Do you know this feeling, when you get really excited about something and then it’s taken away..đ
Two days ago I got a surprise email with an invitation for an interview on a radioshow in South Korea about selfmarriage. I thought it was very cool that they found me and that the topic somehow is getting some attention. They phoned me to check the connection and said they would send me some prep questions the next day. I shared it with my friends on facebook, who shared my joy by reacting enthusiastically, which made me even more excited. The next morning (yesterday) I got another email, saying they were sorry to say that they confirmed another person for the interview.
I felt dissapointment and immediately my mind started to rationalize to get away from this feeling; “nothing bad happened, it’s not that big a deal, there’s probably not even that much people listening to this radioshow…blablabla.” Then I noticed this old pattern of neglecting my emotions and thought about my Weddingvow “Emotions are welcome. All of them! So I sat down and welcomed the dissapointment to be fully felt.
And with the feeling of dissapointment, there came a memory of my first big dissapointment (that I can recollect). When I was in pre-school I wanted to give my teacher a present, so I wrapped an orange in nice looking paper. I was really excited about it. My mother walked me to school and because we were early I could play outside for a few minutes. My mother went back home. I put my present on a little wall and played until the bell rang. When I came back to the wall, my present was gone!! Some kid had unwrapped it and ate the orange! I was so dissapointed, hurt and angry that I ran back home by myself. My mother was ofcourse surprised to see me back, tried to comfort me, and brought me back to school.
It is these little, seemingly unimportant little moments that define your life. I decided not to allow myself to get too happy and excited about something, because before you know it, it can be taken away, which causes painful emotions.
I’m learning now to allow those painful emotions back into my life, because I want to be able to fully step into my Joy too.
It’s an interesting journey.
Lots of Love,
Annemarie
Just as I thought I had mastered this thing called LIFE and LOVE,  feeling totally happy and in flow just six weeks ago, it bit me in my tail again. My thoughts were taking me in a downward spiral, feeling like a failure and that something is seriously wrong with me, that I had been fooling myself into believing this huge personal growth that I had made. It felt like falling all the way BACK.
e. And I have a choice to hop off to watch others having fun taking a spin. Sometimes life goes too fast and you either fall off or you can’t get on. Or it is so full of other people (having fun, or making noise) that you have to wait for your turn. So in essence, I always experienced life as something outside of myself. Of something that I was IN or OUT. And being out, as the observer, I could feel very lonely, even with having great friends and family around me. Existential loneliness.
I like going for a morningwalk on a regular basis (usually around 45min), so it seemed like a nice idea to walk from the house I currently live in, in Veldhoven, to the house that I was born in (where my parents still live) in Soest, Netherlands. So I put on my walking shoes, packed a little bagpack and just started walking on a Mondaymorning. I thought it would be possible to walk the distance of 125km in 5 days. This meant that I was walking 5/6 hours a day. The temperature was around zero. I navigated with google maps and sometimes a compass when I wanted to take a nice route through fields or a forest without roads. It’s funny how food becomes important when you are walking. So I navigated myself to stops for a coffee- or hot chocolate break in the morning, a nice lunch in the afternoon, a late afternoon tea or beer and a place to eat and sleep for the night. I used friends, Airbnb, booking.com and bedandbreakfast.eu for my sleeps.
I expected the trip to be about going back to my roots. It turned out differently in  a very nice way. I totally loved the experience of walking by myself for such a long time. It was about being present in the moment with all my senses being tickled; seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, touching. I totally fell in love with LIFE!
myself laugh. I’m surprisingly funny when I get bored đ And because I was feeling good, I met nice people, had nice conversations and ended up in very nice places. (you receive what you radiate).
The next morning, after a cosy nights rest in the ‘bedstee’ with a warm water bottle (‘kruik’) my knee felt much better. My mother had brought an elastic kneeband and a walking stick. My father took my backpack home. We decided to call him if it didn’t work out and off we went. My mother is 70 years old, but very active and sporty (rows 3 times a week). She has a new hip that works perfectly. And ofcourse we started catching up while we were walking. It was funny to notice the big difference in experience of walking by myself or with someone else. After 1,5 hours I suggested to stop talking and enjoy and appreciate the nature around us.
After 5 hours of walking (with a big lunchbreak) we arrived at my parental house in Soest, where I was born 45 years ago. I made it! Feeling happy and proud.
I decided to reframe a quiet time in my usual busy workschedule as a mini-sabbatical of three months and asking myself the question; How might I use these three months in a meaningful way?
Annemarie Steen 