made me want to die. And at the same time, it was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Because, as I told you, I can be stubborn. And when you combine that stubbornness with fear - well then you also get a person who will not listen to her gut feeling anymore. Who does not want to see the signs. Who does not want to count the nights she's spending alone. Who does not want to admit how wrong it is that she's sitting with half a cooked lamb on a perfectly set table, a fridge full of hand made chocolate-dipped marzipan eggs, that it's Easter and she is sitting there - once again - alone. She will even accept "work" as an excuse - all because she does not want to lose everything she's worked so hard on at making work.

But I did lose it all. All of my hard work did go down the drain. (Unlike the chocolate-dipped marzipan eggs. Them I ate.) I lost everything that had felt safe in my life. And all at once. My relationship - and with that a huge chunk of my future. My financial independency - as my partner had asked me to work less, since he was so busy at work. (I know...) And, on top of it all, I had a serious scare with my health, where I got to picture myself spending my last days on this earth sitting on the cliffs of our lovely little paradise island, overlooking the sea, dying in peace. (I can also be dramatic...) I was so frickin' stubborn that I had to learn the hard way that having "everything" is what kept me from not doing anything. That being "safe" is what made me scared. And that all of this was paralyzing me and keeping me from living a life I would die happy from. I had to lose everything in order to find my courage. In order to brake the illusion of safety. And I had to admit to myself, that none of what happened came as a surprise, as my gut had tried to tell me the truth - over and over again.

So stubborn me had no choice but to start respecting the power of the gut and admitting the importance of listening to it. So a few months later I quit what remained the last "safe" thing in my life - my job. I had no idea where exactly I was headed, but I knew where I didn't want to be. It was scary (and exciting) as hell, but my gut told me I would be fine. And then came January 16. Eight months after my previous life had been given to someone else, something in me told me to write those words and publish them. My brain wanted to panic. It kept telling me "But what if your painting does not turn out to be a good enough one? What if you once again choke - as you've done so many times before - and never finish the painting? How embarrassing isn't that: you put it out on FB and then you don't even deliver? Or worse: you put it out on FB and nobody likes it! That's bad... That's even worse!" (The brain can be a picnic of a friend sometimes...) So I heard what my brain said, but I decided not to listen, as listening to my brain had gotten me really nowhere in life, except stagnation and dissatisfaction. Listening to my gut on the other hand, had proven to be a winner. And my gut told me to post. So I did. It was seriously one of the scariest things I had done so far. And one that truly paid off. I found my passion thanks to doing it. That tiny little gesture is what put me on my path. So now I'm hooked. This seriously is a relationship I am never giving up on. My gut and I - together forever.



Megalove,

Carolina

Paradise.

There was a time when we laughed together. All of us. When we sang to Clapton, danced to Springsteen, hugged each other and appreciated every moment we were blessed to have together.

Then, suddenly, one of us was lost. Swept away. Our humble one. Our calm one. Our friend, our father, our beloved one. And with him, we were lost. With his passing, what we thought would never brake, broke. Words we never thought would be said, were. Our differences rose to the surface, and with it our weakest link revealed: our intolerance for imperfection.

We had the chance to learn the essence of true love, the part that keeps a family together - acceptance. But we chose another path. We chose war. We chose to make war on our brothers in arms.
We are the fools who made war on our brothers in arms...


You are in my thoughts.


Love,

Carolina

Got dumped?

I have. Several times, I might ad. (Well, I am already almost 34.) And in all of these dumpings - with a drama scale that has varied from everything between 'none' to 'The Bold And The Beautiful ain't got nothing on me' kind of drama - there has been one common factor to them all: all have left without an explanation. Now we all know how frustrating that can be: silence. Not getting closure. The infamous closure... It meddles with our brains and eats at our self confidence, until we finally drink one too many at some random girls/guys night out and demand for answers. Because we seem to think we cannot move on without these answers. But whyyy do we need this closure?? Closure won't change the fact that what happened happened. Closure certainly won't change the way it happened. Closure won't make the hurt or sorrow disappear. And closure won't fix our bruised ego. Or will it? I think that is exactly what we look for in closure: proof of worth. Because getting dumped hurts our ego. So we want to hear that we did mean something. That we do mean something. That there's nothing wrong with the way we are. But looking for that proof of self worth in others is not the way to go, as it can - and should - only be found in ourselves. So the less of an explanation we need and the less we demand - the better we will feel. I promise. Because the way someone else chooses to be has nothing to do with us. The way others treat us tells us nothing about ourselves, but everything about them. And vice versa. We all do the best we can. And if we don't - well, then that's our problem, isn't it? So since closure won't change fact, then why bother meddling? Why not focus upon what is important instead: ourselves. Us moving on. And what if the reason might be as big of an enigma for the other as it is to us. May even be the reason why they had to leave without an explanation...


Big love,

C

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My dark place.

Have you ever seen a picture of the earth, taken from outer space, where it lies in the midst of dark, calm in its own shadow, quietly surrounded by the vacuum of space. And as it lays there, suddenly the sun reaches the corner of the world where it hits the horizon, creating a growing ray of light - ultimately beaming with such force and intensity, that it leaves any possible spectator in a state of awe, blinded and mesmerized by the magic of the moment.
    Now imagine this moment - but without the dark. What would it be? The light wouldn't shine, as it had no place to shine from. There would be no contrast, no power, no magnificence. That's what makes the dark so beautiful: it simply makes the light shine. As does the dark inside and around us enable us to shine. But only if we so choose. This is where we are a powerful being, above the laws of nature: we do have to power to choose this. We can choose to let the dark be overpowering. We can choose to never let the sun hit our horizon. Or we can choose to use the dark as the force that makes our light shine even brighter, with even more power and intensity.
    This is how I choose to use my dark. I choose to turn the challenging things I go through in life as the source from which my light is able to grow even bigger and forever more beautiful. And this is why a sense of melancholy might reach some of you at times - through my words, my pictures or my paintings. As it is there. Because I want it there. I so value the contrast that it gives me. As without it, my light would be dimmer. My waves wouldn't glitter with gold. My morning and evening skies wouldn't be painted with all the hues of pink. Without it my light would have nowhere to rise from...


Yours truly,

Darth Vader

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The secret to my perfect buns.

Making great things happen in life is a lot like making great cinnamon buns. No matter how much effort you put into getting top of the line ingredients, mixing, measuring and kneading of the dough - it'll all be in vain if you stick them buns in the oven without having the patience to let the dough rise.
    Achieving personal greatness is quite the same: know what you want (be it perfect buns or some other dream), equip yourself with what is needed, put plenty of love and your best effort into it, and then: have patience. Let the greatness rise. Enjoy the anticipation of what is to come. The best goddamn buns in town.


In honour of the upcoming international cinnamon bun day on October 4.


Kiss,

Carolina

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