For most of my adult life, I've felt too tired to choose my outfits creatively, and when I did, they were ruled by the expectations of others or the judgment I was afraid would come my way once I stepped out of the house.

So I would either completely give up on the idea of getting dressed and choose what felt comfortable, easy and as a consequence, boring. Or I would choose based on what was already digested enough by culture so it feels trendy, expected, and safe. None of these options really represented my way of getting dressed. None of them fulfilled my wish for expression through my body and presence.

As a child I loved dressing up. I loved fashion, I loved choosing my own outfits, and I loved how confident they made me feel. I loved expressing moods, playing roles, embodying characters through my clothes but as time passed, I forgot how to do it.

The same way I forgot what it’s like to try new things without the fear of looking silly. The same way I forgot what it’s like to make choices based on pure intuition and excitement without the fear of failing.

I still remember the first time I felt afraid of how others would perceive the way I dressed. I was 10 years old, and while I was getting ready for school, I picked up a small package of body crystals I had received for Christmas. I chose two small round pieces and I placed them in the outer corner of my eyes. I remember looking in the mirror, seeing them glitter. And I remember thinking "I look so cool."

My mom was dropping me off and I was riding in the back of the car. As we approached the gate of the school and my mom slowed down for me to get out, a sense of terror went over my body and without thinking twice, I removed the crystals as fast as I could, before anyone could get a chance to see me.

I kept both tightly in my hand with the plan to find a trashcan. I remember looking down at them as I entered the school, feeling a mix of adrenaline and guilt. Even though I was so young, I knew I had betrayed myself. And I knew there was no turning back.

So on that Saturday evening, my inner child was coming out to play. I wanted a simple black top that covered my chest and stomach. She chose a fun tube top I had bought 2 summers ago and never felt confident to wear. I wanted black trousers to look elegant and slim, she chose baggy denim for fun and contrast because she thinks it makes us look “cool”, as well as big statement ceramics necklaces that we had made together some months ago.

For the shoes, I wanted black havaianas. She chose flip flop kitten heels from Melissa. Her favorite shoe brand. I immediately thought how uncomfortable they would potentially be. She did not care a bit. In her eyes, we looked cool.

She was excited about the look, and despite how I was feeling, despite how insecure I felt, that excitement was exactly what I had been looking for.

I don’t have a very interesting ending to this evening. It was quite normal. As lovely as a Saturday evening with your girlfriends can be. It was wholesome and warm. I had a glass of white, I complained about my feet twice, and we shared fish and chips at a bar.

But the outfit choice. That made the night extraordinary. Which might feel like a small detail and while I would have enjoyed the evening just as much as if I had worn an all black look with havaianas, I would not have written about it here. It would not have made me think and question. And above all, I would not have had the chance to claim my body and give a second chance to the little girl who was not confident enough to wear the body crystals to school.

Since I was 10, I've lost count of how many times I changed an outfit because I thought it was too much. And I bet you have too. How many times do we do the same with our careers, our whole lives? Choosing the safe path and sticking to it. Settling down, getting married, having children. Not too early, not too late. Just at the perfect time. Leading a conventional life, whatever the hell that means.

A conventional life feels right because it is expected. And whatever is expected is easy to control. It’s anti-risk. But the older I get the more I realize nothing about our nature is conventional.

So I want an extraordinary life. As unconventional as it gets.

I wanna move countries on a whim, I wanna open the business, close the business, change the business, move back, build the house, then sell the house, then travel and then…

I wanna look back when I am on my deathbed and feel like I lived life under my own rules. I wanna feel my choices were my choices, that my body belonged to me. I wanna be called crazy and wild and fun and brave.

I want a life ruled by my inner child, because she has all the answers to what truly makes me happy. She knows what it’s like to own her body. She knows what it’s like to be fearless and shameless. And I want to make sure she is honored in every choice I make from here.

What you don't yet know is how showing myself took me from years of not being able to make a living from my work to finally becoming a full-time ceramic artist. How it took me from a couple of pieces sold here and there, very sporadically, to webshop updates that sell out in minutes.

For years, I had been hiding behind the business, behind the brand. But this shift was the proof I needed that the connection between me and my work ran deeper than I could ever have known.

The moment I started to work on how I saw my story, my sense of self-worth, and how I wasn't allowing myself to take up space, was the moment my business expanded.

The truth is, and I will hold your hand as I tell you this:

There is an energetic connection between being seen and succeeding as a creative business.

The work you create is a direct reflection of you. It holds your heart, your soul, your story. And once you see that your fear is the very thing standing between you and the future you want, the only choice is to meet the parts of you that are still afraid, and to remind them that you are safe.

So here is how I did it:

1. I Named My Resistance

The stronger our resistance towards doing something in life, the more important it is to our evolution. You can bet on it.

But the tricky thing about resistance is how we tell ourselves one million stories to avoid looking at it.

I remember all the excuses I would use to justify why I wasn’t showing up online. How I kept repeating I didn’t have the time. How I didn’t know video editing. How other people would judge me for trying. How showing up online would make me less credible as an artist. How I was not beautiful enough, interesting enough, talented enough.

I was so desperate to believe these things that I would get to the point where I would tell myself avoiding social media was my way, as an artist, of “refusing to commodify myself under patriarchal capitalism.”

Complete. Total. Desperation.

2. I Challenged the Narrative

Once I realized how little kindness and support I gave myself, I knew I had to challenge it. That was not my voice. It had been instilled in me by external ideas of who I am and what spaces I am allowed to occupy.

So I wrote down all the excuses and I created counterarguments as to why they were not truths. Every time I thought "I don't have time" I would tell myself "I can use the time I spend scrolling mindlessly on social media to actually create my own content."

Every time I thought “I don’t know how to edit” I would tell myself “No one does until they start.”

I also realized that staying hidden as a way to “fight patriarchal capitalism” was the best way to keep the system exactly as it is. I thought I was going against it. But I was playing by its rules, choosing exactly what I had always been taught. To stay hidden, to stay silent, and to stay small. While others used the space to build their names and careers.

My fears of being judged were nothing more than my judgment towards myself. And slowly I ran out of excuses until I couldn’t choose anything besides actually taking action.

3. I Made Peace with Where I Was

By welcoming other creatives into my studio, I noticed how many of the women around me never felt they were ready, including myself. The work is not enough, the talent is not enough, the setup is not enough.

But who decided we needed to be further along? To be a certain way, look a certain way, live a certain way? To have it all figured out before our voices were worthy of being heard?

I decided to make peace with who I was, with where I was. With the home I had, with the business I had, with the work I was producing. Of course I had a clear vision of what I wanted to achieve and I was not willing to compromise. But I also made sure I had a clear vision of how far I had come. Of how that version of me, the one who didn’t feel ready, also deserved to have a voice.

Because we are always changing, always evolving, and there is always room for growth. But there is also so much truth in the in-between. So much power in the becoming.

4. I Devoted Myself to the Vision

Devotion is my way of committing through difficult choices. It became clear to me I had to be devoted to my work, to the dreams I always carried with me, to the version of me who already had it all, and to the space I occupy in the world.

Your vision is a great way to connect to your “why”, and your why is what keeps you devoted. It is the foundation beneath your vision, the force behind the choices you make. When resistance creeps in, your why brings you back to action. It gives meaning to the work, structure to your practice, and courage to keep going.

When you are connected to your why, deeply and clearly, you are no longer looking for external approval. You are answering a call.

5. In an Unkind World, I Offered Myself Kindness

For the longest time I had been my worst enemy. I would put everyone else’s opinions and expectations in front of my dream. I would be the first one to doubt myself. I didn’t know how to offer myself compassion, patience, unconditional love.

But someone once told me: how we speak to ourselves is how we speak to the child we once were.

So I decided to change the way I treated the little girl I used to be. The one who was pure and well-intentioned. Who had so much love and awe for life.

If you are looking for this connection, you can try what I did:

Find a photo of yourself as a child. Keep it somewhere you will see it often. In your journal, on your bathroom mirror, or as the background on your phone.

Every time you begin to question your worth, look at that photo. Remember that how you speak to yourself is how you are speaking to them. How you judge yourself is how you are judging them.

Offer yourself the kindness you have always deserved.

A simple task that is incredibly healing.

6. I Got Angry

We all know that being a woman in a capitalist, patriarchal society is a challenge. Many of us have witnessed the women in our lives give up on their dreams for the sake of family or societal expectations. We are often raised to be quiet, small, and invisible. And until not too long ago, many spaces, including those in the art world, were reserved for men, limiting our visibility and the opportunities available to us.

These cultural messages make it difficult for women to claim their space, and there are many layers of this conditioning that we must begin to untangle if we want to understand how to change this reality.

One place to begin is by acknowledging how difficult it can be for women to even consider themselves artists. In a world that tells us “good women” do not take up space, self-expression becomes a struggle. And in a world where women are still so underrepresented in galleries and museums, it becomes even harder to imagine art as a viable path.

To inform yourself is to radicalize yourself.

And that’s what I did.

Changing the way I was operating was how I started challenging these systems. Being kind to myself, celebrating my work, using my voice, were all ways of doing exactly that.

Knowing all of this, choosing to be seen becomes something much bigger than your dreams or your business. It becomes an act of courage. Every time you show up, you are moving against generations of conditioning that told you to stay small.

It is also an act of service. When you hide yourself, you hide your art, and you withhold from others everything your work could offer them. Your story might be exactly what someone needs. And your visibility opens doors not only for you, but for every woman watching who has not yet found her courage. By allowing yourself to be seen, you give others permission to do the same.

7. I Finally Took Action

Taking action looked like slow progress. Posting occasionally here and there, being too precious about how people would perceive me, my page, my work.

For a long time, very little happened. I was still choosing fear, and that was impacting my business. Until one day, I got angry enough. And anger can be a great fuel to move through stubborn stagnation.

So I made myself a promise. One video a day, on Instagram, for thirty days. No waiting to feel ready. No editing it to death. Just showing up, every day, whether it felt good or not.

And so I did. Sometimes while crying. Not kidding. Crying out of exhaustion from having to make “another video,” out of hopelessness that this would get any easier. But I did it. And as cliché as it sounds, this was a turning point in my life.

Because almost three years later, I am still here. I am still posting. I have a community of 128k on Instagram. I have a business that supports me fully. And I am freaking proud that I never gave up.

It’s your turn

The process I just described, the fear, the hiding, the slow pace, is what I had to go through to understand that there is a system to this work. There is a system to turning your passion into a business.

In August I am opening The Guided Edition, a small mentoring group for artists, writers, and creatives.

It’s where I personally walk you through the system of uniting your personal branding, business, social media, and belief work into your blueprint for success.

In this program I work with a small group of people who are ready to be fully seen, and who understand the importance of building a business structure that puts them, and their passion, front and center.

There I teach my approach to business as a sensitive creative. And it ends with a social media challenge where you will post a video a day for 30 days. I will be there to answer your questions, offer you my perspective, share my approach, and give you feedback.

If this is the work you are ready for, the application is now open. I will ask you a few questions, so we can both feel whether it is the right time to work together.

Apply to the mentoring group

And if you wanna know more about the program, you can read more here.

I looked down at the rushed notes I had scrawled in my journal during the session. One line called me from the page before I had even finished reading: "Success will come, once you link your image to your business."

As a very shy Leo sun and moon who had never truly felt like a Leo, this was probably the worst thing she could have told me. Because I knew exactly what it meant: show up online. Show your face. And I had no intention of doing that.

But did that mean I was setting up my business to fail?
It turned out, I was

Months passed. I avoided thinking about it. But from time to time, her words would find their way back to me, the way an old embarrassing memory does, catching you completely off guard, already settled in the body before your mind has had any chance to prepare. I would feel something tighten in me at the thought of "linking my image" to anything.

Since my teenage years, I had kept myself behind the camera. The artist. The maker. Not the subject. Never the subject.

The idea of being seen felt silly. And scary in a way I couldn't quite rationalize.

I did try. I would pick up my phone and go to the studio. I would move the tripod from corner to corner searching for the right angle. I would change the lighting, try a different wheel. By the end of the day, exhausted and empty-handed, I would watch the videos back and feel something close to shame. I would put the phone down and not pick it up again for days.

Until her voice would return. "Success will come, once you link your image to your business." And the whole cycle would begin again.

The frustration eventually made me curious, and curiosity has always been the way I find my way. Why was it so hard to simply record what I did every day? And to be at peace with what I saw?

I have always needed to understand things at their root. As a child I could not let go of a question until I had turned it over from every angle. I still can't. And so I kept turning this one, looking for the place where the resistance was actually coming from.

During this same period, I started meditating. And it was in stillness that I finally understood.

I received a download of how artists work. I could see clearly that there is no separation between them and what they create. This is one of the reasons why artists tend to perceive their work so deeply. With criticism, with perfectionism, with protectionism. With pride. How an artist relates to their work can say a lot about how they relate to themselves.

This is why artists receive criticism as if it were aimed at their identity. Why they price their work the way they price a piece of themselves. Why the question “what is this worth?” so often actually reads as “what am I worth?”

And this is true not only for artists — but for anyone who pours themselves into what they make. A business, an offering, an experience. Anything that comes from the soul.

Behind my resistance to being seen online was something older than social media or my own sense of self-consciousness. It was a belief, buried somewhere deep. From my childhood. From my mother. From my grandmother. From the women in my bloodline that came before me. From a collective understanding, passed down through generations, that a woman who is perceived is a woman in danger.

So like for many of us, it was not safe for me to be seen. And if my work and I are the same — if there is truly no line between the maker and the made — then keeping myself hidden meant keeping my work hidden too. Unconsciously, I was choosing to hide us both.

As I breathed through it, I could feel my body softening to the idea. I could feel a warm sense of knowing, very different from the sensations I had felt before when thinking about what my astrologist said. This time, I felt calm. Peaceful. It felt simple.

I finally understood that becoming visible was non-negotiable. And from that moment I made it my mission to work through the fear that had been keeping me (and my work) hidden.

Next week, I will share with you what I have done to move through it.
Update: You can read it now here

In the meantime, you are warmly invited to join The Collective Guidance, which starts on July 19.

A guided accountability space for those sitting with their own fear of visibility. A daily morning email and a shared community, dedicated to transforming how you show up for your work and for yourself.

We will explore:

• Why feeling safe being seen is essential for artists

• The energetic connection between being seen and succeeding as a business

• How visibility goes beyond showing up online and how social media can be a tool to work through fear

• Understanding your why and building trust through authenticity

• How to root your visibility in purpose so it feels sustainable and nourishing

• What it means to be the niche and embrace all sides of your multidimensional self

• Tools to identify visibility blockages in your subconscious mind

• The beliefs and conditioning that hold so many of us back from visibility

• How to move through fear of judgment and step into your voice

Can’t wait to introduce you to this beautiful work!

The price is 22€ and we start on July 19.
You can click here to enroll.

I remember asking myself how other kids seemed so sure about what they wanted to do when they grew up. I never felt a strong pull towards anything and I felt unsettled by how that didn't seem to bother me.

Choosing a career was more guided by what was possible and felt smart, considering my natural abilities and financial security. "I am a graphic designer" is what I started saying when people gave up on asking what I wanted to be when I grew up and moved on to what do you do.

But like many of us who choose a career for the sake of choosing one, I fell in love with something completely different after taking a single class. For me, it was ceramics. And before I could notice, ceramics grew on me like poppies grow in fields, unexpected and wild.

This was exactly ten years ago. May 2016. Back then I had no vision or expectation for my path. I had a blurred, distant image of a faraway reality where I could one day live off this passion. The kind of blur you get when you look at far away mountains building up at the horizon. They seem small, distorted, mingled into one stain of an idea of mountains that your mind romanticises and longs for.

But as I made my way and got closer to the dream of living off ceramics, the distance dissipated and my vision got clearer. The idea I had of the mountains proved to be an illusion. In many aspects, reality was much more beautiful than I could have anticipated. In others, it was much less exciting.

I spent the past five years building my business around my studio. A studio I opened in Hamburg, a city I ended up moving to at the beginning of covid with no plan and no vision. I had never imagined myself in Germany. But here I was, and somehow it became home, and somehow the studio became real, and somehow the dream I had looked at from so far away became the life I was actually living.

The more I built, the shorter the distance got. The clearer I could see the details of the life I once looked at from so far away. And that made me realise there was a limit to my dream. A limit to what I had allowed myself to envision. And with that, the magical longing aspect of the distance faded away, leaving me with the reality of its limitations.

I realise now I miss the distance.

I miss the longing for something I don't yet know. And I miss being allowed to not know, the way I was when someone would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

So I am closing my studio. Only to open a new version of it again, somewhere new.

I am now looking at the distance from the perspective of someone who has climbed the highest mountain they had ever imagined climbing. And I feel ready for the next one.

This time around, I start this new walk with more certainty in my steps, in my tools, and in my ability to find my way. I start this new walk knowing that where the new studio will be, how it will look, and what it will mean for my work, are not questions I need to answer right now. Clarity will come as I start moving, just like mountains get clearer as you make your way in their direction.

I can already see new mountains on the horizon. Small, mingled, and distorted the way they always are from far away. This time bigger than ever. And I feel like the little girl I used to be, the one who was okay with not knowing where she was going.

One Last Summer In Hamburg

Before I close this door, I am offering two final workshops at the studio. This July and August, I will welcome two last groups to join The Intensive Week Workshop. A week focused on teaching everything I know about going from clay as a hobby to clay as a business.

We will touch on:

- Wheel throwing and trimming
- Production thinking and scaling
- Glaze chemistry, theory and techniques
- Kiln work from bisque to glaze firing
- How to run a professional studio
- How to monetise your studio
- How to run a creative business
- How to price and sell your work
And more.

In July, I am offering a more complete edition and beyond the classic program, we will also go into:

- Personal branding
- Concept and brand
- Social media
- Working through mental and energetic blockages

The groups are small (max 6), and if you feel a calling to join me at the studio one last time this summer.

You can enroll here.

Although I grew up with the idea that I should be. In school, at the gym, in how I care for my space. Even in how I eat. But discipline never sat right with me. As a word or concept.

“You should be more disciplined.” is the type of advice that sends shivers down my spine. What do you mean, I should be more disciplined? Under who’s agenda?

And that question is more literal than it sounds.

Discipline has always been something preached from above, handed down to people who are already working harder just to stay in place. It’s a convenient idea when you don’t want to look too closely at why some people have to try twice as hard for half as much.

We treat a lack of discipline as a problem to be solved, as if success and a fulfilling life depends on it. We fail to acknowledge the real meaning of the word and what purpose it truly serves.

By the dictionary, discipline means:

“training that makes people more willing to obey or more able to control themselves, often in the form of rules, and punishments if these are broken, or the behaviour produced by this training.”

No thank you very much.

I wonder sometimes whether, with a slight adjustment of perspective, the idea of no-discipline could be cherished and celebrated as something we strive for. No-discipline doesn’t automatically mean chaos, but it means finding one’s own way to navigate life and make choices, beyond what is imposed upon us.

Personally, I prefer the word devotion instead.

Devotion is also, not coincidentally, a spiritual word. A word that lives closer to calling than to schedule. A word that makes the whole act a powerful surrender, a complete involvement of the soul in the practical matters of everyday life.

You don’t need to be disciplined to write, you have to be devoted to your writing, to the way you choose to express your mind, and to how that might touch people who come in contact with it.

You don’t need to be disciplined to paint, you have to be devoted to your painting, to your creative vision, to the space it occupies in the world, and to the purpose it serves.

You don’t need to be disciplined to work out, you have to be devoted to your health, to taking care of your body, to listening to it rather than conquering it.

I am devoted to my ceramics practice. To how it centers me, aligns me, and allows me. I am devoted to participating in the world through the manifestation of my vision. To the role ceramics has played in human history across every culture and every era. To being, now, part of that story.

I am devoted to my vision. To my mission. To the space I occupy in the world and to how deeply my soul craves to create.

Maybe discipline is a concept created to disconnect us from that craving. To tell us what we should or shouldn’t do, regardless of our true desires.

I am not a disciplined person. And I never will be.

She explores themes of uncertainty, trust, loss, memory, desire, and place. All of which I have been dancing with lately. Right at the beginning of the book, there is a quote that has stayed with me, a question posed by Meno, a figure from ancient Greece immortalized in one of Plato's dialogues:

“How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?”

There hasn’t been a day that I haven’t thought about this question ever since.

Solnit highlights how it is the job of artists to invite the unknown. The work is the materialisation of the idea, the form, the tale that until then had not yet arrived. To be an artist is to live in the space between what is and what could be, to navigate uncertain territories and bring back a new perspective.

And to do that, we must find comfort in not knowing. We must master the art of getting lost by learning to sit with uncertainty and doubt, without despair.

To lose yourself can be a conscious choice. It involves surrender and the ability to be in the present moment. Fully. It is to sit in silence, in discomfort, in pain, without looking for a way to fix it. And this is a practice that requires the ability to accept one of the most unsettling realisations in life: that you are, in fact, lost.

Rothko understood this. The expression of basic human emotions translated into fields of color, meant to be stood in front of, absorbed, felt before understood. An abstract concept turned into a performance between the work and the one standing before it.

A way of materialising something we didn't even know we were looking for, and perhaps couldn't have found any other way.

This is the work of an artist. Not just the expression of beauty or the mastery of form, but the willingness to live at the edge of mystery and bring something back from it.

To get lost is to answer an urgent desire to find oneself.

The paradox is part of the beauty, and it is also the point. Because if we are doing the work right, we are never finished but always becoming. Being shaped by every question we dare to sit with.

After all, life moves by questions. Not answers.

Once an answer is found it becomes immediately unimportant. It is the step before it that holds all the value, that charged moment of standing before the unknown and contemplating all that it could be.

The not-knowing is where everything is still possible.