Not given up. Returned

Sometimes your heart leads you not where you thought you would end up. And yet, the journey was not in vain.

There are decisions in life where there is no simple right or wrong. Only this deep knowledge that you cannot stay, even though leaving hurts almost just as much.

My return from Australia to Switzerland was one such decision.

I didn't simply leave a country behind. I left behind a life that had been many years of my life. And the hardest thing of all: My children remained in Australia.

But before I was even ready to make this decision, there was a time when I no longer knew where my path would lead. I had hopes, dreams, and I believed in certain things that I was convinced would one day find their place in my life.

But not everything we believe in becomes reality.

Some things remained a hope. Some fell silent. And some things I eventually had to let go of, even though I wasn't ready to for a long time.

The Sea and the Stars

During exactly this time, the sea and the sky became something special to me. When everything inside me was loud, there was the roar of the waves. When I had no answers, I could look up at night and for a moment simply be still.

The sea demanded no explanation from me. The stars didn't want to know if I was right or wrong. They were simply there.

The sea became the place I went when I no longer knew what to do with my thoughts. There I could cry, doubt, be angry, and be still. With my feet in the sand and that endless horizon before me, some things became clearer. Not immediately. Not in a miraculous way. But little by little.

There I began to pull myself together again. To stand up for myself. To make decisions, even when they hurt. And eventually, not just to hope that something would change, but to go out and make it happen myself.

This image was also created during this time. A woman before an endless sea, her arms wide open, with a sky full of stars above her.

When I look at it today, I don't see a woman who already had all the answers. I see a woman who slowly found the courage again to take her life into her own hands.

For me, it became an image of liberation.

Not because I suddenly had all the answers. But because I had eventually stopped fighting against what I had known deep inside myself for a long time. I wanted to stand up for myself. For what I longed for. For a life that I believed was waiting for me on the other side of the world.

In Switzerland.

Maybe that sounds brave today. At the time, it didn't feel that way. Because following this feeling meant leaving behind almost everything that had been my life until then.

And eventually I knew: I will go.

Back to Switzerland

There are hardly any words for what it means for a mother to get on a plane and know that thousands of kilometers will soon lie between her and her children. To this day, this distance is one of the things in my life that hurts. You might get used to time zones, video calls, and goodbyes at the airport. But not to not simply being able to hold your children when you want to.

And yet, I went.

I went back to Switzerland. Back to a country I had longed for for a long time. Back to my roots, to familiar things, to this feeling of home that had never completely faded over all those years.

But there was more. There were hopes. Ideas of a life I had believed in. Things that had been so real to me that I was ready to go a path whose price I knew very well.

But not everything we believe in becomes reality.

Recognizing this after I had left so much behind was perhaps one of the most painful experiences of this whole story.

Because suddenly I was there, where I had desperately wanted to return – but the arrival I had imagined did not exist.

Behind me lay a life I could not simply return to. My children were thousands of kilometers away. And before me lay a life that looked completely different from the one I had taken this step for.

Some things remained a hope. Some fell silent. And some things I eventually had to let go of, even though I wasn't ready to for a long time.

Perhaps that is why "coming back" eventually meant something completely different from what I had originally thought. I had returned to Switzerland. But the much longer journey was the one back to myself.

The Sea Was Left Behind

And perhaps that is also part of this story: The sea that had given me so much in Australia, I could not take with me.

I still miss it to this day. This feeling of standing by the water, looking out into the distance, and being able to breathe again for a moment.

But something of that time has remained. There I had learned to stand up for myself and found the courage to go a path without knowing where it would lead me.

Not everything turned out the way I had imagined it back then. My children are still far away, and some decisions still accompany me today. But new things have also emerged. I have started living, loving, laughing, and making plans again. And I have created something of my own with DreamOn.

Maybe it is no coincidence that DreamOn today is full of things that stand for special moments and little glimmers of light. Candles, little rituals, and gifts that are allowed to mean something. Because today I know how valuable exactly these little things can sometimes be.

That is why when I look at this image today, I don't just see the sea I left behind. I see the woman who back then was ready to stand up for what she believed in – even if life ultimately made a different story out of it.

I still miss the sea.

But I took the courage I found there with me.

Séverine 💫