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Janin

@janinl74

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Life between city work & country soil
Writing real stories of resilience, healing & perspective
Living a life aligned with what matters

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The truth about my (double) life

Most people here see only one side of my life — my life on the farm, close to nature.
This photo shows another.

By rarely sharing my professional world, I’ve unintentionally created an incomplete picture of who I am. I don’t live “away” from the real world. I’m fully in it.

Alongside the farm, I work as an IT consultant inside large corporate environments — a world of pressure, deadlines, responsibility, and constant decision-making. I’m self-employed and live on my terms, but I contract with large organisations, often across time zones, sometimes with very long hours and intense demands.

What allows me to work in those environments isn’t toughness or ambition — it’s grounding.

Life on the farm, and my closeness to nature, shaped how I handle pressure. Nature taught me patience and perspective. Growth can’t be rushed, recovery can’t be forced, and sometimes the only way forward is to keep going. Watching trees survive fire reminds me that when everything looks lost, progress often begins quietly, from the roots.

I don’t dwell on mistakes. I learn from them and move on. That’s what nature does.

In both worlds — on the farm and at work — I live by the same values. My grandpa taught me to treat everyone with the same kindness and respect. Titles don’t impress me. I speak to cleaners and CEOs the same way, because character matters more than status.

Working with animals taught me how to observe, stay calm, and read behaviour. Those lessons guide how I work with people — how I listen, lead, and decide whom to trust. I’m not perfect, but I trust my instincts. If something doesn’t feel right, it usually isn’t.

My peace doesn’t come from easy circumstances.
It comes from choice — and from consciously creating balance.

The farm gives me strength and clarity.
The corporate world is where I apply it.

This is simply another part of the same story.

Pinned for context.

#Resilience
#Mindset
#Integrity
#WisdomInNature
#ChoosingBalance by @janinl74

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10 months ago

On Sunday I shared that I have started working on a new dream, and many of you asked what it is.

Most of you know why I write: to help others find hope, resilience, and meaning. But this dream is not just writing another book. It is much more personal.

I have shared parts of my story before, enough to inspire, but never the full truth. Some people said healing must have been easy for me because I talk about my past like it was a movie. The only reason I can speak about it lightly is because I have healed fully. Creating distance helps me show the bigger message.

There were three events in my life that reshaped me completely.

The first happened when I was 16 to 17. It shattered my relationship with my mum and pushed me into a depression so deep I did not want to exist anymore.

The second came at 33, when a breakup on the other side of the world left me suddenly without a home, money, family, friends, and with broken heart.

The third came at 40, when I rediscovered romantic love and realised how deeply my past had shaped my beliefs about whether I deserved it. That turmoil made me reach out to my mum, and it brought us closer than ever.

I avoided telling these full stories before because sharing your truth always touches parts of other people’s lives too. Their intentions were not bad; things simply went very wrong. But after reading memoirs written with honesty and compassion, I finally understood how to tell my own story the same way.

And that is my next dream.

I am writing a trilogy that tells the full story of how my life broke and how I rebuilt it. A story to show that no matter how dark life becomes, we can rise again — but only when we choose to save ourselves.

I have started writing the prologue to the first book, The Long Way Home. Weekends will be for writing. During the week I will share either reflections from my current life or small excerpts from what I wrote.

This dream matters to me, and I hope my books will matter to someone who feels alone or lost and needs a spark of hope.

#truestory #myrealstory #resilience #innerstrength #mentalstrength #lifeaftertrauma #strongertoday #healingispossible #findinghope #youarenotalone by @janinl74

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10 months ago

The Road That led me home
(a bit about me & why I write)

I was born in a small town in Poland, where money was scarce but love was abundant. Life wasn’t easy, but it was beautiful — because I learned early that happiness doesn’t depend on what we have, but on how we see life. What truly matters isn’t material wealth, but a loving family, true friends, and a grateful heart.
I’ve walked many roads since then — through different countries, heartbreak, loss, and moments when I nearly gave up. Some paths led through darkness, others toward light. And when I finally found myself on my farm in Australia, I realised that every step, every detour, every struggle was necessary to find true freedom, fulfilment and happiness.
I’ve been through pain, loss, homelessness, and near-death experiences — and yet I stand here, smiling. People often ask how I stay so positive after everything I’ve been through. The answer is simple: life taught me one powerful truth — we can’t choose what happens to us, but we can always choose how we respond.
Happiness is a choice. It lies in the sunrise, the laughter of a friend, and the courage to get up and try again every time we fall.
Through my stories and reflections, I want to show that even when life falls apart, we can rebuild — stronger, wiser, and kinder. That adversity can shape us, not define us. And that resilience isn’t about never breaking — it’s about never losing faith that we can heal.
Every challenge carries a lesson. Every ending opens a new beginning. And every one of us has the strength to rise again.
If you’re drawn to real stories of courage, mindset, gratitude, and finding beauty in everyday life — you’re in the right place.
You can read more of my writing on Substack or Medium — link in bio.
#Resilience #Mindset #Inspiration #Courage #LifeLessons #Hope #Healing #Gratitude #SelfBelief #Storytelling #PersonalGrowth by @janinl74

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a year ago

Looking Back
28/12/2025 — The Journey Begins, Part 2

After we landed in Auckland, I had to go through the declarations section because I live on a farm. Luckily, it wasn’t time-consuming or stressful, and soon we were walking towards the shuttle pick-up point.

On the way, Siara told me about an adventure she’d had trying to find food at the airport on an earlier trip with her daughter. Nothing was available, and they couldn’t get food delivered there either. They’d ended up walking to a nearby hotel and having pizza—or something like that—delivered there instead.

Maybe Brisbane Airport, with all its limitations, wasn’t so bad after all. It might not be like Singapore or Qatar, but at least it had a few shops—lol.

The shuttle took us to collect our rental car. It was a hybrid, which I’d never driven before, but the explanation seemed straightforward. I took photos to record any existing damage, just in case.

Meanwhile, Siara tried to help with my luggage and… accidentally broke off the handle used to pull it.

She was very apologetic and said she’d try to find somewhere to have it fixed. For now, we just threw the bag into the back of the car.

The sun was setting as we drove to her sister’s place. Twenty-five minutes later, we arrived.

Siara had told me a lot about her mum and sister, and it was lovely to finally meet them, along with her sister’s husband.

It was very late when we reached the apartment where we’d be staying for the week. Siara’s friend had recently rented it but, before he’d finished furnishing it, had gone to India to bring his wife and child over to start a new life together in New Zealand. While he was away, we could stay there.

We’d agreed before the trip to share a room, so the sleeping arrangement wasn’t a surprise: two double mattresses pushed together on the floor, making one enormous bed.

We got ready for bed. Siara’s daughter listened to an audiobook before falling asleep, while Siara and I chatted.

Eventually, we said goodnight. But before falling asleep, I lay there thinking about this extraordinary experience. by @janinl74

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2 days ago

Looking Back
28/12/2025 — The Journey Begins, Part 1

That morning, I received a message from Siara:
“Could you come to my place? It’ll be easier to pack, and my husband can drop us at the airport. Oh—and I gave you the wrong address for my sister. Here’s the correct one.”
Before I could reply, she called.
“That’s a bit of a last-minute change,” I laughed. “If Tom were driving me, I’d come. But since his wife is taking me, I’d prefer to keep the original plan. Changing it now would be too chaotic.”
“That’s fine. And sorry about the mix-up—I think I gave you a friend’s address.”
“That’s all right,” I laughed. “I’ve already entered it everywhere—flights, rental car, travel documents—so let’s just hope it won’t be needed.”
After the call, I laughed to myself. We’re just as chaotic as each other. A match made in heaven! Luckily, we have one very mature person to keep things together—her ten-year-old daughter.
The flight wasn’t until lunchtime, so I went for a walk with Tom and Hannah. Later, Hannah took me to the airport, and we had a lovely chat on the way.

Siara arrived soon after me. More chaos followed as we rearranged our luggage. I had a bag to check in, so I offered to take some of her things. Check-in wasn’t as straightforward as I’d hoped either.
The airport had changed since my trip to Europe over two years earlier. Major renovations were underway.
There were some festive decorations, though nothing like those in Europe. For a moment, I wished I were visiting my parents for a cold winter Christmas, enjoying the markets and wonderfully decorated streets and airports. Going to Europe at that time of year is like visiting a fairyland.
But I was happy to be there with Siara and her daughter, looking forward to our adventure.
I was getting hungry and went looking for a snack. Well… let’s just say the selection was very limited. Nonetheless, I found something.
We boarded our flight with one of my favourite airlines, China Airlines—the airline I’d flown with on the very first flight of my life, when I first arrived in Australia.
As expected, the flight was good. A pity we sat 25 rows apart. Oh well—I looked out of the window and took endless pictures, as always. by @janinl74

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6 days ago

I often see posts talking about missing pieces in the bigger puzzle, whether they’re referring to life—how one day, when we finally have all the missing pieces, we’ll see the full picture—or to healing, where the broken or missing pieces allow light into our darkness.

There can be something magical and mysterious about this perception, but also something darker—as though our entire lives we are waiting for something to unfold, for the picture to finally become complete.

But in the end, the only time the picture of our life is truly complete is when our life is ending. Until then, it almost seems as though we’re never allowed to simply enjoy life as it is, because there is always another piece missing.

And I wonder: are we really puzzles that need to be completed?

Or are we more like kaleidoscopes, where all the broken pieces come together to create a unique and beautiful picture? Every time we turn it, every time we look from a different angle, we see another picture, uniquely beautiful in its own way.

Some forms we’ll enjoy more than others. Yet each one is complete. Nothing is missing. It may be made from broken pieces, but it is whole.

So perhaps the question isn’t how many pieces are still missing, but whether we are puzzles to be solved—or kaleidoscopes to be admired and enjoyed?

When I look at my own life, I know my answer.

I’ve been a kaleidoscope all along.

There were painful times when I longed for the missing pieces. But as life went on, as I understood more about life and looked back, I realised that I had been a kaleidoscope all along.

Some pieces were added to the mix, some were removed, and many were polished into what they are today. But when I look back at any stage of my life, I smile. From where I stand now, I can see each picture from a different perspective. I can see that it was complete—not always the picture I wanted it to be, but always beautiful in its own way. ❤️ by @janinl74

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15 days ago

Looking Back
27/12/2025 — Before the Journey Began

That morning, while getting ready for my trip, I was restless and easily irritated. After losing my patience with Twinkles, I stopped and wondered why getting ready to travel made me so stressed.

I love travelling. I was genuinely looking forward to going to New Zealand with Siara. So why was I feeling like this?

I suddenly thought about my mum.

When I was younger, I could never understand why she became so agitated before visitors arrived. Suddenly I could relate to her. I was experiencing something similar—just with a different trigger. For her, visitors. For me, travelling.

But why?

Maybe I simply didn’t want to leave home. I love my farm and the life I have here. I love travelling, but I don’t like leaving home—not to mention leaving Australia.

Maybe it was my past experiences travelling on a Polish passport? The uncertainty at borders. The interrogations. Never knowing whether I would be sent back or kept there for hours.

I have an Australian passport now. Those problems are long behind me. Nonetheless, in my mind they live as though they happened only yesterday…

And there was one more thing—travelling with someone.

I was excited about going with Siara, yet there was vulnerability in giving up the independence I had when travelling alone.

Excitement and fear could exist at the same time.

On my way to Tom’s, I went back to my audiobook—an autobiography about a woman trying to achieve something everyone around her thought was impossible.

Suddenly I remembered myself in Germany.

I arrived barely speaking German. Within three months, I could communicate. I completed three years of language classes in ten months and then started university—in German.

People told me I wouldn’t graduate.

But failing wasn’t an option. I had to make it.

Eventually, I graduated with a Master’s in Business Mathematics.

With those memories in my mind, I continued my drive to Tom’s.

When I arrived, dinner and Christmas presents were waiting. We spent a lovely evening together.

The next morning, my New Zealand holiday would finally begin. by @janinl74

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19 days ago

(Continued 2/2)
I don’t have issues working with Darren, although I do have concerns about him being the project manager. And I can understand why many people struggle to work with him. They find him rude and arrogant.
Sometimes he reminds me a little of myself as a teenager.
After everything I had been through, I developed this attitude of:
“I don’t need anyone. I don’t need any help. I can do everything myself.”
Kind of a typical rebellious teenager.
At some point, though, I understood that I couldn’t be good at everything. There would always be people who were better than me in certain areas.
And even if I somehow had all the required skills, there was still one more variable in the equation:
Time.
I would never have enough time to do every job myself.
And you would think that by your 40s, after years in the professional world, you would have learnt that lesson. Somehow Darren hasn’t.
I know I’ll have some tough conversations with him, and there will probably be plenty of challenges along the way. But I can still accept him as he is.
I can’t change him.
What I can do is adapt the way I work with him and make use of the skills he does have.
Some people genuinely struggle with Darren, and behind his back, some even call him names.
Well, that isn’t a solution either.
He isn’t a dickhead, as some people have called him. He has valuable skills—project management just isn’t one of them. He wants to be hands-on.
And perhaps that’s the bigger problem.
We all have different skills. None of us needs to be good at everything.
We just need to learn how to use our own skills well, recognise the skills of others and work together.
Criticising each other and calling each other names won’t solve the problems.
It certainly won’t get the project delivered. by @janinl74

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a month ago

(1/2) In my previous post, I shared the story of my meeting with Carl. That meeting ran over—not very surprising, as we got a little off topic—and I was running late for my next one. Luckily, Mick was very understanding.

“Let me guess. You got caught up,” he messaged when I was already almost ten minutes late.

I’d become so engaged in the conversation with Carl that I hadn’t noticed the time.

Mick is the Business Analyst on one of my projects, and we work well together. We have a good project manager on that project, but I was curious what he thought about Darren, who is the project manager on another project I’m working on.

What I like about Mick is that he can express his opinion without diminishing anyone, being offensive or getting political, yet somehow still state the facts very clearly.

“Let me put it this way,” he said. “A project manager should have a helicopter view over the project, and Darren is right in the weeds, removing some and adding some new ones. He believes he knows everything better, so he wants to be the project manager, the business analyst, the architect, the developer, the tester… simply the entire team.”

And I couldn’t agree more with Mick.

Later that day, I was sitting at my desk when I overheard Carl talking with Darren, who was very upset because everything on his project seemed to be going wrong.

“For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working until midnight fixing SQL queries. Nothing is working properly,” Darren said, very animated.

“Wait a second. What are you doing? You’re writing the code? Aren’t you the project manager?” Carl asked, slightly amused.

“Yes, I’m the project manager on that project, but it’s all done wrong, so I have to fix it,” Darren continued.

That was when I turned around and looked at Carl.

We smiled at each other.

I knew immediately that this conversation was going to be entertaining, so I joined in.

And it was.

Darren was genuinely upset about everything that was going wrong, while Carl and I could clearly see that he was creating many of those struggles for himself.

And suddenly Mick’s weeds came back to mind.

(To be continued…) by @janinl74

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a month ago

It was Tuesday and I was at work, meeting with Carl. By then, I was kind of over the disastrous meeting we’d had on Friday and ready to simply continue my work on the project.

“I just need to prioritise the requests and choose the three with the highest priority, so I can continue with my architecture design after the disaster on Friday,” I said to Carl.

“What do you mean? Which disaster? What happened on Friday?” he asked.

“The meeting we had with the business,” I replied.

“What? I don’t get it. Which meeting was a disaster?” He was still confused.

“Come on, you were in the meeting, so you know how it went. It was horrible. Don’t tell me you think it went well,” I chuckled.

“If you’re talking about the meeting where you presented the architecture, then I thought it went well. Why would you say it was a disaster?”

“Because nobody engaged. I was just talking and getting nothing from them.”

“Because you presented the architecture, they agreed with it, and now they’re expecting the detailed design. There’s nothing more they can add to it. They just want to understand how this impacts the systems they’re using,” he replied.

That conversation gave me two interesting realisations.

Firstly, how differently we can perceive exactly the same situation and how often the disaster exists only in our heads. We think we failed or did something wrong, while everyone else sees it very differently.

But there was something else.

I dislike long meetings where people just talk for hours and we don’t reach any conclusions. That’s why I prepare documents in advance and share them, so that we can have short meetings, answer any questions and agree on the next steps.

And that’s exactly what happened this time.

There were no questions, so there was no discussion. We agreed on the next steps and finished the meeting.

I saw myself as a failure, when actually I had achieved exactly what I wanted to achieve.

Oh well… our brains can be our worst enemies sometimes—lol.

So maybe, as Carl said, it went well.

Exactly as planned. by @janinl74

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a month ago

There was one more thing I noticed while travelling through my old posts.

Back then I had absolutely no idea how to use Instagram properly. I used a few random hashtags, because someone mentioned I should, but otherwise I was simply sharing my stories with a handful of friends and telling them what happened that day.

And somehow, at some point, those posts were getting well over 100 likes. People commented. Complete strangers sent me lovely messages. I had a little community here, which I loved.

Then life got in the way, and last year I wanted to start posting again. But then I stumbled across so much advice. I started reading it, only to discover that much of it was contradictory and the advice itself became more of an obstacle than a help.

And somehow, while trying to work out what and how I should post… I stopped posting altogether. I mean, other than my almost daily stories.

Trying to create the “right” posts and reels took so much time that in the end I often didn’t create anything—I just wrote stuff for myself.

Perhaps I was better at Instagram when I didn’t know how to be good at Instagram.😅

I was simply being myself, sharing my thoughts and telling my stories. And maybe that is all I need to do again.

Looking back also reminded me how many stories from the last few months I shared for a day and then let disappear. Maybe it’s time to bring some of them back too.

No strategy. Just me, my stories and whatever I feel like sharing. by @janinl74

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a month ago

(Continued 2/2)

And perhaps this is what being true to ourselves really means—to follow our heart even when the entire world says we are wrong and shouldn’t follow that path.

I don’t mean “follow your heart” in the romantic sense, especially not in the sense of the excitement of falling in… lust. Hormones can confuse us.

I mean something much deeper.

Deep inside, we have a sense of who we are and where we want to go.

We just need to trust ourselves.

Yet so often we allow other people, expectations and the need to fit in to steer us away from that core.

We may not yet understand why something feels so deeply right or wrong for us. We simply don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle yet.

The explanation can come years later, after life has given us the experiences and understanding we were missing.

The intuition comes first. Understanding comes with living…

And perhaps life is a little like the photos I chose for these two posts.

The sun sets. Then the moon rises. by @janinl74

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a month ago