It’s been a long time since you’ve heard from me—and yet I had planned everything so differently!

After my last post about the exceptional situation of being without internet, I was hit by a cold and then Covid, so I spent the rest of my time in France separated from sweet Loulou, literally shivering in another apartment, hoping for improvement every day.

The only bright spot was my dear friend, who had returned from her trip with the children by then and brought me delicious food and so much compassion and human warmth with her daily visits that I felt better morally, at least.

All the strength I could spare, I directed towards taking care of my most important students and clients. Otherwise, it was a time of tremendous weakness, miserable freezing (even a mattress felt like it was drawing too much warmth from me, so I preferred the sofa), stress-induced sweating, incessant headaches, and restless waiting for improvement, since I never get a fever but instead process all stages of illness agonizingly slowly—on a low flame, so to say.

The only “highlight” was a visit to the doctor, to which my friend accompanied me to interpret if necessary. And lo and behold, even though he spoke at lightning speed, I understood him for the most part! That was a pleasant surprise.

I also unintentionally provided a comical interlude when, after asking my friend in “sign language”, I literally followed his instruction “Tirez la langue” by holding my tongue with one hand and trying to “pull it out”… The doctor, however, remained completely unimpressed and continued bubbling on…

As soon as my condition allowed, I met my friend for walks by the sea, and I also saw my dear Loulou a few more times—according to my friend, she was different after our farewell as well. Her husband later said she probably wasn’t quite satisfied with them anymore after the “Corinna Spa”… Oh, Loulou!

Ever so slowly I crawled back out of my pit, though there were setbacks again and again. On the day of my departure, my friend encouraged me to try once more to apply for a rehabilitation program, which gave me a tremendous moral boost. So although I set off with cold feet and a woozy head, I started feeling better with each passing day—thanks to much shorter travel stages than on the way there and to rediscovering my joy of driving (what a blessing a heated car seat can be!). Contrary to the pattern my mother propagated—to only start when you feel 100 percent well—I discovered I can move forward even at 60 percent, if much slower, mile after mile.

Arriving in Germany, my family doctor confirmed that I had had Corona and immediately gave me remedies for all the other infections that were still weakening my body. Since then, the intense freezing and tendency toward colds have continued, which partly clouded the overnight stays with my friends. And yet I wouldn’t want to miss these encounters!

The loveliest and warmest was with the dear new owners of my parents’ house—both physically and emotionally. They said I wasn’t a guest at all, but part of the family, the family member who had been missing. That’s how I felt too—in their beautifully newly furnished guest room, I felt more comfortable and at home in my parents’ former house than ever before!

Loaded with delicacies—also from my friend before—I set off like a Russian student after a visit to her parents to my next stopover before my departure for France: Stuttgart!

In an inexplicable way, I always feel slightly more comfortable, more alive, more attractive in this city.

This time I picked a good and affordable accommodation that allowed me to make my room exactly as warm as my body requires. (Who knows, maybe my body wants to signal to me that I should look for other climes? ;-)) And I met dear friends and also former colleagues of my sister at my own pace.

It was particularly touching to actually find books of hers in the university library, which I recognized by her signature on the flyleaf or a few handwritten notes. Thus, the 1200 books from her estate have found their way into a worthy corpus of books at her home university and are now available to countless students—just as she would have wanted!

Soon my departure for the first “official” housesit in the Dordogne is coming up—the route with many historical stops is already planned; now I just need to get various seeds and grains that are hard to get by in France, as well as gingerbread for my “hosts”.

I am very grateful for this time, which taught and teaches me to be even more patient with myself and my body. During the numerous official encounters—household insurance, driver’s license registration office, storage facility, police, fiber optic cable provider, bank, tax office, etc.—I increasingly managed to approach everything step by step and not panic.

For decades, I always had to handle all formalities under extreme time pressure alongside never-ending work units and was quickly thrown off track when everything didn’t immediately “flow smoothly”. Now I’m experiencing and learning that everything is solvable and even initially frightening authorities like the tax office and police are also just made up of people to whom you can—what a surprise! ;-)—actually talk!

It also became clear to me that with this reaction I was imitating a pattern of my father’s, who had to shoulder almost everything at home with few exceptions and had already internalized this role as a war child early on. This resulted in a mixture of being overwhelmed by having to solve tasks not appropriate for a child and the frustration of always having to do everything alone—a cocktail that I had apparently energetically absorbed.

Are you also familiar with stumbling blocks like this—when everything tightens up inside you, your breath becomes shallow, and you want to get this one thing behind you as quickly as possible?

Where the sovereign adult you normally are suddenly evaporates and you fall into behaviors and reactions that are rather typical of an overwhelmed child?

If you look at whatever currently lies ahead calmly and from the perspective of the adult you are today—is it really so frightening, or could a calm approach to this thing perhaps open up completely different perspectives?

Right now I’m surprised myself that my post, originally planned as a brief description of my stopover in Germany, is taking this turn. 🙂

But what if this realization alone from the illness-induced slowing down is already one of the gifts I was allowed to take with me—apart from the realization that I can also continue when I’m not one hundred percent healthy?

I’m exercising patience and probably going about everything more slowly, but I’m no longer letting myself be stopped!

In this spirit, I also wish you a little more patience with yourself—with how your body reacts, in uncovering and releasing internalized patterns, in exploring how you react to things TODAY and what would really do you good.

To put it into questions:

• How much patience can you have with your body today?
• Where are you repeating energetic patterns of your parents (and can simply let them go)?
• If you had no preconceived opinion about how you react to what and when—how are you doing RIGHT NOW with ______?
• What would really do you good RIGHT NOW?

I wish you a wonder-ful day!