MEETING IN LOVE
An email-experience about the process of meeting your partner⏤
and all that you become on and through this journey.
Starting soon. Join it here:
WOMAN IN LOVE
A book about the transformational power of almost love stories.
In the writing.
Until this story happened for me, I had never been aware that at the moment you fall in love with someone, something else happens at the very same time:
You fall in love with yourself; with the warm, limitlessly, and loving person you can also be⏤with the person you truly are.
I had also not realized that regardless of where the love story with the other person was heading, the part of “being in love with myself” was one that I could actually keep and grow.
EVERYONE YOU MEET YOU MEET FOR A REASON
There exist inspiring stories of people who started to change profoundly after a tragic event had shattered their lives. Looking back, they say: this event was a wake-up call. Before it, I had merely existed—now I am wildly alive.
My event was not a tragic one. It was a pretty beautiful one—yet it was shattering, and after, there was no going back to the life I had unhappily lived before.
End of 2012, I was on a journey across Europe, trying to escape a state of stuckness and run away from mean commenting voices in my head. In Paris, I met a man.
In the embrace of this almost stranger, the comments silenced, and I remembered how it feels to be me⏤and free.
Returning to Berlin, this feeling stayed with me.
I was sure that I had met "the one," the person that poems and songs and Pinterest quotes were talking about.
But—he was not. He did not want to be with me. It took me a very long while to accept this.
WHAT IF A HEARTBREAK IS A BREAKTHROUGH?
However, sparked by this encounter, I started changing—from within and the circumstances of my life.
What initially looked like trying to become a person he could love one day (and later also all that I tried to let him go) was ultimately serving one underlying desire: to free slowly but steadily me.
The me I had been reminded of through this encounter.
Speaking from my screenwriters' view: I had mistaken him for the love interest in my own heroine's journey—when his real role was being a catalyst to grow my love for me.
I am currently working on the second draft of the book.
In it, you'll find my story—and all that helps to turn an almost love story into a true love story with yourself.
READ A CHAPTER NOW
Questions I ask(ed) myself
>> Why is WOMAN IN LOVE a book and not a movie? As screenplays are my profession.
Because in this heroine’s journey, the challenges and changes are mainly happening inside. Sometimes, these changes happen in nice locations, like Parisian cafés, Berlin bars, Budapest hotels or beaches in Thailand. If WOMAN IN LOVE were a movie, it would have to be directed by Michel Gondry. I admire his ability to create inside worlds that are as real as outside worlds.
WOMAN IN LOVE is a book because I couldn’t find one when I was in the middle of my (almost) Love Story. I love books. I have a lot of books that are like good friends to me rather than books. Ask me about my favorites!
>> And why is it not a blog?
It takes time for me to emotionally digest events and feelings. What I do is: I kind of “vomit” my feelings on paper/ipad/computer. But this is not material that I consider as beneficial for others, as this writing happens in the middle of a process. However, these archives make it possible to time-travel in the book: to visit former me-s, to sit down and talk to them. That’s something I always wanted to do.
>> The book in one sentence?
To become the Mirjam that I am today – from inside out and also the circumstances that I am living in – I needed (a great part of) this almost love story. It made change inevitable and helped me to develop beliefs, habits and a life that feel good and right (ongoing process). I also needed the reminder of feeling how it feels to be really me - to know that feeling like this is possible, to know again how I wanted to feel more permanently.
>> And what’s with the other part – the part that I did not exactly need?
I am also talking about this part - the part where I prolonged this story and refused to leave my dreamland (knowingly). The part where I was still playing with an invisible friend who didn’t want to be with me.
Actually this part is the second part of the book and it is called: Leaving Dreamland. I consider this part as being of the same importance as the first part. Leaving this particular dreamland was followed by recognizing and leaving dreamlands in other areas of my life that I had been unconsciously living in.
>> For whom is this book?
I believe that books come to us in the right moment, when what they contain is helpful for us. So this book is for everyone who feels like: This book is for me.
What‘s your question? Ask me HERE
