At the moment when NVC stumbled into my life, I was quite desperate - I didn't want to live anymore so as not to feel the shame, the exhaustion, the sadness that I felt because the relationship with my daughter and also with my son had broken up and was also accompanied by verbal and physical violence. That was my beginning.

I survived the day when a fist hit my nose and the evening with the bottle of vodka and the new day held out the prospect of an NVC seminar in the sufficiently near future. If I'm still here, then "I have to", I want to change something and you can only change yourself - they say. I watched every online video with Marshall Rosenberg X times. I absorbed everything I could find. I went to sleep with NVC and practically woke up with NVC practice.

I was particularly touched by the simplicity, clarity, and great compassion with which Marshall Rosenberg and others spoke about death, violence, and addiction, for example, in courses and interviews. And the children in the texts, like mine, seemed so angry and hard and caring, loving and vulnerable at the same time and I seemed so angry and hard and loving and vulnerable at the same time. Longing for security, loving-kindness, safety, to be carried, to be able to sit with the pain in my heart, to be understood, and to have faith in love and life. It took time, October 18, 2014, until today, November 28, 2023, and it is still going on.

My biggest learning...Radical self-responsibility. 

Taking my life lovingly into my own hands. Dealing lovingly with myself and my fears, "mistakes", and "missed opportunities", with the little plant - which is just sprouting and wants to go into the world full of joy. Getting to know my capacity to feel and hold vulnerability, fear, sadness, and immeasurable joy. To become aware of my resources.

Saying no and saying yes in the awareness that it is always a yes to my needs with these particular capacities, in this moment. Getting help when I'm going around in circles and can't get any further within myself.

Someone once said that faith moves mountains and I think they meant love. NVC means tuning into an attitude of love. To live, cultivate, and be love for myself, for others, and for the world, and it moves mountains. That's what I've experienced and learned through NVC and that's what I'm keen to pass on.