And yet, beneath all that vulnerability, something in me refused to let go. Before I even had words, I made a choice. I stayed.
When life doubts you, let your existence be your first act of defiance.
I arrived in this world two months too early, a tiny, fighting newborn wrapped in wires instead of blankets. Machines hummed over me while nurses whispered that I might not make it. I was fragile, unsure, more question than answer. And yet, beneath all that vulnerability, something in me refused to let go. Before I even had words, I made a choice. I stayed.
One gentle soul can change the entire direction of a life.
My first true memory of safety is not a place, but an embrace: my foster mother’s arms. She held me as if my life were a gift, not a burden. In her gaze, I wasn’t a problem to solve, but a child to love. Those years with her were brief, heartbreakingly so, yet they planted something indestructible in me—the certainty that love is real and that I am not unworthy of it.
Where breath exists, hope exists, even if it lies silent beneath the fear.
Then came the season of illness. While other children chased sunlight, I lay in hospital beds under fluorescent skies. Leukemia swept into my life like a storm that would not pass. I remember the sting of needles, the sticky smell of disinfectant, the hush when doctors entered rooms. Priests appeared at my bedside; people quietly practiced goodbye. My body was small, my odds smaller, but I didn’t know statistics—I knew only breath. And as long as I had breath, I stayed.
Discipline is the key that turns walls into doors and gives you the strength to walk through them.
Growing up, I learned that nothing would be handed to me. My hands, still too small, shoveled coal, cooked meals, and worked as though childhood were a luxury I hadn’t earned. Yet in that heaviness, I found an escape. Gymnastics became my first language of freedom; movement let me rise above what tried to pin me down. Later, powerlifting taught me how to turn pain into ower. I became state champion in both, not chasing trophies, but carving order and purpose out of chaos.
Reinvention is not luck. It is courage practiced over and over until your outer life matches your inner strength.
Over the years, I rebuilt my life repeatedly until reinvention became second nature. I moved through real estate, call centers, medical care, beauty, hospitality—each role a stepping stone, each challenge another chance to grow. I studied at night when the house finally fell silent, my eyes burning but my will unshaken. I worked through bone-deep fatigue. I built companies and trained teams with the resolve of a woman who had been told too often to shrink herself and had finally learned to expand instead.
Freedom demands much of you—but once it is yours, you understand it was worth every cost.
One day, without fanfare, I looked around and realized I was standing in something I had never truly known before: peace. Not a fleeting, fragile calm, but a peace I had carved myself—through sacrifices, boundaries, and hard choices. The quiet around me no longer felt dangerous; it felt earned. Independence was no longer a dream—it was my everyday reality. I had built a life where I was no longer bracing for the next blow.
Healing is meant to be shared; when you offer your scars honestly, they become signposts for someone else’s way out.
Today, I live in Salzburg, a city of mountains and music, where the air itself feels like a reminder to breathe deeply. I volunteer in a senior home, listening to stories that might otherwise vanish, trading time and tenderness for wisdom and soft smiles. I am a grandmother to nine luminous grandchildren whose laughter repairs parts of me I once believed were beyond saving. Every small hand that slips into mine is another thread in my own healing.
I also stand beside women who feel invisible, trapped, or voiceless, because I once lived in that silence myself. I recognize the familiar pain in their eyes—the mixture of exhaustion and possibility—and I offer them what was once my lifeline: presence, belief, and the reminder that their story is not over.
When a woman truly chooses herself, she becomes a force that cannot be contained.
I know what it is to be underestimated, to have people mistake a single painful chapter for your whole story. Many assume pain creates fragile, controllable women. My life tells a different truth: when you face it and live through it, pain forges warriors. It shapes leaders and protectors, sharpens your perception, deepens your empathy, and strengthens your voice until it refuses to stay small when something matters.
I wrote a book that took a lifetime, not to rip open old wounds but to close them with honesty and grace. It is a love letter to every version of me that refused to disappear and to every woman who believes she has reached her limit. If something tightens in your chest as you read this, pay attention—that is not weakness but awakening, the first flicker of your own rise. Do not wait for a rescuer or the perfect moment. The saving begins the instant you decide you deserve more than survival and dare to choose yourself.
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