Jacqueline Schäfer, 26-03-1961, The Netherlands
Unknown chances through gentle surrendering and immersing into the new.
Introduction.
I can only write and share what I wrote with others when I’m feeling well. That doesn’t mean that the topic always has to be about something positive. It can be a reflection on a serious negative experience, thought or feeling.
But, I like to share it from a point of view and a moment in time from where I can show that I’ve overcome the negative and that it has brought me something positive.
Cause that’s how I like to look at life. What positive lesson can I learn from everything that crosses my path?
I write journals. I’ve done that for the largest part of my life.There I can share everything with me, myself and I. Problems and thoughts that I don’t want to share with others. Because it would make them, in all certainty, worry about me.
And I know that when people worry about me, most of the time they’d like to come with solutions. To fix things. Being the youngest of five I’ve seen things taken out of my hands out of tender love and kindness. With older siblings taking care of business. That, in all probability, made me want to take care of things myself. So, being who I am, call it stubborn or being too proud for my own good, I like to see if I can find the answers to my questions or the solutions to my problems in my own way, time and space.
That doesn’t mean I’m always able to find them. There surely have been moments that I had to surrender. Give up and give over because the answers and solutions were far beyond my reach. Even far beyond my dreams.
When hitting rock bottom feels like the worst thing ever. Meaning you’ve lost control over your own life and, with a bleeding heart, have to hand it over to others, hoping that all they want is the best for you.
I’ve been there. And surrendering to the inevitable and immersing myself into the new and unknown, has brought me one of life’s real treasures, that would have passed me by if I stubbornly would have hung on to my own beliefs.
Who am I? My name is Jacqueline Schäfer. I’m 61 years old and living in Amsterdam, the capital city of the Netherlands, and I’m going to tell you my story of immersion.
I always like to reassure the readers with whom I share my story, by telling up front that everything will turn out for the best. Maybe not from all of my inner personal points of view. But, on the whole, for me as a complete person, it did.
Up until 2019 I was a professional artist. Painting and sculpting in my Amsterdam home studio. I went to the prestigious Rietveld Art Academy here in Amsterdam where I graduated in 1989. Ever since then I can honestly say I enjoyed doing what I did every day. The freedom of being an independent entrepreneur doing what she loves most while being master over time and space. I could not think of a greater joy.
My financial situation improved with the years and thanks to a collaboration with an Amsterdam art gallery that took care of the commercial part, my work became more and more well known in and also outside the Netherlands. I was as happy as I could be.
In 2008 my dear mother of 82 broke her hip. She still lived in our family home where I was born as the youngest of five. Two of my siblings lived abroad and the other two had busy households and companies to attend to. I thought I was in the ideal situation to help my mother recover and I was really happy that I could be of meaning to her.
But, with the years she her need of help became more and more intense.. And I wanted to be there for her, as she had always been there for me as a loving mother. I also thought that I could afford it financially and creatively. But, with my energy changing more and more to my mother’s well being, the energy for my art and working in my studio decreased. She became my number one priority and I wouldn’t change a thing If I had to do it all over again. For that period became the most meaningful period in my life.
After eight years of me lovingly taking care of my mother she died in 2016 at the age of 89. In her own home, in her own bed, in the room where I was born. Unfortunately one year after my oldest brother had died from an aggressive cancer. I wish she had been spared that experience. I was heartbroken but also very grateful. For her passing went in the best scenario possible.
By that time there was as much as nothing left of the relationship with my gallery. My income was down to the minimum and I was filling one financial gap with the other. Luckily my mother left us all a very nice amount of money of which a part went to taxes, a part to my creditors and of what was left I decided to live on for one carefree year.
Maybe not the most sensible thing to do, but it gave me the opportunity to recuperate from the emotional rollercoaster and to work in my studio and paint whatever I felt like. Without having to keep in consideration that it had to be something of which I could pay my bills. My experiences and losses of the eight years prior were used to express my feelings on the canvas and I did make some wonderful new paintings because I felt free to paint whatever I wanted and to experiment.
When the year was over there wasn’t much money left and I was convinced that I didn’t need a gallery to take care of my business. There were a lot of opportunities in Holland as well as abroad that unfortunately didn’t live up to my expectations.
So, mid June 2019 I came to the harsh conclusion that there was nothing else left for me to do, than to end my professional career as an artist, after thirty years, and to apply for social welfare. I was heartbroken at the time, for it was the end of me living my dream. And the question arose, “What was left for me to do at the age of 58, with no other certificates than the one from the Rietveld Art Academy which I received thirty years before and no other relevant working experience?” I found out I had quite a distance from the labor market and I thought my future would hold nothing meaningful for me professionally. I’d hit rock bottom.
The good thing about me hitting rock bottom is that it opened me up to a new vision towards the future. It would be something positive and probably something totally new, because I felt so down that to my perspective I couldn’t get any lower. Which was good. I changed my attitude of feeling sorry for myself to one where I looked out for an opportunity instead of looking at potential problems.
With that mindset I enrolled in municipal reintegration training where I worked on moving up and forwards trying to find out what life had still in store for me. Looking for chances and possibilities instead of limitations and problems.
The job hunter working for the municipality drew my attention to a one-year work-learning trajectory as peer coach at a social impact company. As a peer coach I would support people without work, with my own experience and story in combination with coaching skills and knowledge, towards training/ education or a long-term job.
I did not share her conviction that this would be exactly something for me, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt.
So, I became one of the twenty members of a peer coach group in training to become professional peer coaches. Module one took about six weeks of personal development. It was for me to find out if peer coaching was something that might become a new professional direction. As it was also the beginning of COVID the whole training started virtual as it was supposed to be physical. For me an unknown concept of communication and another challenge. But, I just went with the flow of opening up to the new and unknown. That mindset turned out to be a very fruitful one.Which is about immersing, exploring and finding what I didn’t even know I was looking for six months prior.
I passed Module 1, during which I’d found out that coaching others was a skill that was supported by a few of my natural qualities of which I had never before thought I could use them professionally. Now that I felt more confident that I was on the right track, I was very happy that, to my surprise, I was selected to continue with Module 2. One year of working in a team of peer coaches and learning for forty hours per week. Coaching people who would volunteer to empower and support them in regaining ownership of their own life. Which all worked out very well.
At this point I feel the need to skip to where it felt like real magic happened.
That’s when towards the end of my wonderful ImPower period, instead of writing my CV/ resume, I wrote an article on LinkedIn titled #OPENTOWORK. I wrote about who I was and what my dreams were when it came to my new job. I shared my experience, knowledge and my skill set. I closed with the sentence that I hoped that there would be people who would like to think along with me.
The next morning I received a message on LinkedIn from Joeri Kraaijestein, founder, co-owner and managing director of Beround, an IT consultancy specialized in software testing, who asked me if he or his network could be of any meaning to me.
That afternoon Joeri and I had our first virtual meeting, which was to be the beginning of a series of wonderful conversations, where I did not had to introduce myself. Because Joeri had followed my process of transitioning from artist to peer coach through social media. He told me about himself, his background and his company Beround.
Enthusiasm was shared and possibilities were explored. Looking where we could be of meaning to one another and to my wonder and surprise this resulted in me signing an employment contract for a bespoke position as one of the inhouse coaches and member of the backbone team within 2,5 weeks.
And now?
This month I’ve been working for one year at Beround as one of the inhouse coaches and member of the Backbone Team. My full time contract has been extended from one year to indefinite. It was one year of pleasure, learning and growth. Immersing myself again in a new environment. Opening up to new people, new skills and a lot of new information. One year of happiness that would have passed me by if I had hold on to my beliefs that there was a limit to my potential, which would have kept me from jumping into “The New” and immerse…
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