Coming Home

In my (almost) whole life, I wanted to become someone.

I studied. I worked hard. I didn't mind sacrificing my time and my spaces to get somewhere. I pushed to meet the expectations, to find my place, to build the best version of myself — one that I and my loved ones could be proud of.

And then, at some point, an unexpected emptiness sneaked in and quietly interrupted me. I stopped, and I asked myself: what if that famous best version of me isn't the part I still have to build, but the one I set aside to be accepted?

What if the best part of me wasn't the part I still had to build — but the one I set aside to be accepted?

A Hungarian, coming from a very modest — if not poor — family, I ended up in Switzerland. I built a career in corporate HR. I got good at it. I learned people, culture and systems, how to help someone grow and evolve inside organisations that weren't always built for them. I knew the cost of continuous improvement and adaptation.

And yet the work that moves me most now has nothing to do with a bigger title, a bigger team, or more recognition.

What I actually dreamed of is simpler. A space where other expat women — like me, far from home, full of enthusiasm and the desire to show up to a new society, culture and language, but internally exhausted from proving that they're worthy to belong here — can finally exhale. Where that hidden belief of "not being enough" no longer has to be compensated for with another performance, another push past her own limits and boundaries.

One thing surprised me in my own inner journey. For a long time, I thought I was drawn to becoming a coach because I'd spent a career in HR.

But maybe it's the other way around. Maybe I went into HR because I was always looking for this, to create a place where a woman could sit in the quiet, stop explaining her reason for being, and feel like she's enough.

So maybe I'm not becoming a new, better version of myself after all.

Maybe I'm just letting go of the one I thought I had to be.

And slowly, quietly I'm coming home. And the fact that this can happen to you as well, gives me joy.