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One of my clients came into coaching after leaving a very controlling relationship. For a long time, her partner had told her what to do, what not to do, what was right and what was wrong. Over time, she had lost trust in her own thinking. Decisions felt difficult, even small ones. By the time she came into coaching, she didn’t want to revisit the relationship, she just wanted to move forward. But there was something I began to notice. Am I doing this right? What do you think

One of my clients came into a session wanting to talk about a difficult interaction at work. She had a meeting a few days before with a new client, and it didn’t go well. What was meant to be a productive conversation became tense and uncomfortable. At some point, the focus shifted from the work to their working relationship. Afterwards, she received feedback that confirmed this. The meeting hadn’t been effective. Something in the dynamic wasn’t working. They had another meet

One of my clients came into coaching shortly after ending a long-term relationship. At the beginning, she was very clear: she didn’t want to talk about it. It was done, and she wanted to move forward. As coaching is a client-led conversation, we therefore didn't discuss it at all during our sessions. Instead, we focused on other areas of her life: her work, her day-to-day interactions, the small moments where she felt tension or discomfort. After few sessions, a pattern began

One of my clients had been working as a digital nomad for the past five years. Freedom was one of his core values: the ability to move, to choose where he lives, to work in a way that fits his own rhythm. At the beginning of our sessions, he just returned to his home country for some administrative tasks, as well as to spend some time with family and friends. But, when we had our third session, he told me that something unexpected came up: A job opportunity. He then decided

One of my clients shared with me how, due to her childhood upbringing, she has been abandoning herself for the entirety of her adult life, and how she never put herself first. Almost every time her own needs surfaced, they were quickly pushed aside, often with an underlying belief: “If I put myself first, it means I’m being selfish.” When I heard this during the session, I asked her a simple question: What is the difference to you between “putting yourself first” and “being s

When raising children abroad or in multilingual families, many parents wonder whether to use their native language at home. Some feel unsure, especially if the language is not widely spoken in their new country. Will it confuse the child? Will it make things harder at school? Will it even matter, when the world around them speaks something else? I had the same hesitation. I have been living abroad since 2014, and I found myself speaking English more than my native language, B

If you like the song “You’re On Your Own, Kid” by Taylor Swift, what makes you like it? It is my favourite song in Midnight, and it feels to me like a song about living abroad --- these lyrics specifically: --- 1 --- “I wait patiently, he’s gonna notice me…” In the early stages of living abroad, many of us are waiting (besides waiting for the paperwork!): waiting to be accepted, waiting to be recognised professionally, waiting to feel at home, waiting for someone, or somethin

I just booked a flight to Jakarta. Since then, I’ve been noticing something strange. Not the logistics of a long journey with two children, but what unsettles me is something much smaller: it's the words I use: Am I going home? Am I visiting? Am I travelling? None of them feel quite right. If I say I am going home, does that mean that here in Italy, in the apartment we carefully built, where I raise my children, where our routines live, is not my home? But if I say I am visit

People often think the hardest part about living abroad is the practical side. The language. The bureaucracy. The distance from family. The unfamiliar food, the different climate, the loneliness at the beginning... Those things are real. Yes, I am still struggling in getting beyond beginner level of Italian. And while some things work very efficiently here, don't get me started on the bureaucracy! Meeting my family once a year as a perfect scenario, the dark period of autumn

There’s something about working from home that might look so relaxing from the outside. No waking up early in the morning, no commute, no crowded public transportation transport. This is what I also thought, and experienced, back in 2019. At that time, I was living in Bern while my office was in Lausanne. That meant two hours of commuting each way, each day. Four hours of changing from tram to train to tram. I felt very lucky when my request to work from home on Wednesdays, t

Loneliness as a challenge of working from home, and what I personally do about it