I have been Shaumbra for about twenty years. This path has quietly walked with me. It has accompanied me through transformations in my body, my family, my creativity, my pain, my realizations, and the many small inner changes along the way.

For a long time, I lived in survival.

My childhood taught me early how to observe my surroundings and protect myself. Back then, I thought it was strength. Later, I began to see that only part of that old strength was true strength. The other part was tightness.

Life felt tight around me for a long time. Then one day I saw that I was also holding myself in that tightness: my body, all of myself, my old fears, and the fixed patterns I had carried from the past. When I saw it, something began to release.

Twenty years ago, I was diagnosed with an immune system disease. At the time, I was told I might have about five years left. I am fifty-two years old now.

I am here.

My body has carried me through so much: childhood, illness, marriage, family, exhaustion, creativity, tears, dawns, poems, and stories. My body still hurts a lot. It changes more slowly than I do inside, yet I feel that it listens to me, in its own way, in its own time.

Today I look at it differently. I love it because my body carries me. It is my companion. That alone is a great story.

My inner changes are often faster than the changes in my body. In my being, I have become more spacious. My body is still learning this spaciousness. It is learning safety. It is learning that, instead of the old defense, there is another way to be.

Fear is also changing inside me. In the past, it would pull me in immediately. Today, I often simply observe it. Perhaps it is an old part of me speaking. Perhaps my body is asking for presence. Perhaps an old energy is arriving because there is finally space where it can show itself.

I began allowing safety as a new feeling. It comes slowly: in a breath, in a dawn, in a conversation, after crying, in a moment when I look at myself differently.

I had an inner experience that changed many things. I saw myself as if I were looking from both the inside and the outside at the same time. I saw a very deep, old, small, protected part of myself, curled up, in a baby-like position. 

I cried. For I finally saw her, from pure presence. There was a part of me that had been afraid for a long time. Very afraid. In that moment, seeing her was enough. The tightness released. I did not want to understand it. My body knew. My tears knew.

After that, I began to feel everything differently.

About six years ago, I started painting. I had never painted before. Suddenly the colors came, the forms came, the inner movements came. Several of my paintings are now in private collections. This brings me joy, but the greatest gift was the realization itself: energy finds a way when I allow it.

Then writing returned. I had written when I was young, then stopped for many years. When it came back, it came stronger: with poems, novellas, stories, and children’s tales.

Today I lead a literary group. I create anthologies. I also give space to other creators. I write, edit, connect, uplift, and listen. I create spaces from words and inner worlds. 

Writing, for me, is creation. Energy taking shape. Feeling becoming words. An inner movement becoming visible.

I want to create softness from old pain. This has become one of my most important choices. Pain can form hardness too. Yet more and more, softness is being born from it in me. Conscious softness. The kind that also has room for tears.

The Pamcsi family was born from this softness. They are small, round, feeling, purple story-beings. Their little tufts change color with their emotions. They live in a flower-filled meadow. Baby stories. Bedtime stories. At this time, two Pamcsi story series have been completed.

To me, the Pamcsis are more than fairy-tale characters. They came from a new inner space, where love is simple, present, and natural. I know that every Pamcsi is also a part of me: the frightened one, the loving one, the helping one, the singing one, the sleeping one, the one who finally comes home. 

My path has been made of many small realizations: a poem, a painting, a dawn, a deep conversation, a tear, a story, a Pamcsi, a sentence, a moment when I looked at myself differently.

I also kept the traces of my deep conversations. They became meaningful markers. They show where I became more honest with myself, where I saw an old part of me, where the tightness began to release.

Now I am sitting here. In a body that still often hurts. In an inner space that is already more spacious. In a life where I write, paint, create stories, and connect people. My body is still learning the freedom that I have already allowed inside. And I am trying to be patient with it.

I breathe.

I observe.

I create.

I allow.

I am here.

Twenty years ago, they gave me five years. Today I write stories, create little story-beings, paint pictures, and hold a community. And more and more, I feel that my life no longer revolves around survival.

Life now has a place in me, too.

I am still here.

And now I allow myself to live.