It was pitch dark in the room and the middle of the night. I was lying in my wooden crib. I was probably three years old.

“Mama”, I called out, “Mama…”.

I was afraid. I was afraid of the dark, of being alone.

“Mama!”

Nobody came.

I could barely recognize a cupboard and the curtains in front of the window. There was no light.

There was nobody who comforted me.

“You cried a lot at night,” my mother told me years later. “But I could not always get up. I let you cry, and at some point, you stopped. When you were bigger, you climbed over the crib and wanted to sleep in our bed. But this did not work. I couldn’t sleep well.”

I know. I also remember climbing over the crib with all my strength with my short legs. I trudged to the door in my pajama, I could barely press down the door latch, I trudged along the corridor and opened the door to my parent’s room. I loved the smell of my mum’s bedsheets. I loved to feel her warm body. It felt safe.

I remember. She always carried me back into my small, dark room with the curtains and the cupboard.

For many decades, I did not understand my mother, why she acted this way.

I was so angry at her for not being able to give me the warmth and love I so badly wished to receive.

For years, I sat with psychotherapists, hours and hours, I lay on my psychoanalyst’s couch, and I cried a lot, tears of despair, of hopelessness, and of being lost in this world.

With the help of professionals, I analyzed myself, my mum, my dad. I tried to understand my mother. Why couldn’t she give me more love? I tried to understand my father. Why couldn’t he tell me that he loves me, that I’m enough?

Again, and again, I slipped off into the bottomless depths. If there had been a simple method to put an end to my life, I would have done it. I thought about it for the first time when I was 16, and I thought about it many years until I finally found the key to my happiness only a few years ago. But this will be another story at some other time.

Let’s come back to this little girl with her beautiful long blond hair and blue eyes. She was perfect. But she didn’t feel it. Her parents told her the opposite.

It was a Sunday afternoon. We mostly went for a walk after lunch. My mother wanted me to have my long hair to be either plaited or tied together or on top of my head. That Sunday, I wanted to be different. I don’t know what brought me to this thought. Did it happen at the church? Did someone mention my beautiful hair and suggest to me to keep it open? I don’t remember. But I remember I fought this fight with my mother to go for a walk with my hair open.

“You look like a witch”, my mum said, defeated.

I heard how she put myself down. But my pride to have won the game was bigger. I felt so different walking on the streets with my hair open. I was convinced that everybody would notice it.

My father did and he had his camera with him.

Unfortunately, the picture got lost, but I see it very vividly in front of my eyes. I sat there on a tree with my open hair – like a princess.

When we came home, I started looking at myself with my mum’s eyes. I saw my long, very fine hair hanging down my head in long strands and I didn’t think it looked so great anymore.

The way I looked at myself for many years was the way my parents saw me. I was far away from perfect; I wasn’t even enough.

It took me so long until I finally understood that my parents would look at themselves the same way, feeling not being enough or good enough. They are now in their nineties, and I get the impression that they haven’t changed much, and they would not always feel good about themselves which is sad.

Today, I recognize as well that my parents did the best they ever could do for me. They gave all. I’m grateful for this although it has been a very painful story for me for many years.

So, this was a small part of my story.

How about your story? Have you been struggling similarly?

Would you like to write your story?

Writing helps to heal wounds from the past. My clients experienced it.

Here is a special checklist I created for you to encourage you to do the same.

PS. Join my free Facebook Group “Believe You Can Write” and listen to my podcast “Living Without Fear” where other women tell how they overcame their struggles.

The post Writing My Childhood Story first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Writing My Childhood Story appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

Wouldn’t it be nice to find joy in writing?

I remember I was sitting in school at the back in the corner close to the windows and I was trying so hard to write a nice essay for my German teacher. I didn’t succeed.

Does this resonate with you?

My teacher was never happy with what I wrote. She was criticizing me that I didn’t put a personal touch into my essay. I used to stick too much to general statements.

No wonder, I was so afraid of opening up and showing what I was thinking.

Writing has a lot to do with mindset. Self-doubts and fear are the biggest blocks in writing.

Why?

When I got the chance to write my first article for one of the biggest Swiss Newspaper, “Die Neue Zürcher Zeitung”, I was so afraid of failure. As I had studied French literature, I received a French detective story to write a review about it and the author. It took my days, weeks, probably a whole month to finish this article. I always re-wrote it.

When I sent it to the editor, I was so surprised that she didn’t answer me, but just published the article, without changing much. What a surprise! But I felt so miserable, because I didn’t want to spend again weeks on writing one article. I wanted to be more effective.

The thing was that with every article, I got more self-confident. And that was exactly what I needed to be able to write apace. And I also discovered joy in writing for the first time in my life.

My dream and also my goal were to get a job as an editor at a daily newspaper. But these jobs were rather rare and the journalists, who got a job at the largest newspapers, stayed for their lifetime. I figured out that I had to work very hard. I applied for an internship at all Swiss German newspapers. Luckily, I got a chance at two different newspapers for three months. And this was my breakthrough in writing.

Writing one or even two big articles a day helped me to get into the flow.

And the most important thing I learnt was to write the whole story without reading back and editing. Once, I had all written to the end, I started editing.

This is also the method I always teach my book writing clients.

If you start writing and you read back, your inner critical voice pops up. You start criticizing your sentences. You re-edit, you fix three sentences, you add one or two and you never come to an end.

Does this sound familiar to you?

Whenever you have to write something, you remember your last writing experience and how big your suffering has been. That’s why it never changes. You already start with your negative state of mind, and it’s so logical that your mindset is always blocking you from having fun and feeling joy when writing.

Can you imagine that I feel when someone wrote something while staying in a flow or the way I described it before? You may not believe it, but I can. and I beg that my German teacher definitely did as well, when she was correcting my essays. I remember I was maybe writing five sentences and deleting three and I never succeeded in filling more than one and a half pages in two hours.

Although, I loved reading since I was a child. I was about ten years old and I had almost read all the books from my library except the special detective stories for boys. When I was asking my school librarian, what else she would recommend to me, she realized as well that there were not many books left, and she told me to ask my parents to take me to the big library in town.

Do you have similar memories?

My first writing client was my younger boy, now 14 years old. He didn’t like reading and writing at all, when he was younger. Whenever he had to write a summary for school, he was suffering so much, and myself as well sitting at his side. I tried different techniques with him.

I asked him to tell me the story before he started it putting into words. This helped already a bit.

Then, we worked on getting into the flow. What he used to do, was to write one sentence and then read again from the top. He spent hours on writing half a page. I was desperate. I told him not to read what he had written already. He wouldn’t believe me at the beginning. Slowly, but steadily, he got the point. I was so happy.

Last year, I realized what I have been able to teach him. Every Thursday, he had to write a short summary of his week for his teacher, and he allowed me to read it as well. There, I found long and funny reflections about his school week put together in a nice and definitely entertaining manner. I was so proud of him. He himself loved to write it and his teacher loved to read it as she told him.

So, if you were convinced that the joy of writing is something you were born with or it needs a special talent, I could help you in discovering the opposite.

Watch my video series on YouTube about how my writing journey started with a diary and how I overcame my self-doubts and how I published my first children’s book.

If you always dreamt of writing amazing texts or even your book, stick to it. You will get there, too. Believe me!

PS. If you like to get started with writing but you’re still afraid, sign in for my special Writing Course “Believe You Can Write”:

Follow me on Bloglovin!

The post Finding Joy in Writing first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Finding Joy in Writing appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

Have you ever thought about writing your book and your own story? I guess, you have. But then you gave up this idea again because self-doubts started popping up. Am I good enough in writing? At school, your teacher told you that you are not good at grammar or writing an essay.

But an inner voice has been telling you again and again, that you’d wish to write your book. Maybe, you’ve started already. You’ve been writing a few pages. While re-reading what you have written, you told yourself that this won’t go anywhere. There are better writers than you.

I know exactly what you might feel. I always wanted to write my book. I studied literature, I worked as a journalist and I always shut down my idea of writing a book. I didn’t feel good enough.

Do what you like

Joining a business coaching program, I was told to do what I like the most and turn it into a business. I didn’t believe my coaches at first. I was mistrusting. But I tried: I published my first children’s book because I thought with a children’s book I wouldn’t put myself too much in a window and I wouldn’t be judged as hard as with a book written for adults. It still took me a lot of courage, and I felt rather uncertain. Fortunately, I had success with my first book. This gave me the idea to help others with children’s books. I started my business with this.

The idea of writing my own story was still there. Should I dare to write it now? I was struggling a lot with the idea. But then, I jumped in very icy water. I created the book cover of my book and posted it on all my social media channels, saying I will start writing my story now titled “Living Without Fear”.

Looking at your life and understanding you better

I started my healing process by writing my story. It was amazing how all the puzzle pieces of my life came together. You may not believe; how powerful this feels when you look at your life and you start understanding for the first time why things happened as they did.

While writing my book, I started coaching others to do the same. What an amazing journey began! Usually, when my clients start their book-writing journey with me (for the moment I have a lot of female clients), they don’t even know what her book will be covering. Although, there is always this indestructible wish to write a book.

Helping others by finding their own blocks

One client didn’t even know which topic her first book will be when she booked my coaching for six months. We didn’t know each other, but when we met for the first time and when I was asking her a lot of questions, we found her topic after two hours and some tears on her side because of the emotional part of speaking about her life story. What is even more amazing in her story: Being a Pilates instructor, she chooses to write about pull-ups – something this graceful woman isn’t able to do yet, although she has got a lot of muscles having worked as a police officer in her former life. She wants to find out why she is not able to do pull-ups properly, and while writing and doing a lot of research, she is figuring out what is blocking her physically and mentally and what could be the exact reason for others, who have the same challenge.

Another client, having tried to work in so many professions and jobs in her life, started writing her book in order to find out where her mission shall guide her. She knew that she wanted to inspire others and help them not doing the same mistakes as she did. Re-writing her story which is a rather emotional process helps her now to heal and forgive herself for having needed many rounds in her life to start the thing she always wished to do in her earlier childhood: Being on a stage, speaking and inspiring others – a thing she wasn’t allowed to do because she grew up in a family of hard-working people.

Daily motivation with the podcast

My own book “Living Without Fear” was nearly finished, when the time with the Covid Virus and the lockdown started worldwide. Fear became such a big topic that I decided to wait for the publication of my story for a few more months because I want to integrate some chapters about this special time with Covid-19.

During this time, I started writing texts for my daily podcast on the same topic “Living Without Fear” including topics like self-worth, not feeling good enough, gratitude, or letting go, and I was very touched by the feedback from Indians listening to my daily episodes in their severe lockdown in their four walls and telling me that my positive thoughts gave them the motivation to stay alive.

I feel very grateful for bringing light into others’ lives, and for my clients helping heal and fulfill their life dreams.

If you want to get started with writing but you’re still afraid, check out my special Writing Program “Believe You Can Write” here:

The post Writing is Healing first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Writing is Healing appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

It has been an Indian woman living in Switzerland, who introduced me to Deepak Chopra’s meditation circle, half a year ago.

Since then, I’m doing my 20 minutes of guided meditation every day – a thing, which I dreamt at least 20 years of, but which I never succeeded in.

Why? I got so much distracted every time, distracted by my own thoughts. Whenever I tried to sit still and concentrate on my breath, it took me less than a minute and my ‘radio’ in my head started its show.

I call it ‘radio’ – these tons of thoughts running one after the other, starting with my daily program, what I have to do, what I should not do, what I missed to do the day before, then thinking of my challenges with my sons or people around me, and ending by the thought that I feel ashamed that I wasn’t able once more to concentrate on my breath without thinking a lot of other things.

How many times did I try to stop this ‘radio’ in my head and pushed the reset button to re-start meditating?

Until half a year, I was convinced that meditation is something for other people but not for me.

Deepak Chopra, an Indian-born American author and inspirational speaker, helped me to get silent inside.

For sure, it isn’t working all the time. Some days are still hard for me to be concentrated on Deepak’s words. But the soft music at the background and his mantra for every day helps me as well to breathe slowly and deeply and relax.

My first 21-day-meditation experience with him was centered on abundance, abundance in every sense of life, love, health, wealth, etc. There, I discovered GRATITUDE.

For sure, I knew what gratitude was and I had often felt it in my life before. But, concentrating on gratitude for every day I’m living, breathing, thinking… this was something totally new for me.

I don’t know when I had the idea to create a gratitude post on Instagram every day. But I don’t regret it a single moment. I’m even looking forward to posting a gratitude picture and a small sentence every single day. It belongs now to my daily ritual right after the meditation or, if I don’t have the time then, during the day.

Some of my friends started telling me that they love and enjoy seeing my gratitude posts every day, which fills me even with more gratitude.

Since I started meditating, my mindset shifted.

I grew up in a religious family. My parents, my younger brother and I went to church every Sunday, and we followed totally this big church community. I started going to the children Sunday school, when I was six or seven years old and I participated in all the church activities until I left Switzerland at the age of 20. The year in Paris gave me the courage to leave this community and to forget about religion and God and to go my way with Freudian psychology.

37 years after this, Deepak’s meditation brought me back to my spiritual side, but not anymore as rigid as it has been when I was a teenager.

I don’t believe in God. No, I don’t want to be dependent again.

I didn’t start to become religious again and reading the bible every day as I tried in my puberty years. But I started believing in something, which is bigger than me and which has a bigger plan than just mankind. You may call it ‘universe’ or something else. It doesn’t matter, which name one puts on it.

My mindset shifted though. I feel relieved. This relieve comes from the thought that I don’t have to feel responsible for all my actions and my being. I can let it go, and by ‘it’ I mean this huge package of responsibility.

I have replaced it by trust; trusting in myself, that I will be doing the right things, that I’m perfect as I am, that everything will be okay; and trusting in something bigger than me, which will be guiding me.

What a change after letting gratitude and trust coming into my life.

I’m extremely grateful for this. You cannot believe, what this means if you didn’t experience the same.

Have a look at my Instagram account (esther_buerki) and send me a message, if you feel like it. I’m looking forward meeting you.

The post Gratitude – my new Instagram journey first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Gratitude – my new Instagram journey appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

I can hardly believe it, but it’s real: my second children’s book is printed and waits to be shipped to Switzerland.

“Leonard and Lea” is the continuation of “Leonard and Loulou”, but you might read it first and you won’t miss anything of the whole story. In this book, Leonard doesn’t only have a cat as his friend, but also his new classmate Lea, who is laughed at by the others in school, exactly the same way as they do it with Leonard.

He experiences for the first time how it is to have a friend, who feels the same way as he does.

How did I write this story? Leonard, in real life my younger son, soon 14 years old and me, developed the storyline. It has been a year ago. We drove a few hours to a place in Germany, where I did a reading of the first book.

We started with the question, what would Leonard like to have as a new friend. We designed Lea: with red hair and a pink school bag. We invented her story, why she joined Leonard’s class in the middle of the school year. We asked ourselves how the two of them got to know each other better and how it came that they even met after school.

The plot got developed, step by step. Leonard helped me to create a natural story, and sometimes, he would tell me, that his classmates would not behave this way, and we shaped the continuation differently.

It has been so inspiring to work with my son on the story. When we got home from Germany, I started writing chapter after chapter. In between, I read the text to him. Most of the time, Leonard was excited about it. Sometimes, I needed to discuss again a situation with him, when I wasn’t sure whether it would make sense what I had in mind.

The story got quite a bit longer than the first one. But it was done rather quickly. The first reader was excited, too, as well as Teodora Puncheva, the art professor and illustrator of “Leonard and Loulou”. Her contribution with these wonderfully detailed and colorful illustrations seems even more dense to me, as if she got more familiar with the characters of human beings and the animals.

I’d love to create a trilogy and continue in a third book with Leonard’s story. There would be so many other episodes to talk about. Bullying at school is such a big theme nowadays, and the topic of feeling oneself not good enough is such a huge topic, even adults are suffering from it – including me.

If you like to discover the whole story of “Leonard and Lea” in German and English, order it here. There is even a special, numbered edition, which will be personally signed and dedicated to the one you choose.

Enjoy the story and the very beautiful illustrations!

The post A beautiful and touching second book first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post A beautiful and touching second book appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

What are the most touching moments during the readings of children’s books?

My very special moments are when small girls and boys start telling things like about a cat, who came to their house, who did this and that and how that felt or like today, how a small boy told a long, long story with plenty of unimportant details about moving and so on in order to reveal at the end how it was that the cat purred.

It is amazing to realize that my story about the boy Leonard and the cat named Loulou resonates with children.

But not only with children… Another touching moment was when an adult told me at my very first reading that my story reminded her so much of her beloved dog from childhood that she was moved to tears. Or one colleague bought my story because when he was a kid, his cat always walked him to school as Loulou does with Leonard in my story.

Today, at my first reading close to my Swiss hometown Winterthur, I didn’t expect a big audience. Fifteen minutes before the start, half of the restaurant was full of joyful, small and big children and even elderly people, and at the start, all 30 chairs were taken.

What a moment to stand in front of this big audience and to see all these open eyes and minds to listen to me!

I’ve been reading stories to children since many years. My two boys, now 13 and 15 and in puberty, listened to me every night. We read together so many books, we read all books written by Astrid Lindgren. We travelled with Jim Knopf and Lukas, the train conductor. We suffered with the figures of Brother Grimm, and when we didn’t have a book at our hands, I started inventing stories about an elephant who was too big because he loved eating, and how many times, my boys told me to continue the story about Frederic, the elephant.

Reading to a big audience like today is completely different. It is strange because I am not that close to the children and I cannot feel exactly how they perceive the story. That’s why I love to ask questions in between in order be able to hear what they have understood and what they have been thinking of it.

One thing I was reassured of today: Animals like cats and dogs have such a big impact on people’s lives.

It gives so much color to my life with my two sons. Besides, our cat story only started five years ago with two cats. Then, Loulou joined us, gave birth to four babies. We kept two of them. Meanwhile, we only have three cats because one of the babies decided to stay at the neighbor’s house. I could tell so many stories about our cats, how they disappeared, how we found them again, how many dead mice, but even more living mice had visited us, and how many of them, I had to catch. Funny moments, I can tell!

The sequel to the first book won’t talk about mice but will be the story about «Leonard and Lea», and there will be a dog playing a big role together with the cat Loulou. The story is already complete in my mind, and more than three-quarter of it written down. As soon as I have some quiet moments without running after mice, I will get it finished.

The post Touching children’s hearts first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Touching children’s hearts appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

The post Encouraging people to write their books first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Encouraging people to write their books appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

The post Conversation between brothers: Scene 24 first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Conversation between brothers: Scene 24 appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

Conversation between brothers: Scene 23

16.15 am after school

Little boy:    “Did you listen to what mom said?”
Big boy:        “No… why?”
Little boy:    “Don’t disturb me…”
Big boy:        “Oh… poor you… you’re feeling disturbed…”
Little boy:    “Yes… I said stop…”
Big boy:        “Oh… yes, I heard that. What’s your problem?”
Little boy:    “I have to do my homework now.”
Big boy:        “Go on…”
Little boy:    “But you’re disturbing me.”
Big boy:        “Oh… my little brother…”
Little boy:    “Leave me now…”
Big boy:        “Well… I see you want to do your homework.”
Little boy:    “Yes.”
Big boy:        “You’re such a eager beaver.”
Little boy:    “Stop insulting me…”
Big boy:        “Oh. You’re feeling insulted. Poor you.”
Little boy:    “Yes. Go away…!”
Big boy:        “Oh. You’re such an excellent scholar.”
Little boy:    “Stopppppp. ”
Big boy:        “Okay… you’re such an intelligent boy…!”
Little boy:    “Stopppppp.”
Big boy:        “You know. I’m cheesed off with school.”
Little boy:    “No wonder… with your intelligence!”
Big boy:        “Hey. Now, you’re insulting me. Stop.”
Little boy:    “Ha, ha, ha… you see how it feels!”
Big boy:        “I didn’t insult you as much as you did.”
Little boy:    “That’s what you think…”
Big boy:        “Yes…! But it’s true…!”
Little boy:    “No…!”
Big boy:        “Yes…! It’s true…!”
Little boy:    “No…!”
Big boy:        “Yes…!
Little boy:    “Stop!”
Big boy:        “You started!”
Little boy:    “No. You did.”
Big boy:        “Oh. What a liar.”
Little boy:    “Come on.”
Big boy:        “Mom. He’s so mean.”

The post Conversation between brothers: Scene 23 first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Conversation between brothers: Scene 23 appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

4.10 p.m. on a holiday afternoon

Big boy:        “Who is your girl-friend?”

Little boy:    “I don’t have any girl-friend.”

Big boy:        “What? Are you sure?”

Little boy:    “Sure enough.”

Big boy:        “But who’s writing you messages?”

Little boy:    “You’re so curious.”

Big boy:        “Tell me!”

Little boy:    “How about your girl-friend?”

Big boy:        “Girl-friend?”

Little boy:    “Yes. Come on!”

Big boy:        “I don’t have. Girls are all b…!”

Little boy:    “I don’t believe you.”

Big boy:        “You know my school mates.”

Little boy:    “What’s wrong with them?”

Big boy:        “They behave in such a daffy way.”

Little boy:    “I know…”

Big boy:        “I cannot stand it.”

Little boy:    “I’m glad. The girls of my class are different.”

Big boy:        “Wait… they’ll soon be the same way.”

Little boy:    “O my god!”

Big boy:        “And they always stick together…”

Little boy:    “Yes… I saw them during the break.”

Big boy:        “I cannot talk to them any more.”

Little boy:    “Fortunately, we’re boys…”

Big boy:        “Oh… yes!”

The post Conversation between brothers: Scene 22 first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Conversation between brothers: Scene 22 appeared first on Swiss Made Story.