Butterflies are an analogy for transformation and the beauty that may arise from it. The act of metamorphosis therefore is a great analogy 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 in close contact with the natural world.
The human behind the dance
at present
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 is quite important to me and I have been pondering about it a lot. In the past two years that is when I felt like a leaf blown away by the wind. Swirling around, 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. Bureaucracy swallowed me alive on top of a medical condition that Western medicine says to be incurable (a statement which I decided not to accept) - and so my journey began: Not only had I to learn what true wellbeing means, but also where the individual boundaries of my organism are. Initially, all this happened whilst I was bearing great physical and psychological pain. Today, I can say that I have improved. I am not "recovered" (yet) but on a good way to rebuild my life. As you might anticipate, healing is an ongoing task, and making my health the single-most priority will be a daily practice, for the rest of my life.
We give life meaning through our actions, but also through love, and finally through suffering.
Two years ago, I would have described myself as a 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.
Writing down my achievements today feels a little odd given that those once defined so much of who I thought I had been. I do not intend to diminish myself here, yet I have come to realise what the price was to be so driven - and nobody had ever told me. I suppose, there were not many I could have picked up clues from and how would there be in a Western world that promotes all the very things that I so perfectly portrayed? Do not get me wrong: I certainly enjoyed large parts of my past. It was wild! Aotearoa. Mongolia. These experiences are part of my becoming and thus every here and there, you will find some bits reminisced and referred to.
the past
the future
Living a quiet, isolated life at present, often observing the leaves at play in the breeze - for hours, is a deeply spiritual as much as a creative experience. There is no such thing as boredom. Even if I have "nothing" to do, sooner or later an idea will appear. Blossom to light from some back corner of my mind. Most of my mental inventions might never make it into practice. However, there are a few sticky ones that I truly intend to pursue (somehow, somewhen). For example, I wish to return to Mongolia and spend a full year in the high Gobi Altai. I have to find and meet one particular nomad man to whom I owe a thank you and write an autobiographical book. (I had already lived in Mongolia in 2016, and spent time there in 2015.) Next winter, I may pull a manuscript together about what I went through in the past two years. Metamorphosis is its title. Long-term I wish to gather the wisdom of Indigenous cultures and adjust my lifestyle accordingly. I wish to rewild. This is an existential desire because I must never forget what the past years have taught me i.e., to be gentle, humble, calm, less busy, and more observant. Life is a process in which I am striving to exist in tune with the natural world and my human nervous system. I wish to live each day healthily as if it were the last. Fearless of death. In love with life.
What about the wild times and wilderness adventures?
No worries!
Stories about those will be
part of this dance, too.
Mongolia
Aotearoa
Swiss Alps
United Kingdom
