Blog

Some people arrive like mirrors. Others arrive like earthquakes. The rare ones if you’re paying attention, do both.

We’re often told that growth is a solo pilgrimage. Light a candle, journal your feelings, become your “best self” in a vacuum. And yes, solitude has its sacred place. But let’s not pretend we evolve in isolation. We are shaped, sharpened, and sometimes beautifully undone by the people we let close enough to matter.

From a feminist perspective, this matters deeply because for so long, relationships have been framed as places where we are diminished, accommodating, or quietly edited into something more acceptable. Growth, we were told, should happen around others, not because of them. Especially not because of those who challenge us.

But here’s the twist: the right kind of friction is not oppression. It’s ignition.

Meeting someone who challenges you, really challenges you, is not about being corrected or controlled. It’s about encountering a perspective that refuses to let you stay comfortably unquestioned. It’s the friend who tilts their head and says, “But is that what you actually believe, or just what you’ve been taught to believe?” It’s the lover who doesn’t flinch when you show your contradictions, who doesn’t rush to smooth them over but instead invites you to sit with them, examine them, maybe even laugh at them.

It’s uncomfortable.
It’s supposed to be.

Because introspection isn’t born from ease. It sparks in those moments where something doesn’t quite fit anymore, where your old narratives start to itch, where certainty begins to crack just enough to let curiosity seep in.

But challenge alone isn’t enough. Without support, it’s just erosion.

The real magic happens in the presence of people who hold both: the audacity to question you and the care to not let you disappear in the process. They create a space where you can stretch without snapping, where you can rethink without feeling like you’re losing yourself entirely.

Support, in this sense, is not passive. It’s not empty validation or polite agreement. It’s active, intentional witnessing. It’s someone saying,
“I see who you are right now, and I’m not threatened by who you’re becoming.” It’s the kind of presence that doesn’t demand you shrink to maintain connection.

And here’s where the feminist lens sharpens everything: agency.

Personal development, when rooted in agency, is not about becoming more palatable, more productive, more “together” by someone else’s standards. It’s about becoming more self-authored. The people who truly support your growth aren’t sculpting you, they’re standing beside you while you carve yourself, sometimes wildly, sometimes imperfectly, always on your own terms.

There’s something quietly radical about that.

To be in relationships; platonic, romantic, fleeting, or lifelong, that don’t require you to abandon yourself, but instead invite you deeper into yourself? That’s not just personal growth. That’s resistance. That’s rewriting the script.

And yes, it can get strange. Growth often does. You might find yourself unlearning things you once defended fiercely. You might outgrow dynamics that once felt like home. You might become a version of yourself that your past self wouldn’t fully recognize.

Good.

Let it be a little disorienting. Let it be a little magical. Let it feel like stepping into a version of your life that hasn’t been fully mapped yet.

Because the people who challenge and support you in the right ways don’t just change how you see yourself.

They change what you believe is possible for yourself.

And once that door opens, it doesn’t close again.

There are loves that announce themselves with fireworks, loud, dazzling, impossible to ignore. And then there are the quieter rebellions.The ones that hum beneath the skin, that slip between shadow and soul, that refuse spectacle in favor of something far more dangerous intimacy on our own terms.

There is a version of love that doesn’t perform. It doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t center itself for approval under fluorescent lights. It grows wild instead like moss in the dark, like roots tangling beneath a forest floor where no one is watching and nothing is asking to be palatable.

That’s where the primal lives.

Not the caricature of it the tired, overused myth that reduces attraction to instinct stripped of thought, but the deeper current. The body as archive. The pulse as language. The quiet, electric recognition of another being that doesn’t erase you, but sharpens your edges. Makes you more you.

Desire, from here, is something done to us.

And yes, it can be strange. It can be inconvenient. It can laugh at the rules we were handed like they were polite suggestions, scribbled in pencil. It might show up barefoot, tracking mud across the clean floors of expectation. It might whisper instead of shout. It might choose the unseen over the obvious.

Good.

Because there is power in the unseen.

There is power in desire that belongs fully to us, that isn’t curated for consumption, that isn’t softened to be digestible. Love, sex, attraction, these are not scripts we inherit. They are terrains we explore. Sometimes with a map, sometimes with nothing but instinct and curiosity and a slightly unhinged sense of adventure.

And maybe that’s the point.

To love not as we’ve been instructed, but as we discover. To let it be playful, feral, tender, surreal. To let it exist between shadow and soul, not as something diminished, but as something protected, potent, and entirely, unapologetically ours.

We inherit a world already in motion, soil turned by other hands, stories half-told, rivers that remember older paths. Yet the loudest voices often insist on taking more: more land, more profit, more space than any one life could possibly need. Scarcity, we’re told, justifies the grab.

But another tradition exists, quieter and older. It asks a different question: 

What if we took only what we needed and left the rest for those who come after us?

This is not a philosophy of smallness. It is a philosophy of responsibility. It assumes the future has a claim on the present.

To take only what we need requires courage in a culture that celebrates excess. It means refusing the myth that accumulation equals success. It means noticing the ways power concentrates resources in some hands while others are told to make do with a lot less.

But restraint can be radical. Imagine economies built around sufficiency rather than endless growth. Cities designed for shared life instead of private hoarding. Knowledge passed forward instead of locked behind gates.

Taking only what we need is not about deprivation. It is about remembering that we are temporary guests here. The forests, the water, the fragile architectures of echo systems none of them belong to us.

So we move through the world with open hands.

We take what sustains us.
We protect what sustains others.
And we leave enough wonder, enough possibility, for the generations still on their way.

Something strange is happening right now. and has been going on for a while.

The public sector, the place that is supposed to hold our schools, our hospitals, our libraries, our safety nets, is quietly being run like a startup that drank too much venture capital.

Growth! Efficiency! Optimization! Quarterly thinking applied to systems meant to care for generations.

Somewhere along the way, the state started cosplaying as a corporation.

But here’s the thing: citizens are not customers, and taxes are not revenue streams. Taxes are an investment. A collective spell we cast together so that education gets brighter, healthcare gets kinder, and the future gets a little more breathable for the kids who aren’t even here yet.

Right now that spell feels… hijacked.

We pay in, but the return, the real ROI, is oddly invisible. Schools stretch thinner. Healthcare workers run marathons in hospital corridors. Sustainable development gets treated like a decorative plant in the lobby instead of the foundation of the building.

Meanwhile the language of “growth” floats through policy rooms like a ghost that refuses to explain itself.

Growth of what? For whom? Toward where?

Because a society isn’t a tech company chasing its next funding round. It’s a living ecosystem made of people, care, knowledge, and the stubborn belief that our shared resources should circle back to us.

Especially to those who have historically been asked to give the most while receiving the least, women, caregivers, the invisible laborers holding entire systems together with coffee, spreadsheets, and sheer willpower.

If the public sector keeps chasing profit logic, it risks becoming something uncanny: a machine that collects contributions from citizens but forgets the magic trick of turning those contributions back into collective wellbeing.

And people notice. Because the real question humming beneath it all is simple:

If the public sector is run like a company, where exactly are the dividends?

There’s a moment in Industry that keeps haunting me. Not a dramatic one, just someone’s face going blank between transactions. That split second when the performance drops and there’s nothing underneath. Just void.

This show understands something brutal about our current moment: we’ve become so good at performing ourselves that we’ve forgotten who we actually are. And the trading floor at Pier Point is just the most honest version of what we’re all doing.

The Performance Economy

Industry doesn’t moralize about ambition or capitalism. It just shows you what it costs. Watch any of the characters, the lies they tell, the people they become, the way they’ve learned to trade pieces of themselves for proximity to power that might never actually be theirs.

They’re all doing it. Manufacturing personas. Calculating every interaction. Turning sex into strategy and friendship into networking. They move through their lives like they’re watching themselves from outside, because they are. Constant self-surveillance has replaced actual selfhood.

And I can’t lie to you, it feels familiar.

The Authenticity of Emptiness

What makes the show devastating isn’t the financial corruption or the excess. It’s the emotional precision of disconnection. These people can’t even have a panic attack without calculating the optics. They can’t be vulnerable without weaponizing it. They’ve internalized the surveillance so completely that there’s no private self left to protect.

The darkness in Industry is authentic because it’s not dramatized. It’s just shown, flatly, as the normal state of being. This is what it takes to survive in systems designed to extract everything from you while giving back just enough to keep you hungry.

From a feminist perspective, this isn’t just about women trying to make it in male-dominated spaces. It’s about all of us—regardless of gender—learning to hollow ourselves out in exchange for value that’s always determined externally. We’ve all been taught to perform, to optimize, to turn ourselves into portfolios rather than people.

The Society We’ve Built

Industry reflects a world where connection to yourself is a luxury no one can afford. Where your worth is measured in productivity and performance. Where even your trauma gets monetized, your relationships become transactional, your authentic feelings are liabilities.

We don’t have time to know ourselves because we’re too busy optimizing ourselves. We don’t have space for genuine feeling because we’re managing how our feelings appear. The show just makes it visible, the trading floor as metaphor for contemporary existence.

These characters aren’t villains. They’re just people trying to survive in a system that demands constant performance and offers no room for the actual self. And they’re losing themselves in the process, piece by piece, until they can’t remember what they wanted before they learned what they were supposed to want.

The Question We’re Avoiding

Here’s what troubles me about the show, and about our moment: we’ve fought so hard for access to these spaces, these positions of power. And we’ve won some of those battles. But at what cost?

If the price of success is complete disconnection from yourself, if the price of mattering is becoming indistinguishable from the system that dehumanizes you, then what exactly have we won? Industry won’t answer that question because there is no easy answer.

Can you be authentic without being destroyed?

What the Darkness Shows Us

The most radical thing about Industry is that it refuses to offer solutions or hope. It just shows us the cost and says: this is what it takes. This is what we’re losing.

And we are losing something. All of us. In the way we’ve learned to curate ourselves for consumption. In the way we’ve turned self-improvement into self-erasure. In the way we’ve forgotten how to simply exist without performing existence.

The show is dark because the truth is dark. We are disconnected—from ourselves, from each other, from anything that can’t be quantified or optimized or traded.

We’ve built a society that values
performance over presence
image over interiority
productivity over personality

And sometimes the most honest thing to do is just name that. Not fix it. Not inspirationalize it. Just look directly at what we’ve become and sit with the discomfort of recognition.

Industry gives us that uncomfortable gift. It shows us people who’ve traded themselves away for something they’re not even sure they want. And in their blank faces between transactions, we see our own reflection. In the end a culture, whether at the workplace, societal or among friends, that  withholds the structure of inequality is made up of the people living in it. 

The question isn’t whether the show offers hope. The question is whether we’ll stop performing long enough to notice what we’ve missing out on.  

I didn’t think of myself as unfaithful. 

I loved him, but he didn’t enjoy sex as much as I did. No matter how hard I tried to tease and engage him, he didn’t respond. 

So I looked elsewhere. 

The question came a late wednesday night after that extra glass of wine that you never really need. He asked me if I was cheating on him. I looked him straight in the eye and said:

– Don’t be ridiculous. 

I smiled my big smile and he laughed. 

It never felt like a lie and it wasn’t, as it was all in my head.  

Maybe I was searching for a way out from my soon to be failed relationship or maybe I  just needed to fulfill my basic needs for desire and passion in my life. Call me selfish but I enjoy sex and if my partner doesn’t, I suffer. 

I knew exactly what I needed and almost knew where and how to get it. 

I was looking for the person that fascinates you and sticks in your mind. Who briefly enters your life in different times and places, always with a terribly bad timing for the next step. I wanted that person so bad. 

A beautiful man, that I never would consider sharing my life with. My partner was smart, witty and a perfect everyday-person to hangout with. We hade so many great discussions. He endured my mopyness and moodswings and had so much respect for me as woman. 

This [other] man had already proved he didn’t have any of the qualities that I valued. A film director. Smoking and drinking way to much and had probably been fucking around since forever. 

I first met him as a young girl. A loud loft party. We shared a couple of cigarettes on the terrace. Trying to talk, searching for topics we had in common. It was painfully hard, we were in so different stages of life. He newly divorced. Me, trying to understand his situation that I knew nothing about.

The man smirked when we talked as if I was young and unexperienced. I tried hard not to be.

He said something about an evening that never comes again, sharing moments together. I barely listened I was so taken by my feeling of want. I wanted that man with a ring on his finger. A shockful realization. I had never considered an older man and here I was in my early twenties with a man in his late thirties. At that point in my life he was unthinkably old.

Another evening many years later when I was out with my partner that I still hadn’t broken up with despite the sex being even worse, I saw him again. He recognized me and came up to me when I was standing in the bar. Giving me wanting eyes and asking why I was there with my partner. I love him and we live together I said.

He will never lick your pussy the way I would he told me.
– How would I know, you’ve never have I replied.

He gave me a look like he wanted to fuck me right there in the bar.

– What a shame, he said turned away from me and left.

Imposter syndrome doesn’t always sound like panic or self-doubt. Sometimes it sounds calm, reasonable, even factual. For me, it began with a sentence spoken in a classroom.

My language teacher in gymnasium once told me, you will never become a writer. It wasn’t framed as cruelty, just an assessment, delivered with authority. And because it came from someone whose job was to judge language, I believed it. That sentence settled quietly into my identity and hardened into truth: I will never become a writer.

What’s strange is how easily a single opinion can override a lifetime of instinct. I’ve always carried stories with me. Scenes, voices, fragments of worlds that linger and insist. They don’t ask permission. They wait. Yet the belief remains, steady and persuasive: this isn’t for you.

Imposter syndrome thrives on this kind of contradiction. You feel the pull to create, but you distrust the legitimacy of that pull. You tell yourself that real writers look different, sound different, work differently. You collect reasons not to begin, not enough time, not the right mood, not enough confidence, not enough certainty that it will be worth it.

So the stories stay unwritten. Not because they aren’t there, but because avoidance is easier than confronting the possibility of failure. Or worse, the possibility of trying and proving the old verdict right.

What imposter syndrome doesn’t account for is persistence. The stories don’t leave. They return in quiet moments, in the spaces between obligations, reminding you that the urge to write is not accidental. It’s not a hobby you picked up. It’s a pressure that hasn’t released.

I’m learning that being a writer isn’t something granted by teachers or institutions. It isn’t bestowed through permission or approval. It happens the moment you sit down and write, even if doubt is present, even if fear narrates every sentence.

Maybe the truth isn’t I will never become a writer.
Maybe the truth is simpler, and harder to avoid:
I already am, I just haven’t allowed myself the time, or the courage, to act like one yet.

And the stories are still there, patiently waiting.

We are moving toward the light again.
The days are still short, but they are lengthening. The shift is subtle — easy to miss if you’re not paying attention, yet it’s felt in the body before it’s seen on the clock. With it comes a quiet reassurance: this phase is not permanent. It never is.

I cherish the changing seasons for this reason. They teach resilience without force or spectacle. They remind us that contraction is not failure, but part of a necessary cycle. Rest, withdrawal, and slowness have their place, even when the instinct is to push through.

When the world feels dark — politically, socially, emotionally — it’s tempting to believe that heaviness is all there is. But the seasons offer a different truth. The return of light is already underway, whether or not it dominates the headlines or the mood of the moment.

In the Nordics, you learn to trust this process. You survive the dark by honoring it, not resisting it. By resting within it. By understanding that brightness doesn’t arrive all at once, fully formed and overwhelming.

It comes gradually.
Minute by minute.
Day by day.

And then one morning, almost without realizing it, you notice: you’re standing in it again.

Darkness in the Nordics isn’t just an absence of light. It’s a presence. It presses gently at first, then more insistently, until it shapes how you think, sleep, move, and relate to time itself.

This December in Stockholm has felt especially heavy. The city has been wrapped in cloud and dimness for a long time, with sun hours sinking to levels not seen in generations. Whether measured by data (38 minutes of sunlight in decemember) or simply by the body, the effect is undeniable: the days blur, mornings resist beginning, and the mind turns inward.

In the Nordics, we don’t just endure winter, we adapt to it. Hibernation is real here. Energy drops. Social lives quiet down. There’s a collective permission to slow, to do less, to retreat without apology. The culture understands something modern life often forgets: constant output is not sustainable when the light disappears.

Darkness has a psychological weight. It can amplify anxiety, deepen sadness, and make the world feel smaller and more fragile. Thoughts loop more easily. Worries linger longer. And when the wider world already feels unstable and tense, the lack of light can make that darkness feel both internal and external.

For me, the sauna is a remedy. Not a cure, but a counterbalance. Heat instead of light. Stillness instead of stimulation. In the sauna, time loosens its grip. The body softens, the mind exhales, and something ancient clicks back into place. This ritual has carried people through Nordic winters for centuries, a reminder that care doesn’t always come from pushing forward, but from warming what has gone cold.

What the darkness also offers, if we let it, is perspective. It strips life down to essentials. You notice what sustains you and what doesn’t. You learn which habits are noise and which are nourishment. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the seasons begin to shift and soon we will move towards lighter days yet again.

I believe stories are doorways.
Some are hidden in plain sight. Others wait in the dark.

They live in the pause before a decision, in the headlines of today, in the art that unsettles you, and in the quiet magic of everyday life. This is where my stories begin.

I write to explore the unseen and to give form to what lingers beneath the surface. To listen for voices history forgot, ignored, or tried to silence. To center intuition, agency, and transformation without asking permission.

I believe imagination is not escape—it is resistance.
That darkness can hold wonder.
That curiosity is a radical act.

I embrace the strange, the cosmic, the playful, and the unsettling. I follow questions. I trust the weird.

My work is shaped by the present moment, by art in all its forms, and by the quiet magic woven into everyday life. I write worlds not to explain them—but to open them.

This is an invitation.
Step beyond the ordinary.
Look closer.
The universe is waiting for you.

In a world that often questions, limits, or underestimates women, I want to invite you to reflect on the quote ”She believed she could, so she did” and think about what it means to you.

For me, personally, it stands as a powerful declaration of self-trust and action. It’s more than just a catchy phrase — it’s a mindset, a quiet rebellion, and a rallying cry. For you, for me and every woman who chooses to back herself, even when the odds aren’t in her favor.

Belief is the first step toward change. In today’s fast-moving, often challenging landscape, belief in one’s abilities can be the difference between staying still or stepping forward.

When women believe in their voice, their value, and their potential, they make things happen — at work, in boardrooms, classrooms, homes, and beyond.

It isn’t about waiting for permission or the perfect moment. It’s about trusting your instincts, pushing past fear, and doing the work — even when no one is watching.

Because belief is powerful. But paired with action –> It’s unstoppable. So, what does ”she believe she should, so she did” mean to you? And what is your next step with that knowledge at the tips of your fingers?

With love/ JJ

Refuse – to buy trash (fast fashion)
Reduse – buy less
Reuse – use several times
Repurpose – use for something else
Repair – take care and mend your belongings
Recycle – your waste
Rebel – against capitalism

Circulate – borrow, rent, trade, share