Butterflies are an analogy for transformation and the beauty that may arise from it. The act of metamorphosis therefore is a great image for my work. It too is the very source of my creativity and, likewise, it can be used well as an awareness-raising framework for acknowledging that the process of metamorphosis is a quite difficult undertaking. Something that requires the art of dancing. To take a step, and then explore if it suited the flow of the sequence. If not, one might have to step back. Learning to dance with butterflies requires both: discipline and ease - and, eventually, it will lead to finding a new state of flow and well-being closely connected to the natural world.



the human behind the dance
It is nothing short of a challenge to describe who I would be. Being a human is my species. Being a woman, my gender. Being a scientist, my former education, and Enna is my artist name.
But who am I?
This question... I have been pondering about it a lot. In the past years that is when I felt like a leaf blown away by the wind. Directionless, lost, incapacitated. I fell severely ill in mid-2022 and was made redundant after ten days of sick leave. I dropped out of my "dream job" and decided to end my overseas life by returning to my country of origin. Germany. The decision to do so, sadly, invited me into hell. Family trauma was reactivated, the culture clash was massive, and the loss of my social life was all-embracing on top of a condition that Western medicine says to be incurable. However, I did not accept this death-sentence like kind of a statement - and so my journey began: Not only had I to re-learn what true wellbeing means, but also where the individual boundaries of my organism are. Initially, all this happened whilst I was experiencing high levels of pain. Partially even being bed-bound. Today, I can say that I have improved. I am not "recovered" but on my individual way to rebuild life. As you might anticipate, wellbeing is an ongoing task, and making my health the single-most priority will forever be the most crucial of my daily practices. It is a challenge, yet pierced with moments of life.
We give life meaning through our actions, but also through love, and finally through suffering.
the past
A few years ago, I would have described myself as an exceptionally well-educated soil scientist and journalist. A woman who was working for local government in Aotearoa New Zealand. She was young, clever, successful, active, sporty, and social, a surf lifeguard volunteer - in short: she was meeting all expectations that society, family, friends, and work placed on her. She had been raised in this way. Seldomly said she no. Certainly was she a perfectionist. She got many scholarships. Her Master of Science degree was a straight 1.0 average. Her PhD was accepted without revisions. She experienced a wild life, not only at the antipode but also in other countries like the UK, Mongolia, and Europe as a whole.
the future
Most people tend to talk about goals when they refer to the future. I am not. Because goals implies the pressure to reach a certain achievement at a certain point in time, I rather prefer the term "intentions". And so my first and foremost intention for the future is to live a life with as much wellbeing as I can, healthwise that is. Health is a high good and to retain a balanced health appears to be increasingly more difficult in a globalised world... Another intention is: connection. I wish to build a life based on interrelationship to the natural world and, if possible, other human beings. Nervous system regulation is my new lifestyle, meaning that present and future interactions will have to value this principle. One project that I intend to pursure next winter will be to pull together a book manuscript: Metamorphosis its title. Longer-term... I have got a few ideas. Such as to gather the wisdom of Indigenous cultures like I was gifted to experience in 2016, when I lived in Mongolia. To rewild my human soul is an existential desire because never must I forget what the years of chronic illness are teaching me/have taught me. Ultimately, I intend to live each and every day as if it were the last. Invite presence and mindfulness into consciousness and be fearlessly in love with life. As a survivor of severe trauma-transformation, I wish to become a living example of that change is hard but not generally imposible - and actually brighter than remaining in a status quo.