I was brought up with the belief that I could become anything I wanted. Looking back, I think this is the most dangerous fairytale you can tell a child. I entered adult life convinced that if I just wished hard enough, the universe would answer and manna would fall from the sky. Of course, reality was different. I started a business with no knowledge of finance, economics, or trade. I was naïve enough to believe that if I only worked endlessly and held fast to my vision, life would deliver. I set myself grand goals. I wanted to be the best in my field. I wanted admiration, acknowledgment, and money. For years, I worked with every ounce of energy I had, certain that if I just pushed a little further, success would come.But there is a price to living this way. Stress became my shadow, my constant companion, and I had no tools to soothe it. My upbringing had never prepared me for the pressure of the career I had chosen. Slowly, I entered my first real life crisis: the devastating discovery that I was not built for a life of endless striving. The harder I tried, the more drained I became. At the same time, I had two small children. And just as with my career, I wanted their lives to be flawless. I longed to be the most composed, graceful mother. I dressed them in dusty pastels, followed every piece of advice on healthy food and proper play, and drove myself to exhaustion trying to perfect every detail.
Looking back, I think all my yearning for approval grew from feeling out of place as a child. I was raised in a commune in Copenhagen in the 1970s, surrounded by ideals of freedom, creativity, and harmony. The adults around me believed in living slowly, in finding joy in simplicity, in personal freedom. It was a childhood built on the dream of balance. And yet, surrounded by so many voices and opinions, it often felt intrusive. Like most children, I longed for escape. I dreamt of pink Barbie dresses, of glamour, of ambition. At the same time, I felt ashamed of being the hippie kid. I didn’t know the social rules others took for granted. Even simple things, like eating with a fork and knife, I had to teach myself. The embarrassment of being uneducated pushed me to work harder, to fight for a sense of being right. My first business was a small jewelry shop in Copenhagen. I created what I loved: tiny series, custom pieces for private clients. But restlessness and ambition kept me impatient. That kind of work is difficult to scale, so I launched a more fashion-oriented jewelry company. We produced abroad, designed seasonal collections, and launched several times a year. The company became a huge success, changing the way jewelry was seen. Suddenly, fine jewelry was treated almost like an accessory, widely available, and we produced in whatever quantity the market demanded, never asking ourselves if this was a sustainable way of creating. In my core, I am a sculptor. I need to shape directly in metal and wax, to let my hands speak before the drawings. Reducing design to technical drawings cut me off from the very pulse of my craft, and slowly my creativity seeped away. I hadn’t understood how essential it was for my well-being to work in this physical, direct way. It was like vitamins for my body and soul, and without it, something vital inside me withered. And one day, I simply broke. It was as if someone had turned off the light inside me. I couldn’t leave the house. I called my business partner of ten years and said: I am not coming back, notever again. Count me out. In one phone call, I walked away from everything I had built, and I left with nothing.
The collapse did not stop at work. My marriage also came undone. In hindsight, it makes sense. I had built a life on impossible standards, and when the foundation cracked, everything above it crumbled too. Yet strangely, the crisis also held a kind of clarity. I think it was life’s way of forcing me onto a truer path.
For as long as I can remember, I had demanded of myself to be almost superhuman in my integrity. I wanted to always be the bigger person, the graceful one. Even when large companies copied my designs, I told myself to stay calm, to kill my enemies with kindness, to never show anger. But the truth is, watching someone steal your creativity is like watching your children being taken from you. It wounds you deeply. For years I swallowed that pain. I pretended to be composed, to be untouchable. The problem is, I am human. And sometimes, a very angry little one.
Through my divorce, I finally allowed myself to feel that anger, to rage, to sulk, to be imperfectly human. Accepting those darker sides has turned out to be one of the most liberating things I have ever done. After the collapse, I was paralyzed. For half a year I did nothing. I couldn’t even look at my workbench. The thought of creating another piece of jewelry made me feel sick. It was as though my creativity had abandoned me. Eventually, I signed up for a ceramics course. I had never touched clay before, so I had to surrender to being terrible at it. For two years I played with it without expectation, only trying to mend myself. Slowly, the desire to create jewelry returned. Financially, it was a disaster, no salary, no security. But I came to understand it as the price of having ignored my own needs for so long. I had driven myself into the ground chasing a dream that, in truth, was never mine. What I know now is that whenever I push myself too hard, creativity vanishes. I used to dream of being the kind of person who could thrive in endless work, who could stay calm in chaos and shine under pressure. But that is not who I am. The harder I try to be someone else, the faster my inspiration disappears. So I have learned: I must live differently. I must slow down. I must rest. I still struggle with relaxation. I am still embarrassed by my imperfections. But I am in progress. And I finally know my end goal: to feel safe and at peace in my work, to choose what is true for me, and not to run after everything that glitters.
My batteries recharge slowly. If I work on weekends, my week collapses. It has taken years to understand that my creativity depends not on hours worked, but on how deeply I have rested. My best pieces come when my head is emptied, when silence makes space for something new. After a lifetime in the city, I have bought a house in the countryside. For years the thought terrified me. I imagined boredom, isolation, and missing out. But the reality has surprised me. I find joy in silence, I feel blessedly detached from the noise. I still need the city, but now time away makes it easier to hear myself, to set boundaries and just breathe. So navigating change, for me, is no longer about ambition. It is about peace of mind. It is about treating myself with kindness and respect. And it is about remembering, always, that without rest, there is no creativity. I have now found a way back to almost where I started, and I am at the moment working on a relaunch of some of my very first work. I have redesigned some of my oldest designs, and I find great pleasure in finding my way back to the beginning. I often askmyself if I regret that I took such a big detour, but honestly I do not. I am just so grateful for all of the mistakes I never have to repeat. And I am so excited about giving myself a new start. I would, after all, never have been here without the journey.
