My Heroine’s Journey: the journey of the heart
My breath trembled slightly as I picked up the colored pencils.
“Draw your vision for life and what you most want,” my coach had said.
I hesitated, then began to sketch the earth, simple blue and green shapes, surrounded by people holding hands, encircled by hearts. It looked playful, almost childlike. I laughed nervously. “This feels too naïve,” I told him.
But as I looked at the drawing, something stirred deep inside me. That simple image of people connected in love and harmony actually awakened a memory of something I had always longed for: more love, more realness, more connection in the world.
And in that moment, I knew. I had been chasing a version of success that didn’t reflect who I truly was.
Where It All Began
Just months earlier, my life had looked perfect from the outside. I had a successful career, the family, the house, the cat. The picture of stability and achievement. With a degree in Economics and Management, I was the CEO of a leadership development organisation at 36, had led complex and innovative programs in the public sector and I was surrounded by brilliant, ambitious and idealistic people who were shaping the future.
It looked like success.
It was success.
And yet, deep inside, something felt flat.
Those familiar questions: “Is this it? What difference am I really making in the world?” became the first whispers of change.
So I made a choice. I stepped away from the path of competing for more responsibilities and money. No more proving my worth. I began a journey of living from the depth of my heart.
Crossing the Threshold
Soon after, I encountered a group of people practicing something called Circling and Surrendered Leadership.This was in 2013. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. There was no agenda, no performance, only realness and exploring what’s alive in the moment and in relationship.
This practice was both exhilarating and confronting. It reflected back all the ways I had been hiding behind competence, ambition, and control. It showed me who I had become, and who I was longing to be.
These practices seemed to me the fastest catalyst for leadership development I had encountered up till that point. It was unlike anything else I knew.
Within a year, I became a certified facilitator leading Circling practice groups in the Netherlands, training new facilitators, and coaching leaders across Europe and the UK.
But the deeper I went, the more I was asked to let go.
I left the career I had built and started a new one.
I ended a long-term relationship and moved out of the home we’d created.
I sold my car and everything else that wasn’t a basic life supply.
I stepped into the unknown with only my heart as a compass.
It was one of the hardest and most liberating choices of my life.
The Descent and the Liminal Space
That period was raw and uncertain.
I was co-parenting my son in the city that formed the pulsing heart of the newly growing community around Circing. I started a new career as an entrepreneur and teacher of relational arts with an income that was only a third of what I had earned before.
I was questioning everything I had believed about life, love, success and happiness. Unhooking from cultural narratives and introjections. I had stepped beyond the familiar story, the one society tells us about what a “good life” looks like. For humans in general and for a woman specifically.
I found myself in a place without maps.There were no road signs, no mentors who could tell me what came next. It was disturbing as well as it came with an incredible freedom. I had to become my own role model.
The doubts were loud: Was I being naïve? Would I regret this? And others questioned my choices too. But something inside me was certain: there was no turning back.
I was learning what it meant to take radical ownership of my life and to lead myself. To trust the process, even when it didn’t make sense.
The Healing and the Reclaiming
During this time, I turned toward practices that supported and nourished me.
Movement and dance became ways to process emotion and return to my body. I learned about the non linear ways of knowing that comes through the body and started to trust this more deeply.
Meditation, prayer, and chanting were daily rituals of grounding and alignment.
I sought healing through therapy, energy work, spiritual guidance, and shadow exploration. I immersed myself in tantric philosophy and practiced deity yoga with a female teacher.
I surrounded myself with strong women walking their own paths. Together we explored what it means to be human, a woman and a woman leader.
Through all this, I reclaimed my power and vulnerability. I learned to speak my truth, to honor my boundaries and needs, and to have an open heart, even when it was messy or uncertain. Presence has become more fully expressed through me and as me.
The Emergence
Today, I am living my dream. Not a perfect one, but a true one.
I work with courageous, heart-centered people from different parts of the world who choose to live their deepest truth and bring their unique gifts to the world. I support leaders, change-makers on their path of unfolding and becoming authentic and ethical leaders.
My life is grounded in freedom and choice and I get to shape my work, my relationships, and my time in alignment with my values in a way that feels fulfilling.
I am in a loving, conscious relationship with a partner who shares my vision for evolutionary partnerships. Together, we walk this path of unfolding wholeness, devotion, ensoulment and the kind of grounded agency that moves us to be of service in the world.
Family life has its challenges, but I meet them with presence, love, and integrity. I feel grateful for the family constellation we’ve created.
To the best of my ability, I am living in truth and presence and I am compassionate when I am not.
When I now think back to that drawing of the earth, the hands, the hearts,I realize that what once felt naïve was actually the truest expression of who I am and what I stand for.
The Invitation
The path of the heart is not always easy. It asks for courage, honesty, and a willingness to let go of what no longer serves and of what is not in alignment. But IMO it is the most rewarding journey there is.
It is the journey home to yourself.
If you feel a call within you… a knowing that there’s more to life than what you’ve been told, then maybe this story resonates because it’s also yours.
I’d love to walk with you as you explore your own path of unfolding, love, presence and freedom.
Let’s discover what it means to live and lead from the heart.
With love,
Ellen
A short summery of my trainings in the Relational Arts:
– Circling and Surrendered Leadership SAS (2013)
– Aletheia Advanced Coaching (ongoing)
– Internal Family Systems (IFS-informed coach)
– Adult Development and vertical development trainings (different trainings)
– Non Linear Movement Method™ and somatic coaching
– Intimacy and Attraction™ levels I, II and III
– Energy Mastery with Lynda Caesara
– Training in trauma – trauma informed (David Treleaven, Biodynamic Trauma Release, and other teachers)
Alongside my private coaching and energy mentoring practice, I collaborate with:
- Transformational Connection (since 2014 )
- Coaches Rising (since 2015)
- Various partners and facilitators in Europe and the UK.
