Already during my time at the Waldorf school, I learnt to love life – the wide range of intellectual, artistic and practical subjects offered a rich variety of things I could love. It was particularly easy when the teachers loved their subjects too. So I went on to train as a teacher in the subjects taught by the teachers who loved their subjects the most – and hence I loved the most: Mathematics and Art. Although I thought I’d prefer to work with adults, even then… I just couldn’t think of a way to bring these two interests together…

After completing my degree, I spent nine months in South Africa as part of the BMZ’s Weltwärts programme, at the Centre for Creative Education, the Waldorf teacher training college in Cape Town. I enjoyed it so much that I ended up staying for seven years. During that time, I worked in fundraising to make it possible for students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds to study too. I also taught individual modules and helped supervise the subsequent Weltwärts volunteers.

One day, a friend invited me to a talk by Dr Tessabella Lovemore, a psychologist, anthroposophical psychotherapist and former Waldorf teacher. She presented a course she had developed – ‘How to love anyone’. I was so impressed by her talk that I was determined to attend this course. However, two months later I moved back to Germany for family reasons, and so it had to remain a dream for the time being.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Tessabella Lovemore began teaching online, which is how I was able to attend her course. When she asked for help with the administration of her courses, I offered my assistance and was thus able to attend almost all of her courses during the last two years of her teaching career. Together with other long-standing students, we founded the Active Practical Love initiative to manage her courses and help spread them further around the world.

I am now still involved with the Centre for Creative Education on a voluntary basis as a board member, I create content for the Instagram channel @discoveriesofamom, and I teach all the courses developed by Dr Tessabella Lovemore.