28 Random Things | 1 Story

1. I grew up riding a bike & a pony around Neede, a tiny little village in a rather unknown part of the Netherlands; the back-corner in the Gelderland province; 'De Achterhoek'. Near the German border, it is filled with dark forests, castles and farmland, and rich with Saxon legends and stories. The picture above is a view I frequently admired from the back of Miranda, a chestnut New Forest mare.
2. I secretly like cleaning and scooping horse poop
3. I had my own radio talk show for a while
4. I can’t measure things, pictures always end up on the wall at the wrong angle
5. I once got lost in the Vietnamese countryside in the middle of the night
6. I accidentally killed Napoleon, my beloved hamster, during a fight with my brother by slamming the door while the hamster’s head was in between. It still haunts me.
7. I camped in the Moroccan desert with two young bedouin guides and one gurgling camel.
8. I stalked Mark through facebook and forced him to become the love of my life
9. I’ve always said I never wanted kids, but at 32, after meeting Mark, that changed right away. He is the best partner and father ever.
10. I traveled to 37 countries, mostly by myself without GPS or smartphones
11. I was once married to a US Army Major and stayed in Germany while he deployed to Iraq for 15 months. That was rough. Even rougher was the aftermath of war, and the divorce afterward.
12. While I am writing this, the cat is laying on my left arm and it is starting to tingle.
13. My biggest fear is losing my freedom and independence as a woman.
14. I studied five languages, speak two fluid (English/Dutch) and one semi fluid (German). (Turkish and French never stuck)

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1. I love apocalyptic and dystopian novels. 
2. My dad died of acute myeloid leukemia when I was 22. My grandma followed him the year after. This experience profoundly changed me.
3. I skydived.
4. I am terrified of flying.
5. I have sent helium filled balloons, apple trees and intricate puzzles with job applications. And even though I didn't meet the job description/requirements, I got any interview I wanted, got any job, and got promoted too. Pretty proud of that.                           
6. I never took the time to finish up a full degree (while I am certified in Transformative Life Coaching, Project Management, Equine Assisted Learning, Recruitment, PRINCE II, Metaplan, First Aid, Business Administration and more). To get hired in the corporate world, I have drowned my way to swimming by putting myself in places that were way over my head to gain experience. It sucked. It was stressful. But it worked to get me the success I wanted and taught me that as long as you really, REALLY want something, with enough work and dedication, it is yours.
7. I love coffee and tea, and dislike the taste of alcohol.
8. My grandfather Felix is my hero. He hid allied forces pilots in the woods behind his house in Arnhem during WWII until someone alerted the Germans and he was caught. He spent a lot time in two Dutch prison camps of which I have the eyewitness statements, pretty gruesome stuff. He died a few years after the war and still inspires me to be ethical, compassionate and truthful, despite opposition.
9. I can’t cook. Mark says I should just stay out of the kitchen.
10. I once fell so hard during my first time snowboarding that I couldn’t move for 3 hours. The doctors thought I was paralyzed from the neck down. Glad they were wrong. It was a humbling experience.
11. I can’t bake either. I once baked an apple pied and everyone got food poisoning. Yay for catering!
12. I interviewed hundreds of people and learned it sucks for everyone involved when someone is not completely truthful.
13. 10 years ago I was miserable both at work and privately, but envisioned what I wanted from life. While I didn’t think I’d ever get it, I now live the life I described back then.
14. When I was 21 I survived a firework factory explosion unscathed that left 1000 injured and 20 dead

Story

From a corporate spaz to a more mindful gal..
I used to work in a pencil skirt and high heels in the fortune 500 corporate world in Europe as a project leader and productivity consultant, coaching and consulting executives in optimizing the performance of their teams. This may sound like quite the career. And in some ways it was. I definitely learned a lot. Over the years I worked with hundreds of people and helped them to get the positions they wanted. I even worked with the military for a few years. However, it left me miserable and unfulfilled. There was a strong focus within me on promotions, success and material gain. More more, bigger cars, more status. It took me a while to wake up and discover a more pragmatic way of looking at life. One day I woke and realized that even though I had more money, more fame, more status, my happiness had not increased. I actually felt more stuck, less free and less content with life. I decide to pursue a different path. It took me for several detours and brought me to some strange places, but it was worth it in the end. Now, I spend a lot of time outdoors and work flexible hours doing things I genuinely love, like supporting others in going after what they truly want from life, and I notice how much easier it is for me to be a kind, emphatic, compassionate human being. A win-win, both for myself and for human-kind.

Who is EquineFlow for?
EquineFlow is for people who want to live a good, meaningful life. The ones who want to have balance inside. The ones who need a break. The ones who want to live authentically, staying intuitively true to their core values. The ones who want an amicable conversation with the voices inside, but aren’t sure how to start. The ones who want a extra set of hands to pull the load that life gives them, whether it be with their horses, their family or at work. The ones who are ready to communicate with others in a compassionate, yet assertive way. The ones who want to reconnect with their inner child and finally start living instead of merely existing. Who want to expand their embodied intelligence and are ready to commit to making the change.  The ones who are ready to, through their own transformation, expand their positive influence on the entire world. <3