Turns out, I wasn’t lost. I was collecting life.
Twenty years of building things, starting over, and being far too curious about people to ever pick one lane. This is the long version.
If you looked at the last 8 years on paper, you might reasonably wonder whether I ever heard of the concept of picking one thing. Which, ironically, is what I preach in marketing.
Marketing Lead at De Kleine Keuken, Convious.
GTM Scandinavia & Belgium for Tiqets and Greetz.
Community Lead at a tech consultancy in London.
Building websites for entrepreneurs.
Working in a wonderful little local coffee place.
Studied life coaching, Reiki I–III, HBO Energy Therapy, mindfulness and systemic family work.
Making Human Design books for hundreds of people because I believe that sometimes, having a different language for who you are makes all the difference.
Co-founded inWONDERSTATE with my stellar biz partner Wendelien because we want Sexual Wellness to have a much bigger and more joyful place in our lives.
Started Pre-loved Vintage clothes exchange for kids in my village.
Volunteering at the food bank, hockey club, primary school, local newspaper and padel club. An ambassador for Het Vergeten Kind and organised local events, including a rather ambitious charity dinner in the Grote Kerk which somehow grew into many more events.
I would love to tell you there was a master plan. There wasn’t. There was curiosity, and a reliable inability to walk past something interesting.
And somewhere in between all of that:
I bought houses. Sold houses. Completely renovated one.
Went all-in on crypto. Successfully.
Am a mother to two wonderful daughters. Got divorced. Started over.
And then life did what life sometimes does.
It knocked the wind out of me.
I lost my best friend.
Not just a friend.
My person.
The woman with whom I could be completely, unapologetically myself. The one I could put absolutely everything on the table with, the beautiful, the messy, the ridiculous and the what the actual fuck am I doing?
She never judged.
She just listened, saw straight through the noise, gave me an annoyingly accurate answer…
…and then made me laugh.
I miss her every day.
She would also want it on record that she found my ability to start yet another project hilarious. She was right. She usually was.
And looking back, I realise how much of my life has been about
People.
Friendships that stretched me. Relationships that challenged me. People who reflected things back to me that I wasn’t always thrilled to see.
Sometimes I was the one being tested.
Sometimes I realised I was simply holding up the mirror.
Neither is particularly comfortable.
Both are useful.
And somewhere along the way, I started wondering:
What is the common thread in all of this?
Because surely it isn’t that I have an unusually strong appetite for side quests.
I was looking for the thing underneath it all.
Not the job.
Not the company.
Not the next adventure.
The thing that never changed.
And it turns out, it has always been people.
I’m endlessly fascinated by what is really going on underneath the story we tell.
What someone already knows, but hasn’t quite dared to say.
The contradiction.
The possibility.
The choice hiding underneath all the noise.
I know what it feels like to have a life that looks perfectly fine from the outside and still wonder:
Is this actually what I want?
I know what it feels like to make decisions when there is no obvious right answer.
To lose something.
To start again.
To question yourself.
To build something and then realise you might have outgrown it.
To have people put you to the test.
And to discover that sometimes, the hardest person to see clearly is yourself.
For a long time, there was another thread underneath all of this too:
the fear of being seen.
But why me?
A charming little generational condition passed down through the women in my family.
Don’t take up too much space.
Don’t make too much noise.
Don’t think you’re special.
Just be normal.
Well.
That ship has sailed.
I still have moments, obviously.
But I no longer want to hide behind the next project, qualification or job title.
I want to bring all of it with me.
The entrepreneur.
The marketer.
The coach.
The systems nerd.
The Human Design enthusiast.
The mother.
The woman who rebuilt.
The woman who lost.
The woman who kept going.
The woman who has learned that life rarely follows a sensible career plan.
And now, rather unexpectedly, I know what I want to do with all of it.
Be the person I was lucky enough to have.
The person you can bring everything to.
The thing you can’t say out loud anywhere else.
The decision you keep circling.
The relationship you’re questioning.
The business you’re no longer sure you want.
The version of yourself you’re quietly outgrowing.
The supposedly perfect life that somehow doesn’t feel quite right.
You can put it all on the table.
I’ll listen.
I’ll probably see something you haven’t seen yet.
I might ask a question you weren’t expecting.
And, if I’m doing it right, we’ll probably laugh too.
Because life is serious enough.
You don’t need another person telling you what to do.
Sometimes you just need someone who can see you clearly enough for you to hear yourself again.
Maybe I wasn’t lost after all.
Maybe I was becoming the person I needed to become.
And collecting a frankly ridiculous amount of experience along the way.
Life still throws things at me. It hasn’t run out of ideas yet.
And I remain ridiculously interested in what happens next.
Start a conversation
If something in here feels familiar, let’s talk.
You can bring the question, the mess or the thing you have not said out loud yet. I will bring the attention.
Or email hello@sannekeringeling.com
If something in here feels familiar, let’s talk.