This is me.

I had several burnouts. They showed me what happens when you override your own limits for too long. For a long time I barely noticed my own needs. Taking them seriously, or standing up for them with others, was even harder.

Dependency and a susceptibility to addiction are also part of my story. When contact with yourself is lost, you look for support on the outside. That is exactly what I did. There was no quick solution. It became years in which I dealt intensively with myself.

I worked with psychology and philosophy, questioned my patterns and learned to observe myself more precisely. During my geography studies I encountered indigenous cultures and other worldviews. There I understood that much of what seems self-evident is merely learned. And what is learned can also be changed.

Step by step I learned to recognise my needs, set boundaries and make decisions out of myself. That is what I pass on today. I do not stand above it all. I walked these paths myself.

For me, sovereignty does not mean always being strong. It begins where I look honestly at what is going on inside me and determine the direction myself again.

I started out in the forge. A trade in which nothing is talked up: either the workpiece holds, or it does not. I never unlearned that honesty.

Then came the first break with the path laid out for me. The workshop became a server room, and the server room later a lecture hall. Craft, IT, geography, social science – not a straight CV, but one with edges.

Those edges are exactly the point: I have experienced several times that you can leave a path that was already settled. Not as a break for its own sake, but because at some point I noticed whose decisions I was actually living.

For me, sovereignty is therefore not a feel-good term but a craft. It can be learned, practised and built up piece by piece.