a brand that lets you wander, because you know where home is

As I’m sitting here on the beach in Croatia, I’ve realised once again that travelling is still one of the things that fulfils me most. But it wasn’t always like this. I used to travel constantly, but I rarely had the inner peace to truly be where I was. Travelling no longer feels like something that disregulates me. It feels like something that nourishes me. And I think that says a lot about the difference between wandering from a place of restlessness, and wandering from a place of being rooted.

I have always been an avid traveller and explorer. This blood runs through my veins constantly asking me to explore more, to see more, to wander further. I am the person who would sit on an airplane to one destination already thinking about the next. For a long time, I thought this was freedom, and maybe, in many ways, it was. But I have come to understand that there is a very different kind of freedom in knowing you have somewhere to return to. I didn't understand that until I had spent years deliberately cutting myself off from everything that could even resemble a root.

The biggest and most courageous trip I took was leaving my hometown in Germany during covid for good. I sold basically everything I owned. My entire life became a 70-litre backpack, hence that backpack became the closest resemblance of a "home". Everything I needed had to fit inside it. And there was something incredibly liberating about that. I learnt what it meant to strip away layers we thought defined us, to question the things I had been keeping "just in case" (and i am speaking people too), to realise how much I was carrying simply because I had become accustomed to carrying it. I learnt how to travel lightly.

So for about two years, I lived nomadically throughout Central America. I travelled from one place to the next, never staying long enough to truly arrive, as I associated that with stuckness. I would arrive somewhere, meet people in a hostel, attach myself to a group, and continue traveling with them. Sometimes it was wonderful and sometimes, if I am honest, I knew very quickly that these weren't actually my people. However, I am a human and there was comfort in not being alone. So, I would just override the voice inside me saying, this isn't actually where you belong... because when you have no roots, belonging can become something you desperately seek externally. You find it in people, places, relationships, flings, new adventures, in identities. And I guess for a little while, it works... until it doesn't.

Traveling deeply humbled me in this way. It showed me how easy it is to confuse movement with freedom. I was moving constantly! I was seeing incredible places, meeting so many souls across the world and I was having experiences I will forever be grateful for. And yet, underneath all of that movement, there was also a part of me that was constantly searching for people who felt like home and searching for something outside of myself that could make me feel held and supported and rooted (without realising it just yet).

About two years into my nomadic lifestyle, my parents decided to leave Germany too and move to South America (now you know where i get it from hehe), so I decided to help them and meet them there as they settled into their new home. Or so we thought. (Extremely) long story short, we got scammed and ended up in a deeply corrupt, cult-like community. The kind of situation where your entire perception of reality and hope in humanity starts to crumble. We had arrived with rose-coloured glasses, we thought we had found a home. A way out of the "system", and a place where we could belong and build something entirely ourselves. Instead, we discovered another system, just on a much smaller scale.

And in the middle of all of this, I entered a romantic relationship that, in hindsight, was another attempt to find what I had been searching for all along; support, safety, belonging, love. Something solid enough to hold me after years of being on the move. And, perhaps most honestly, somewhere to continue to hide from my own inner world. That relationship ended badly too (what a surprise). And I found myself completely and utterly helpless. I had spent years removing every root I had. I had become exceptionally good at leaving, but I hadn't learnt how to stay amidst the pain and discomfort. This was btw the most painful yet profound time in my life that led me to birth Wandersoul by Saskia. Every death initiates a birth.

Today, three years later, I live in Austria. And so much has changed. I still travel. I still feel that pull to explore. I still get excited about discovering somewhere new. The traveller in me hasn't disappeared, but now traveling feels completely different because I have somewhere to return to.

I have a physical home now. A place that holds me. A place I can return to. I have roots, not just physically, but internally, too. And yes, I believe we can cultivate a sense of home within ourselves without having a physical home to hold us. But I also deeply believe in the importance of having a vessel outside of ourselves; especially as women, with our deep connection to water, movement, cycles and flow. A vessel that can hold us while we ebb and flow, expand and contract, wander and return. And strangely enough, having roots hasn't made me feel less free, it has made me feel more free. I no longer need every place I visit to become my home. I don't need every person I meet to become my people. I don't need to squeeze belonging out of situations that aren't aligned. I can arrive somewhere, experience it fully, let it move me, let it change me and then return home. I can explore without abandoning myself, wander without desperately searching. I can go far because I know I can come back. And perhaps this is the deepest freedom I've found so far –

not having nowhere to go, but knowing exactly where you belong

And don't get me wrong, I still loveeee travelling. That part is incredibly important to me. I don't look back at those years and think they were a mistake, the contrary. I had the privilege of traveling the world and I saw places that took my breath away. I learnt things I could never have learnt from staying in one place. Those experiences shaped me, and they still do. They made me who I am, but they also showed me something I couldn't have understood before: you can love the freedom of movement and still need somewhere to belong.

And this is where I think about branding too. I see this same pattern play out in the women I co-create with. So many multi-passionate, creative, intuitive women have birthed businesses by constantly pushing, constantly giving birth to something new. New offers, niches, visual identities, websites, positioning, insta bios, new versions of themselves. When they approach me, they most often vulnerably share that they finally want to be held and they are tired of re-invention. But what's holding hem back is the fear of feeling stuck, restictred, limited in the way they create and share their medicine.

So I tell them that a brand, in the way I see it, isn't supposed to become another box you have to squeeze yourself into. It isn't a rigid set of rules telling you who you're allowed to be, and what you're allowed to post and not post. And it certainly isn't a performance you have to maintain forever.

I see a brand more like a vessel, a home if you will. A place that reflects who you are. A place that holds your essence. A place you can return to when everything around you feels chaotic. And from that place, you can explore – yourself, your creativity, your wisdom, your body. You still ave the space to evolve, to create new offers. You can change your mind. You can follow a new thread of curiosity. You can expand. You can experiment. But the difference is, you are not having to abandon the core of who you are every time you grow.

your brand can hold you too

All it needs it to be rooted deeply enough that you can move through those versions without losing yourself. That is the difference between a brand that feels restrictive and a brand that feels deeply supportive.

One says:

"Stay here. This is who you are now. Act that way"

The other (my approach) says:

"This is who you are at your core. Go explore."

That seemingly little distinction matters enormously, because when you have a strong inner and brand foundation, you don't have to chase external validation to feel grounded, or keep reinventing yourself to remain interesting. You don't have to say yes to every opportunity because you're afraid the next one won't come. You don't have to attach yourself to someone else's way of doing business because you haven't yet found your own.

With a supportive vessel, you can say no. You can pause. You can rest. You can wander. You can go beautifully, wildly far, and still know where home is.

This is the work I care about and why I don't see myself as someone who simply "builds brands and visual identities." I see myself as a brand doula, because the work isn't about creating something shiny and trendy. I am guiding you to come home to what has been there all along. The parts of yourself you abandoned because they didn't seem practical, or the desires you buried because they didn't fit the "content model", the sensitivity you thought you had to outgrow to appear like a teacher or healer. The intuition you stopped trusting as your (business) guide. The wildness you tried to make more palatable.

We don't need to strip all of that away to create a successful brand or business, but what we need to do is to create the conditions for all of those parts to come home too. To create a home spacious enough for you to breathe and create, yet still rooted enough for you to grow deeper into your own truth, and strong enough to hold you as you change.

The intention is a space you can always return to. A home base from which you can explore the world. So I guess after all these years of wandering the world, that's what freedom means to me now.

Not cutting every root so I can go anywhere, but having roots deep enough that I know I can, intentionally.