First chapter - The cracks in Life

I started writing a book 3 years ago.

About our connection to Life, about our hearts that are opening wider and our

sensitivity that is growing stronger. It is a story about navigating the cracks in live.

The last 10 years of my life have been about discovering how we live in resonance with the life around us. With our bodies, heart, Earth, nature, skies, water.

I guess in these times we can all use more heart and more connection.

We have this amazing opportunity now to collaborate with technology. Which accelerates things massively. But are we also strengthening our human capabilities enough?

The ones that allow us to navigate life with our inner compasses? Our body technology, our hearts, our intuition.

Just a question.

I started writing this book 3 years ago, in English.

Which is odd, as that is not my native language. Dutch would have been much more obvious. But every sentence I wanted to write somehow always came out in English.

So I decided to fully trust the life inside me and go with English.

32 Chapters so far, and in this blog I share the first chapter..

It where the story begins.

If you decide to read it… I’d love to know how it resonated for you,

In the cracks of life, the real change happens 📷 Wix collection

'CHAPTER 1 - The Cracks In Life'

Nature hears us! She communicates with us every day. Every minute! Every hour!


We live in a direct connection with her. A beautiful almost physically felt, warm and wordless communion. And all of us have the capacity to pick it up!

If only we decide to listen.

I found out years ago, when my life finally broke down and there was nothing else to do but feel the pain and come to a complete stand still.

But just before that…

It is 2016, life is passing by nicely. I find myself working a job that inspires me, I am enjoying my two creative kids growing up, I am driving a small BMW I love and we are able to go on a vacation once a year. Things seem perfect!

One late evening, the kids in their beds, I tuck myself in the sofa, pick up my laptop and start scrolling on YouTube. My eyes catch the trailer of a documentary soon to be released: Down To Earth. A film by Rolf Winters and Renata Heinen. Who as a young family had left behind their cosmopolitan life in Amsterdam to give their three children a different start in life, one that is much more connected to nature.

During their five-year journey they captured moments of how they lived with a clan of Native Americans and traveled the world to visite some of the oldest indigenous communities on our planet. And they found themselves having profound informal encounters with the indigenous elders and wisdom keepers of these clans.

I feel the excitement rushing through me, can’t wait to see this one.

As soon as the documentary is released, I book a ticket. I drive to a beautiful theatre right in the middle of a gorgeous park and take my seat. Loving every part of it. When the film ends I feel myself falling silent, just wanting to stay there in my seat, completely still. I sense a calmness around me and as I look around I notice the whole theatre is silent. No one talks. No one even moves. The movie has touched every heart. There are simply no words to add to what we have just experienced.

This is extraordinary!

I feel myself resonating deeply with the connected life of the indigenous tribes. And everything in me wants to leave behind the world I live in to discover that way of living.

Isn’t it strange I think to myself, in my car on the way back home, how these indigenous people still know how to live so connected. They are so present, approach everything from their hearts and use the wordless communication with all species and plants around them.

We in the West here seem to have forgotten how to do that.

~ 

Shouldn’t we have the capacity to pick that back up?

In the next six months I watch the film 8 times. Talking about it with anyone willing to listen.

That is how at an office lunch I enthusiastically tell my boss about the importance of this film. And how a connected way of living ánd working is essential for all of us. He lets me speak and then looks at me with a smile.

‘You’re in luck’ he says, ‘I met that Rolf Winters you just mentioned. Actually I met him last night. We had a great conversation. And I asked him to guide our company through the coming change. He and his team are meeting us here next week. Would you like to meet Rolf?’

My eyes shoot open wide, I can not believe my luck. This is wild! Did life just hear my cry? Because I certainly could not have conjured up something like this myself.

And at work!

On Wednesday a week later, just before Rolf Winters arrives, my boss comes to my desk. ‘If you head over to the waiting area now Nicole, Rolf will be there any minute. You will have the chance to meet him just before he goes into the meeting with me.’

I feel like a nervous 16 year old when I walk towards our waiting area to meet him.

A bit awkwardly I look at Rolf and shake his hand. He of course is totally calm and relaxed and we exchange some nice words before he has to go.

A few days later my boss lets me know that the deal is done, Rolf and the Down To Earth Collective are going to guide our company. “Would you like to participate in the core team leading the upcoming change?” he asks. Feeling utterly excited I almost shout out a heartfelt YES!

The change process that follows aims at improving our companies sustainability. Reducing the company footprint while incorporating the wisdom of the indigenous tribes. This way of changing is so different than I am used to from my IT background. Where process improvements and change processes are organized far more linear, high performance and top-down. We make sure to stay highly inspired and our team starts initiating small but impactful changes in the company.

Meanwhile the spark inside me grows into a full blown fire. This is what I want more of! I can feel myself shouting it out to the universe.

I want to live a much more connected life!

A life where things get the opportunity to unfold in a natural way. I want to live from my heart like the indigenous people. Closer to nature. I want to feel the water, the skies, the trees, the plants.

My heart is full of it.

But something else is going on below the radar of my awareness. The energy in my body is changing, it is slowly fading. I don’t realise it there and then, but Life has heard my deep cry. My longing for a connected and heart centered way of living. 

And it has decided to answer it. Of course also in a way I could not have imagined. In hind sight that seems to be a pattern when life decides to respond.

A breakdown follows. Starting with burnout and then the collapse of my life in several areas. It brings me to a complete stand still. Allowing me to do one thing only, and that is to: Feel.

I need to feel it all. Old pains and struggles, the rejection of them, the resistance in me, the shame. Feel all emotions and sensations that I had somehow passed by with my busyness and that had become stuck in my system.

And finally... surrender. A full surrender to Life.

My senses cracked wide open and for a long time I was living life feeling fully unfiltered. Making even the simple daily routines become challenging.

Looking back at it 10 years later,

this breakdown was the best answer Life could have ever given me. It left me no other option than to clean my slate, which was doing a lot of emotional work. And rebuild my life from scratch.


The more I cleaned myself up, the more I stumbled on to that intimate connection with life. Allowing for new capacities to open up, new dreams to arise and new hopes to form.

I gently started crafting a more natural way of living." 

That is how my journey started.

I live such a lovely connect life now. In the middle of a small village, still with my kids. I have learned that real change and lasting transformation always starts in the cracks of life. Followed by a liminal time - that messy middle - in between the old and the new.

Where figuring it out and having a plan no longer work.

Those 10 years were difficult as much as magical. And they made me become my ow expert in noticing the cracks before they happen, sensing the dynamics of the liminal space and navigating it using

my heart and my gut feelings.

I those moments where things end, collapse, break down and fall apart.

Where we loose grip, have to deal with a loss of control, sense our powerlessness and even desperation. They are also the birthing place of something new that wants to be born.

It is the place where the future wants to emerge.

When the cracks happen, new seeds in us get the change to sprout.

New possibilities and new ways of living arrive.

So let’s watch for those cracks in our lives. And in our collective.

They seem to be happening a lot now.

And if you can, after the initial mess and maybe even shock, be very gentle with yourself and others.
 And create a bit of distance and time, here and there, to just observe.

You will start sensing that - right in the middle of to the pain and the mess - something new and beautiful wants to be born.

But all of that is found in the next chapters of the book.

Let me know, what do you think?

Should I finish it? Much love,

Nicole

Silently observing and connecting with Nature 📷 Annette Beerens