This beautiful poem of Rainer Rilke expresses exactly how I feel about my life.

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Hi, my name is Sanya and my lifepath has been expanding in unexpected ways. I am a mother of three adult children. I have lived in six different countries in my life – three countries in a childhood which had been quite a tumultous one.
 

My learned profession had been  teaching young adults. I have always liked being around young people. Teaching and giving - this has always been very fulfilling for me. Raising children, working and dedicating my free time to artistic expression – this is how I spent my 20’s and 30’s. It felt like a full life at the time.

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At around 45 my life stopped short because the path I had taken did not feel right anymore. Life was showing it to me the hard way – illness and depression brought down my innate energy. Little by little I understood that if you don’t listen to your soul it will first speak to you quietly, then a bit louder and finally its message will scream out through your body.

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This was the beginning of my search or my personal soul path. Having gone through many traumas in my younger years, a new understanding of my life seemed of highest emergency. So I started on a new journey – an inner journey – which I have now been on for the last 15 years. It took me down into deepest questionings and most complex feelings, moments of utter despair and great hope, of falling and rising. And more and more feeling like a phoenix by  understanding how I and the world function.

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Along this path I discovered that I was a highly sensitive person which meant that I had to readapt how I wanted to live from now on. More time of silence, meditation, less stress, more nature, less activities and above all learning to chose who I wanted to have around me, to see the red flag before it would destroy me.

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This was when I had my first deep spiritual realisations by being initiated to the Reiki energy. This awakened in me my innate healing power.  Being a highly sensitive person it had always been easy for me to look into people, to decipher them and their problems. My frustration came from the fact that I wanted to go further. Not just SEE, but DO something, have an impact on people.

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At the same time I started on a Buddhist path which has totally been aligned with my deep feelings of compassion for the world. The Buddhist teachings have ever since been the ground  on which I walk and from which I create my life.