... on a wonderful sunny day, my husband and I were on vacation and stayed at this great 4-star hotel. The children were looked after and we had treated ourselves to a day in the private SPA. We were lying naked on the bed looking at the snowy mountains, the sauna was optimally heated, the whirlpool was bubbling, as was the sparkling wine. Fresh fruit invited to enjoy, a dream.

I ought to be so happy. Life doesn't get any better. I have everything I wished for. This great man by my side, he is charismatic, humorous, successful and the greatest lover I could imagine. I have 2 wonderful, healthy children, a successful career, there's nothing, absolutely nothing, that I am missing.

Or am I?

What am I missing? Why am I not happy? Not only am I not happy, this dark cloud haunts me everywhere. How can I be so ungrateful? Did I forget where I came from? Did I forget how difficult it was in my childhood and youth? As a child I was pushed back and forth in the family, nobody really wanted me. My mother was depressed, she used to beat me for every little thing. But the worst part was the terror when I was with her because I never knew when she would yell at, criticize or hit me. She killed herself when I was 16 and, as bad as that sounds, that was the step towards freedom for me. I tried a lot in my youth and made a lot of mistakes. I never finished my studies but worked hard. All of this in my native Romania. I was successful professionally and so I was able to travel a lot through my jobs. Among other things, I spent a lot of time in Germany and I knew that this was my home. Maybe also because I grew up speaking German, in a German community.

I had my twins when I was 32, but I was a single parent. I moved to Germany for work, with the twins (who were almost 1 year old at the time). I was a project manager at a huge IT company when I met my husband. He accepted me despite the fact that I had 2 children and my numerous shortcomings. I ought to be so grateful. I know this man would never lie or cheat on me, he would always support me no matter what. But I'm a failure in everything. I work too much and I make mistakes there too. I'm not a good mother, I leave my children with the nanny for too long. I don't have the patience kids need, I'm just like my mother. I'm a miserable wife, my husband doesn't feel understood, I don't sleep with him as often as he wants me to and I don't cook every day either. Our nanny also helps with the housekeeping, but there are things she doesn't know how to do, so our house always looks untidy. I'm a failure, I don't have any friends either. I feel best when I'm on a business trip, when all that is far away from me and feel guilty about it. My colleagues and bosses don't yet know what a failure I am, but at some point I'll be exposed. At some point my bosses will notice that I'm not as competent as they thought I am. Then they'll fire me. God, am I a bad person. And actually I don't even believe in God and if He does exist, I'll burn in hell. Rightly so, my children deserve better than me.

Those were my thoughts as I lay in this little paradise and prepared myself mentally for marital intimacies, although I didn't feel like it at all.

This condition is called depression. It took me a couple of years to admit that I suffered from it. And a few more to really decide to change this state I was in. You see, when you have depression, you can't really imagine that there are better days because you can't feel it. One has the impression that it will never be good again. You somehow remember that it used to be different, but you don't feel it.

What happened there? What went wrong? How come I was most unhappy when I had it all?

Well, if I had known then what I know today, it would have been predictable. We now know that depression is not genetically inherited. No, the following happened:

As already mentioned, I was a single parent when the children came. What it means to care for 2 babies at once, only someone who has done that knows. In short, you don't get more than 3 hours of sleep. To make ends meet, I occasionally worked as a freelance Microsoft trainer. When the boys were 10 months old, I accepted the project in Germany, moved 3 times with the children until we finally ended up in our apartment. I wanted to prove myself in my new job, so I worked a lot. In addition, since my project in Germany was time-limited, I started to freelance, so I can have a second income stream when the project finishes. I never slept more than 4 hours a night for many years. When I finally could have done it, since children slept through the night, I couldn't anymore. I had a sleep disorder, my immune system was broken, I was sick all the time. I was burned out too, but I wasn't aware of burn-out back then, so I ignored all the symptoms. I fell in love and that kept me going for a while.

But my husband could not understand my tiredness and my constant urge for something new, because I did not understand it myself.

Until my body said no and there was the suspicion of cancer. Fortunately it wasn't malignant, but that was when I fell into depression. Somehow, in a weird way, the thought of cancer was more comforting then that I should just get on with my life as I did. Something inside of me was more intelligent than I was and was telling me to pull the handbrake. My husband couldn't understand it. "I can't see your long face anymore" he said at some point. We often argued, he wanted to understand, but couldn't because I couldn't explain it to him. I couldn't explain it to him because the way he talked to me reminded me of my mother. Every time he tried to talk to me, I became that little traumatized child who tried to defend itself but couldn't find the words. How can a young child hope to defend themselves against an adult's argument?

Our arguments got louder and louder and we yelled at the children too. They also suffered a lot from my depression because I just couldn't give them the presence the children needed. Everything seemed to be falling apart.

One evening when I came home from work, I had the thought of simply accelerating at the next bend and driving straight away. That thought was very frightening. Because I knew what my mother left behind when she took this route, so I couldn't do that to my children. But with that, this door also closed: I cannot live and I cannot die. It only made me feel more helpless.

It is impossible to describe how difficult it was to crawl out of bed every morning and to function reasonably and to do at least the bare minimum. I always thought "if only I had a little more willpower...". Today I know that it was pure willpower to tackle everything anew every day. I smoked, drank, and ate way too much. I would never have admitted it, but I was an alcoholic.

At some point, also encouraged by my husband, I went to see a therapist. After 2 sessions he wanted to admit me to a clinic for 3 weeks. I thought the idea was good: 3 weeks away from everything, would perhaps give me the time to find myself again and to recover and the doctors the opportunity to look for the right treatment. With a little relief and hope, I came home and told my husband. The only thing that came from him was "And who will take care of the children during this time?" We never wasted a word on it again, but my world collapsed. Because I realized that even though I was married, I was actually alone.

I don't intend to talk negatively about my husband here, he's a great man. But in those moments, we were just 2 hurt children who didn't have the maturity to deal with reality.

Slowly the thought crept in that I would be better off alone, because then at least the difficult and stressful conversations would be over. One last incident and I moved out. We still loved each other because we somehow realized that we were more than our behavior under these circumstances and we wanted to try to repair the relationship. A year and a half later, we realized it was a waste of time. I also realized that I have to switch off everything that pulls me down, everything that is negative, otherwise I will never get over this. I took sick leave, started meditating, learning about depression and addiction, changing my diet, and so on. I understood that I have to resolve the childhood trauma if I want to progress and so I went into therapy. I started to sleep - after 8 years of insomnia and six months later, the depression was gone. All of a sudden, out of the blue from one day to another. All of the feelings came back at once and I thought I am loosing my mind. The actual healing work only started then, but at least I was back somewhat. I could see and feel beauty again. I had hope again, for the first time in many years. But all that happiness came with a lot of pain too. Because I found that I still loved my husband, even though so much time had passed and he was in a different relationship (with the Nanny, by the way :)). The pain of missing 5 years from my children's childhood. The shame of having failed, of having ruined everything in my marriage. And last but not least, grief after the lost time and after my husband. It was like waking up from a dream to find that everything around me had crumbled, broken.

It took a lot of internal work to overcome all of this. I discovered RTT and Ayahuasca; the combination helped me the most personally. I had decided for myself that the career I had no longer made sense to me. I wanted to do something meaningful, work that was both fun and gave me the feeling that I had done something good. So I took the RTT course and became a Rapid Transformational Therapist and Hypnotherapist. My life changed completely, the relationship to my kids is excellent.

So in the end I am grateful for all that happened to me!

It was all meant to push me on my own path, to teach me how to be my true self, not what other expect me to be, to find confirmation within myself, not from others. It was meant to find my authentic self.

The fact is, I have managed to heal the following in myself:

• Depression
• Insomnia
• Back Pain
• Addiction (including food addiction, I've lost about 40 pounds)
• Childhood trauma
• Self-confidence, self-esteem

And I've found my own path, found meaning in my life, know what I want, who I am and where I'm going.

You can do all of this too and you don't have to do it alone, we can help you!