I was born into an environment that didn’t know how to meet my needs as a highly sensitive person. I always felt different, so my quest became to fit in. 

There was the life I wished I could have lived: one where all parts of me that felt misunderstood, invisible and different could take up space through colours, shapes and composition by pouring my heart and soul onto a canvas. Looking at a painting is so much like looking into a mirror - reflecting different parts of the self back to us. I yearned for a life in which I’d be seen, without having to explain myself with words.

Then there was the life I actually created: the life I thought I should live to be accepted by family and society, allowing my true interests, longings and desires to fall away. 

It’s not that I didn’t live a good life. I traveled to exotic places, immersed myself in different cultures, dove deeply into self development and did many things on my own that many others would shy away from. But I didn’t live the life I needed to truly thrive and flourish. 

I became a nurse, worked schedules that didn’t match my circadian rhythm and lots of overtime hours to make sure all patients were taken care of. Also witnessing a lot of deaths and experiencing many dangerous emergency situations was more than my mind and heart could cope with over the years.

In hindsight it´s clear as day that my body and mind told me for years that this career was not the one for me. But it took severe symptoms of post traumatic stress, panic attacks and loosing the ability to perform the simplest daily tasks on my own to wake me up to that reality. 

I felt hopeless for two years thinking I will never make it back to living life on my own terms. When I think about it know I honestly don´t know how I mustered the strength to survive this.