St Tropez. 2009. One wish. One word. One life rearranged.
I have always believed that life would give me what I needed at the exact moment that I needed it. When life has been hard on me, that belief was somewhere within me invisible, but alive.
I remember that weight even before I remembered the wish.
It sat heavily in my chest and mind, like something that had gone quiet but never really left me. It wasn’t sharp or overwhelming, just a dull heaviness. Days turned into months, yet nothing shifted inside. I wasn’t unhappy in any clear way; I was simply stuck, as if life had moved on without me and I hadn’t noticed.
The night before blowing the candle, I felt it more in my body than in my thoughts: a stillness that wasn’t peace, a waiting without conditions. A pressure to know where to go and what to do, and at the same time an immense emptiness born of having no direction.
It had been a few months since I left my dream job at Cartier. The breakup was still very painful, and I needed to rebuild myself. I was looking for something without really knowing what. Perhaps a healing process, in hindsight.
In St. Tropez, on the French Riviera, I feel good. I always see possibilities there. In 2009, everything revolved around my coaching business, and it was in the South of France that my first project was born.
At the beginning of the year, while visiting my mother, the idea came to spend the summer there and create a coaching concept I called the “Awareness Walk’shop.”
So, when summer arrived, I went back to St. Tropez to stay with her and launch this project. I hoped to return to Amsterdam with a clear sense of what September 2009 would bring: would I settle under the sun and start my coaching business there, or would I return to my life in Amsterdam?
I was already preparing this project back in April. On my website, the presentation page stated:
I wrote: “During your daily walks, you’ll experience magical moments surrounded by nature, while reconnecting with yourself. Among the fragrant flowers of the French Riviera, you’ll learn to listen to your inner voice, to sense the connection between your energy and the Universe, and to welcome new, nourishing sensations.
Join us in Saint-Tropez for a gentle, one-of-a-kind experience.”
On my “About me” page, I wrote about faith, about letting go, about trusting life to bring me what I needed. I wrote: “I decided to just be and let it be.” Something was already brewing in the Universe without my knowing; I could feel its vibration and was beginning to give it words.
But writing about letting go and actually living it are not the same. That summer, I was still trying to do something to soften the heaviness of my recent breakup. I was searching for the shape my new life would take.
Despite the original idea behind my project, nothing was really taking off. The momentum was there: the preparations, the sharing, the printed flyers… but it all fizzled out under the weight of failure. If I’m honest I know I didn’t do everything I could to make it work. And I think (in fact, I’m certain now) that it stemmed from my visceral fear of being seen. So, in the middle of that summer 2009, I found myself back in the same place: emptiness, and the pressure without direction.
Then one evening, at a party on a yacht in Saint-Tropez, everything changed. Without me even realizing it yet. In the whisper of a single sentence.
There were three of us, standing at the bar, waiting for our drinks. Suddenly my friend Hope turned around. She was holding two small candles in glasses that were sitting on the boat’s bar. She handed one to each of us, turned back to get one for herself, and simply said, “Blow out the candle and make a wish.”
Completely out of the blue.
A wish? Ummm… I didn’t know what to wish for. Really. There was nothing planned, nothing thought out. And then, for the second time a few seconds, out of the blue again, I heard:
“Travel the world and the seven seas.”
I didn’t choose it. I heard it.
The next morning, I woke up with that phrase still there.
I went to my mother and said, “Listen, Mom, last night I was asked to make a wish, and all I heard was: travel the world and the seven seas. So I think that’s what I have to do.”
It was a phrase. Not a plan. Not a carefully considered decision. Simply a sentence heard in the silence of a deep whisper. And that phrase, quietly, rearranged everything. The shift had occurred.
As always when I find myself in a flow state, everything started moving at lightning speed. That’s when the decision becomes clear, as if it had always been there, just waiting to be seen so it could manifest.
So the next morning, I told my mother that I was going to travel to follow that whisper. She immediately embraced my idea and together we decided that the trip would begin with a “return to my roots.”
The first two destinations came easily: we would travel together to Morocco, where she was born, and then Tunisia, where one of my grandmothers was born. What would come next? I would start sketching that out a few weeks later in Amsterdam.
Back in the Netherlands, I had to get organized: put my apartment up for long-term rental, store my belongings in a storage unit, and buy the first tickets. And how long would I be gone for? Once again, I let life decide: the length of time my tenants wanted to stay would be the length of my trip.
It turned out to be a year.
One day in September, I went for coffee with Georgi, an Israeli friend I had met that same summer in St. Tropez. I told him about my plan to return to my roots. For him, it was obvious: given my Jewish heritage, I absolutely had to add Israel to my list.
For me, it was a shock, almost a visceral refusal:
“No way! What the f*** do you want me to do in Israel!?”
Seriously! Why should I go there? For me, that place was the symbol of unjustified death and, above all, the fundamental reason why I couldn’t be myself in this world. Because one day, people decided that a label placed on others could justify their murder, Israel had come to represent, in my eyes, the decree of my difference.. Times have changed, of course, but when I was ten and wanted to do what my classmates were doing, like go to catechism, my parents told me: “You can’t go, we’re not Catholic, we’re Jewish.” But what exactly did it mean to “be” Jewish or Catholic?
I didn’t understand, and I still don’t fully, especially since this “identity” was given to me based on a lie, one I didn’t know about at the time… but that’s another story.
So, Georgi invited me to stop by Tel Aviv, and I accepted, because in the end he was right: this land was also, in some way, part of my origins.
And there you have it: Morocco. Tunisia. Israel. No travel plan, just a thread to follow.
It was on this path that circumstances fell into place, giving my life its new direction.
My mother and I left on November 14, 2009, and nine months later, after sixteen years spent in the rain, I no longer wanted to leave this new life in the sun I ending up having after the beginning of that sabbatical year. I sold my apartment in Amsterdam and decided to see what life had in store for me from that moment on, in Israel, or elsewhere.
What this wish set in motion was something I could never have imagined back on that boat in August 2009. The shift propelled me into a new country, made me learn a new language, and, though I didn’t know it at the time, it would also bring me my greatest joy: motherhood.
And my greatest loss: not being able to be a mother in the way I had imagined.
Above all, this shift marked the beginning of a long period that would ultimately prove to be a return to a strength I didn’t yet know I possessed.
All of this, in a single overheard phrase. Not chosen.
That is the magic of a true wish, the kind that carries the seed of a profound shift: it does not come from you. It comes through you.
Thank you!
Indeed and I am lucky to have her! 🙏
Such an amazing story of your life experience. What an incredible experience to have with you mother too 💕