Tag: writing

What I did to start Telluselle Living Center in Sweden

Hannah TelluselleLeave a comment

This business idea originated as part of a Project Management course in spring 1999, when I was seeking a combination of wellness and coaching myself, as I wanted to transition from working as a copywriter to a career coach. I was very much identifying myself with my profession, wherefore this journey became deeper than expected. After showing my business plan to a man working in the wellness industry, I received a freelance assignment as a writer and editor to his membership magazine, and did so during my university studies in Work science.

In 2004, I took extra graduate classes in Conversation technique with a focus on coaching and mentoring sessions, that were developed after my exam paper didn’t make the cut, with a professor thinking that coaching as a profession was fluff, but I began working as a Job coach in my own company Balansfokus after getting some support by a student incubator organization. Then I was suddenly put in foreclosure at the same time my mother passed away and therefore took a break and went to Hawaii to heal. When I returned and tried to begin working again as a career and life coach in fall 2005, nobody was interested, and I didn’t get any job.

In 2008 after I had written my book about my healing in Swedish, entitled The Keys to Paradise, I developed my business plan and had a vision about making it look like a gazebo, but bigger. I ran my idea by some of my contacts in dancing, yoga and qigong south of Sweden, but nobody was interested. I then looked into building it in Stockholm instead and contacted some people here, while looking for a location, set on blending in and contributing to the emergence of eco-design and planning. After no interest here either, and losing my home in south of Sweden in fall 2009, I went back to Hawaii in 2010, to finish my Masters degree there and hope to start it up in San Francisco the following year or so.

In Honolulu 2010, I developed my business plan further after translating my book into English. I saw an opportunity to build it with ready-made bamboo structures that together with foundation, utilities and so forth would come together exactly how I had envisioned it. I shared my plan with various people, like my Hula-teacher, the university, and one of the founders of organization Kanu Hawaii, through which I found the architect. I also shared it with the people I met at the YWCA 2011 thinking of their coaching and how these things could be incorporated into Telluselle Living Center in a similar fashion. But then, I was deported.

Back in Sweden and having recuperated somewhat, I started to look into building it in Stockholm again in 2013-14. I went to see Co-ompanion, an incubator type consultancy for creating a cooperative, which was the form of shared ownership I thought could be a good idea. I shared it with the WestAfrican dance teachers and with the Isadora Duncan teachers here, but as so often in Sweden, nobody stepped up to the plate, not even for a meeting about it.

In 2015, on a vacation to Estoril, Portugal, I visited a spa where I got some much needed Hawaiian Lomilomi massage and began to see how I should position myself as something neither just a spa, nor just a dance studio but an actual wellness center offering several services and classes, with me as the coach for sacred circle groups and one-on-one sessions while being the manager. But then, I was heavily subjected to vicious libel and could neither get any PR for my books, nor for this business idea or move ahead with my plan to also make a lei out of bamboo. I couldn’t get any job either. I held some coaching for MeetUp-groups instead, and some introductory Hula-classes, but all came to a halt.

In 2018, a Swedish psychiatrist decided to declare me insane, partly because he though I wouldn’t consider isolating the house hosting this wellness center, which of course was something I already checked in Honolulu 2010 and he never asked about, just assumed. This made me flee Sweden, wherefore I first went to Germany in 2018-19 and then back to Portugal 2019-20, considering both places to live in, but realising it would take much effort and time to learn either language good enough, so that wasn’t really an option, unless I could work solemnly in English.

Fascinatingly, I came to live in a neighbourhood since 2023, close to an old house and tower, in an octagon shape! It was formerly owned by Fredrika Bremer – Sweden’s pioneer feminist and author making way for creating equality and more women authors, meeting in this house. It’s now a café and restaurant. The original house, including the octagon shaped tower, was built in 1867 and is called Lyran, after the instrument Lyre.

What happens next? I’ll let you know…

What’s your story?

Hannah TelluselleLeave a comment

After attending an event today with Marco Robinson, behind the movement and books Start over, I saw once again how much storytelling means to all of us. I’ve also attended an international MeetUp group for storytelling during this past spring, to practice my own oral skills. Storytelling, when done from an authentic place and for a respectful and curious audience, is what enables compassion to grow, when we can relate.

I’ve used writing for many years to process my experiences and to reframe some of them into what became lessons and of benefit to me; hence my books. Some stories are both easier to share in writing and deserve a larger audience to enable others examples they can use and apply on similar issues or situations. But there is something very special to say it out loud to others and realise the resemblances of what many of us have gone through, to learn how we’ve coped and been able to grow from our experiences. When many share similar stories, it also forms a stronger community and eventually society.

Sitting in circle, is my preferred way, so that we all get to talk equally much, we all can see each other, and we all can listen more intently. Through this way, we can create a stronger sense of group intimacy and confidentiality. A good way to get to know both ourselves, others and the way of the group.

Which are the stories that you tell yourself about your own accomplishments and inadequacies, and what do you tell others? Are you talking from a sense of ownership and empowerment, or from a sense of victimhood? We may not win all battles, but we can be the winners of our own lives. What we’ve overcome and improved, especially in service to others, is what really matters, not what the story is about.

To begin writing your story, you can start by journaling. To reframe an event or relationship, see the pattern with more examples, and dare to change perspective. Then share!

The message from crow

Hannah TelluselleLeave a comment

A couple of days ago, when I was walking back home, crossing the parking lot, I heard a crow cawing loudly and looked up. I saw it sitting next to a big lightning rod, that I hadn’t noticed before and thought to myself how good that we have one.

The day after, when I stepped out of my apartment building on my way to the beach, I saw a big black feather on the ground and thought to myself, it must have belonged to the crow. I wondered what it meant. Did it want to tell me something?

I took another path then the one I normally walk, and saw this giant tree split in half, by lightning I presume. I don’t know when, and saw that ants were living in the trunk. Good for them!

But what if it was the crow’s home that got split in half? Why would it have to make such a sacrifice and lose its home? Had it?

Yesterday, two days after, I realized that my Swedish stalker had intruded into my home again, scraping out butter violently (for whatever reason beats me, he’s obviously not well), why I reported him to the police again, who both by email and by phone, first refused to even accept my report. Third time, they did. As if this wasn’t enough, someone also messed with one of my photos through phone intrusion and tried to ruin it with a mark on my clothes that wasn’t actually there. That too was reported of course. And then… as if by fate, all the trains from Stockholm to Gothenburg where he lives, became cancelled due to an electric malfunction after lighting had struck… Unfortunately, the Swedish police do nothing about him and haven’t for more than 15 years, neither did the German, nor the Portuguese, where he also ruined my life, which is one of the major reasons why I want to move abroad again, since I got help and a restraining order in the United States, when he stalked me there too.

Until then, I’m grateful for crow’s warnings.

More about different cultures tales and symbolisms of the crow, can be read here.