Living, breathing, being in our often mostly online worlds feeds something inside of us. I just wrote an Instagram post about why I think becoming more isn’t the answer. Yet it’s all social media seems to be about: self-branding, manifesting, co-forcing things into shape. We’re constantly telling ourselves we’re not enough. We’re thinking, rather than feeling. We’re driven from the outside rather than the inside. We make moodboards that look pretty, but feel like work. While avoiding the true work.

I want to find inspiration in the everyday, not on trips, not through a curated apartment or a new wardrobe or a different city. Something more internal than that. The joy of exploring life from the inside. Can we love colors, materials, shapes, being creative, taking pictures, writing, without getting lost in thousands of open tabs of other people’s lives? Can inspiration come from within instead of always from without? Can we listen to our own rhythm instead of borrowing health hacks and routines from others?

Portraying our life always makes it into something artificial. It’s fun, and I’m part of it too. But it shapes our view from the outside in. We start thinking in content.

The time when our daughter was born was probably the most inspiring time in my life, and still is. The growth it evoked. The things I learned about myself. About my partner. About life. It wasn’t something I got to pick, narrate or control, but something that found me. Because (unknowingly) I was open to be found. I was forced to be still and could not search for the next best thing.

I think I have never done so little and yet lived so intensively. The quieter it gets on the outside, the louder it gets on the inside. Though inner doesn’t automatically mean depth. There are so many programs running. So many chances every day to catch yourself in the act. What I’d been experiencing as boring, my everyday life these past weeks, is actually the real deal.

I want to write about motherhood. But every time I read something about it, I notice myself reading all the way to the end, comparing, thinking, underlining things mentally, and then wondering what I actually took from it.

Motherhood is so vulnerable, so intimate. And it’s so important that we talk about it. But how honest can we really be while we’re still living it? While also protecting our children, our partnerships, our families, ourselves.

Maybe there isn’t always a takeaway. No lesson. No clean conclusion. And maybe that’s exactly what motherhood often feels like. The aha moments come many moons later. That’s at least what I keep noticing, while our daughter will turn eight months soon.

Motherhood is all-consuming. Time, identity, space. And for the last few months I simply couldn’t find myself in it. Until I managed to feel motherhood as a part of me, instead of as my new identity. Even though my identity has of course changed. It just doesn’t have to be the only thing.

What I noticed along the way: I unfollowed most motherhood accounts after a few months. There was almost a thin layer on top that didn’t feel authentic(?). I could feel it even when I couldn’t name it. But there are people I’ve followed for years. Through every season of my life. Accounts that move with the rhythm of life.

The accounts that keep on giving…

1/ Jenna Zoë: Wisdom in words

2/ Elaine Huntzinger: All things TCM & Holistic Beauty

3/ Eliza Parchanska: Food as inspiration

4/ Marie von Behrens-Felipe: Grounding aesthetics

5/ BECK by Rebecca Zeijdel-Paz: Warmth & inviting to dream

Thanks for being here. And for reading all the way to the end — even without a takeaway. — M

– I’m 33 and still can’t cook. You should have seen the smile on my face when I made my daughter her first carrot purée with our Thermomix. I did that, haha. Thinking of turning this endeavour into a series — “30-something holistic health coach learning to cook”.

– I think I have never done so little and yet lived so intensively. Becoming a mother opened a gate I'm ready to step through — the quieter it gets on the outside, the louder it gets on the inside. Though inner doesn't automatically mean depth. There are so many programs running. So many chances every day to catch yourself in the act. What I'd been experiencing as boring — my everyday life these past weeks — is actually the real deal.

– The last sequin piece I bought, I was 17. These pants feel modern and not like sequins.

– LOVE these drawings by artist Anna Zimmermann.

– I like saving the same things over and over again. It shows me what I truly like. Also after time passing by. What colours and shapes speak to my soul not my conditioned brain.

– I get flash-forwards, not flash-backs these days. Imagining how my daughter sees me and lies in my arms when I’m 90 years old. Being a mother.

– One thing that I drink religiously is a classic Earl Grey with a bit of cashew milk. This café in Brussels looks so lovely and has the best drink menu one could imagine.

– I still haven’t committed to a pair of Ballerinas for a couple of years now, because I cannot decide. That’s crazy, right? The greatest example of how not deciding keeps you stuck on a bigger level.

– Starting solids with my daughter is probably the reason why I’m currently seeing food through a different lens. It’s my main inspiration atm.

– For long, I truly thought healing needs healing methods. It doesn't — it can, but it’s a little more complex than that. Actually, it’s just letting go. A great reminder.

– This made me smile.

– Grocery shopping as a luxury. Lately, we’ve been ditching the car and walking to get our groceries. I just wish we had a Happier Grocery here.

Happy Monday (if it's Monday — losing track of time here). X

But also realizing something else: that I am done waiting for the right moment, the right plan, the right version of myself to begin. For a long time, my strength was exactly that — breaking down complexity, structuring, and analyzing before daring to move. It’s what I was paid for. And I am quietly stepping away from it. What I want, first and above all, is to be human. Not a machine. And to trust the inner clarity that I know always finds its way back to me.

During my pregnancy, I thought I had made space for my new life. Looking back, this was merely the beginning. I made space for our daughter so that we could take care of her. I assumed I’d have space for myself as well. Instead, we seemed to have arrived at a stage of adult life where everything revolves around which friend to visit next or which friend to have over next. Weeks passing by — and it feels like life is too.

So this is me, returning. Trying to bring my notes into some kind of order and share them here. Finding my way back into the rhythm of creating, as I slowly find my way into the rhythm of being a mother.

Some of these notes go back years. Long before I became a mother, I was trying to figure out how to take care of myself. What brought me here, truly, was years of digestive issues, chronic migraines, and depression.

For a long time, I looked outside for help and solutions. Something new to learn. A skill to acquire, a technique to train. I was adding layers instead of removing them — even when they all claimed they would lead me back to my essence. They were just another coping mechanism dressed up as healing.

What I truly learned — slowly, and only recently — is that the people who live in their purpose have so much more to give than just another retreat, healing session, or product. They offer something greater. True authenticity. A space to be listened to, and at the same time, to listen closely to what we tell ourselves.

They are not here to help us function in a life that is not designed for us. Or to treat symptoms that are the product of that life. They are here to open something.

Seeing life as the medicine itself — I used to hate this saying. And then, somewhere in the past two years, I quietly understood it. Every day presents a chance to learn and grow, if we allow ourselves to step outside the current for a moment. Not too close, so you get swept away — but close enough to acknowledge, and choose to respond differently. In a way that is aligned with who you actually are.

We have all heard this before. And yet we keep falling back into our own patterns. Even now, with more awareness, I see on a daily basis how quickly it happens.

Everyone has to find what resonates for themselves. But what I have always loved is being an open book to the people I care about — sharing what helped me when they found themselves in their own difficult stretches.

So that is what this is. A curated, personal, deeply tested list of healers and practitioners across Germany. For every chapter of my life, there were the ones I turned to, the approaches that actually worked. Here are the ones I keep coming back to:

• Eike Ahrens OSTEOPATHY & ROLFING · BERLIN

  “He’s not a regular osteopath — and I’ve been to many. What sets Eike apart is the depth he works on: tissue, organs, the whole system. You feel the before and after immediately. He brings everything back into flow, back into place. His work is in a category of its own.”

• Beckers & Bethge HOLISTIC MEDICINE · BERLIN

  “I first came to them for a full health check-up and to get a grip on my chronic migraines. Years later, they are still my most trusted medical alliance — for maintaining my health day-to-day, for emergencies, and for the weeks leading up to giving birth. The kind of doctors you don’t know you’re missing until you find them.”

• Anke Wolfert HOLISTIC HAIR, FACE & BODY RITUALS · BERLIN

  “I came for a massage and immediately knew this was something else entirely. So much more flows into her work than hands on a body. Her full-body treatments — body gua sha, reiki, facial — feel like a week at a spa condensed into a single afternoon. An incredibly intuitive soul.”

• Herr Dipl.-Med. Lay Aung ACUPUNCTURE · BERLIN

  “Such an authentic experience.”

• Luisa Carla Hartmann ASTROLOGY & ASTROCARTOGRAPHY · BERLIN

  “My very first birth chart reading — and so many ‘yes, that’s exactly it’ moments in one session. But the real gift was astrocartography. A tool I hadn’t heard of before, that suddenly helped me understand why my time in New York had felt so uniquely significant. Geography and soul, mapped together.”

• Silke Liederbach MEDIUM, MENTOR & CONSCIOUSNESS TEACHER · FRANKFURT

  “What Silke does, above all, is show you your own blind spots. She encourages you to live from your essence, to find your calling, and actually inhabit it. Hard to put into words. Easy to feel.”

• Friederike Kleinert SOUND BATH HEALING · FRANKFURT

  “The most beautiful sound bath healings I have experienced. You travel to places inside yourself you didn’t know existed.”

• Louka & Paulo BESPROKE PRIVATE RETREATS · MALLORCA

  “They invite you into their beautiful home in a remote corner of Mallorca — a place with a very particular energy. You are the only guest. You are cooked for, treated with bodywork and massage, and the stay is entirely shaped around what you need. A retreat of a completely different kind.”

There are also some I loved deeply who have since retired or moved on — my go-to healer in Berlin Pankow, who worked with bioresonance therapy and Wingwave among other things; the mother of Helen from Yogibar Berlin, who regularly visited and first brought craniosacral therapy into my life; and Cordula in Hamburg, who introduced me to red light therapy long before home panels became a thing.

Some things come to you exactly when they need to. And I hope this does too.

X Marlene

So I sat down to read through my notes, without knowing exactly why — maybe to remember, maybe to release.

These are fragments from the past nine months. Small learnings, quiet realizations.

Nothing to teach — just what it felt like to become two. And what I feel isn’t talked about that much yet.

I

Creating life. Feeling less alive*.

How ironic.

*at least during the first 4 months

II

You truly understand self-worth when everything you used to rely on falls away —

when your body changes beyond recognition,

when your mind loses its sharpness,

when all that’s left is surrender.

And in that surrender, you connect with love and life in their purest form —

something the mind can’t grasp,

something words can’t capture.

III

I did some of the hardest things in my life

while having the lowest energy I’ve ever known.

IV

Sometimes I can sense my baby’s soul moving through me —

as if it’s speaking through me,

shaping how I act, what I say, what I feel.

It’s not just hormones.

You can tell the difference.

It’s their essence blending with yours —

a quiet dialogue between two souls,

sharing one body for a while.

V

No one talks about how isolating pregnancy can feel.

Maybe this is a soft way of returning — by sharing what it feels like to become someone new. It feels good to write again, even if just in whispers.