Your weekly poem: ON CHILDREN & PARENTING

Your weekly poem: ON CHILDREN & PARENTING

by | May 15, 2026 | Coaching, Inspirational, Mental wellbeing, Poem, Spiritual

🌿 A poem a day keeps the blues away… 

ON CHILDREN & PARENTING

🌻 Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable. 🌻

— Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), from The Prophet

🪴 Last Sunday was Mother’s day. In my household, it tends to be a day like any other, which I don’t mind. In fact, the two people who wished me Happy Mother’s Day “proactively” were my friends Andy, Maryam, & my mum’s dentist, who had kindly offered to do a check-up on his day off after her operation…

🪴 As I was reflecting on parenthood, I found myself drawn back to Gibran’s words—a wise reminder of what it means to be entrusted with a life.

I love being a mum to my wonderful 16-year-old. It’s the most important and precious role I’ll ever get to play, and I’m immensely grateful for it—all the more so because I’m well aware that there are countless people who would love to be a parent but can’t. I was almost one of them… until I wasn’t.

🪴 Reflecting on what it means to be a parent also reminded me of all the important parental figures I had growing up. People I knew I could rely on, and who were always there for me, especially when my parents couldn’t. Sometimes without a family of their own, they became my parent and I their child all the same—not by blood, but by extension, by choice, through love. These wonderful souls also deserve to be celebrated!

🪴 I also believe in celebrating our children—every day! For the person they are the moment they’re born. For the person they become as they grow, learn, and explore. For every step they take, every fall they make, and as they stand up again.

I celebrate my daughter for the fresh perspective she brings—those youth-tainted glasses she wears that remind me of a time that was and of all that can be. The joy and pain of every first. The discovery of life’s promises. The carving of her own path into the world.

It’s an enormous privilege to witness a child’s journey—whether they are our own or not.

🎉 Today, I celebrate you and all your loved ones! 🎉 

🦋 Happy parent day ! Happy children day ! Happy Friday everyone! 🦋

With love,

Dina 🫶🏽

Image: My husband and I in Hawaii, 2012, renewing our vows a year and a half after our daughter was born.

Resources:

  • In celebratuion of YOU and all your loved ones, this week’s song is CELEBRATION by Kool & The Gang

Your weekly poem: WHY I WAKE EARLY

Your weekly poem: WHY I WAKE EARLY

by | May 8, 2026 | Coaching, Inspirational, Mental wellbeing, Poem, Spiritual

🌿 A poem a day keeps the blues away… 

WHY I WAKE EARLY

🌻 Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness. 🌻

— Mary Oliver
(published in “Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver”)

🪴 I haven’t posted a poem for a few weeks now. Life has been life, I guess, with its usual ebbs and flows. As I finally sat down to share with you a poem, I picked Mary Oliver’s book and it opened on page 171, revealing WHY I WAKE EARLY.

🪴 I think any analysis of Oliver’s words would defeat the whole purpose of this simple but powerful poem. It’s not just an ode to the sun, but an ode to our planet and the beauty that surrounds us. And it’s meant to be experienced rather than analysed.

🎂 I find it interesting that this is the poem that revealed itself to me today (Friday 08 May), the same day we celebrate Sir David Attenborough’s 100th birthday: someone who has dedicated his life to sharing the wonders of our beautiful planet with millions of viewers in a most iconic way. 

📌 So, instead of a question, I invite you to wake up early tomorrow and experience the wonder that is “morning” through all your senses.

🎂 Happy 100th Birthday Sir David Attenborough 🎂

🦋 Happy Friday everyone! 🦋

🌹 And Happy Mother’s day (on Sunday)! 🌹

With love,

Dina 🫶🏽

Resources:

  • This week’s song is What A Wonderful World, cover by Sir David Attenborough—an ode to our planet

Simone Weil’s quote on Attention

Simone Weil’s quote on Attention

by | Apr 4, 2026 | Inspirational, Quotes

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

—Simone Weil (1909–1943)

Winnie The Pooh Quote

Your weekly poem: ALONE—or no man’s an island?

Your weekly poem: ALONE—or no man’s an island?

by | Apr 3, 2026 | Coaching, Inspirational, Mental wellbeing, Poem, Spiritual

🌿 A poem a day keeps the blues away… 

On this blessed Good Friday, Maya Angelou’s poem ALONE came to mind.

ALONE

🌻 Alone
Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
‘Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.🌻

—Maya Angelou

 

Creative, resourceful, and whole

🪴 There’s a persistent belief in coaching—not sure where it originated—that clients are creative, resourceful, and whole.

I always struggled with that mantra, but it took me some time to figure out why.

It sounds amazing, and it’s one of those mantras we sure as heck want to be true. But the question is, is it?

Creativity and resourcefulness sit on a continuum—some have it more than others. But I do believe that we all carry a seed of both. How that seed develops, and how it shows up in action, will greatly vary…

Wholeness, on the other hand, is rooted in this modern-day thinking that we can be anything we want to be, and do anything we want to do, all on our own, if we only put our mind to it. Bollocks. No man is an island. And no talents are infinite.

Relational coaching practices try to tone this idea down by acknowledging the importance of the coach-client relationship, and the coach’s use-of-self as an instrument of change. And yet, we still hold on to the idea of “wholeness” as an individual trait, rather than a communal one.

Why are we so afraid to admit that each one of us has limits?
That no one can be everything to everyone.
That my talents have limits.
My creativity has limits.
My resourcefulness has limits.
My knowledge has limits.
My resilience has limits.

And once we accept that—that we, human beings, have limits—we start to understand that we can only become WHOLE with one another.

“No human being is ‘whole’ in and of itself”

🪴 And I’m not the first one to propose such a sacrilegious hypothesis. I attended a brilliant webinar on existential analysis by Kate Hammer earlier this year, in which she shared the following quote by existential clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, and close collaborator of Viktor Frankl—Alfried Längle, who said:

“According to existential analysis no human being is ‘whole’ in and of itself, even if healthy and with all drives satisfied. A human being as a person needs to transcend themselves and to turn to others (people, projects, tasks) in order to achieve existential fulfilment.”

Imagine my relief when I realised I wasn’t alone in my thinking. Which in itself proves Angelou’s point:

We need one another. We complement one another. We build on one another. We nurture one another. We protect one another. Fill in the blanks…

“Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.”

🪴 In today’s world, with the fires blazing across my beloved Middle East, Maya’s words pierce through the silence:

“Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
‘Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.”

Man is no island. Mankind is a highly sophisticated root system—similar to the mycorrhizal network—a Wood Wide Web—or in our case, a Soul Wide Web: connected, woven like a tapestry. Because when it tears somewhere, everyone hurts…

📌 Your turn… 

  • What do you know to be your limits?
  • Who completes you? Go and be with them!
  • What completes you? Go and do it!

🦋 A blessed Good Friday everyone! 🦋

With love,

Dina 🫶🏽

 

PS : all em dashes are my own ;).

Resources:

  • This week’s song is The Power of Love, cover by Josh Krajcik

Your weekly poem: THE SOUND OF SILENCE

Your weekly poem: THE SOUND OF SILENCE

by | Mar 23, 2026 | Inspirational, Poem

🌿 A poem a day keeps the blues away… 

THE SOUND OF SILENCE
—by Paul Simon (1964)

🌻 For copyright reasons, I’ve woven in only a few excerpts below.
For the full lyrics, check Paul Simon’s website 🌻

🪴 “Hello darkness, my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again”

I have a lot of things I’d love to write about—but—somehow everything pales in the face of that crazy world we seem to live in right now. I feel I have nothing to say that hasn’t already been said—on this platform, or others—and yet…

🪴 “When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light, that split the night
and touched the sound of silence”

Just like Simon’s neon light—sudden, violent, intrusive—here we are, witnessing the disruption of norms we once thought solid in the so-called “western” world. The irony… the hypocrisy…

I agonise at my own inability to bring about any meaningful change in a world led by leaders who have decided they are above all checks and balances—just because…

A world where leaders behave like kindergarteners—squabbling over “toys” while the “playground” burns…

So, while I’m not sure I have anything new to say… silence seems just as deafening—and damning.

🪴“Fool, said I, you do not know,
silence, like a cancer, grows”

I offer you these lyrics today as a reflection on what it means to be Human;
on what it means to live in a world where rule of law means little;
where international law is treated like toilet paper;
where respect for human life, human dignity, and morality are slogans to be branded only on those we deem worthy.

🪴 “And the people bowed and prayed
to the neon god they’d made”

Already in the 60s, Simon was warning us about living in a world that abandons genuine human connection and morality for the glare of superficiality, technology, and consumerism—the neon gods of the time… Lord only knows how many more neon gods we’ve made and worshipped since then…

🪴 “And in the naked light I saw, ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening”

We live in a cacophonous world.
So much noise, but no music.
So much talk, but no meaning.

A world that makes compasses turn round and round in frenzy for they can no longer find true North;
… forever lost in a world that holds no profound truths—for every man his own;
… blind to the everyday struggles of the ordinary man;
… blind to the brotherhood of man.

🪴 “And the sign flashed its warning (…)
the words of the prophets are written (…)
and whispered in the sounds of silence”

The world is ablaze, and we’re watching it unfold like a TV show.

My heart bleeds for the world we’ve created. One that believes there is good justification for the suffering we’re causing our fellow human beings and our planet Earth—our only human family and home. It also bleeds for I know I’m no innocent bystander…

🦋 Happy Sunday everyone 🦋

With love,

Dina 🫶🏽

PS : all use of em dashes are my own.

Resources:

  • This week’s song is obviously The Sound of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel

A donkey named Balthazar… and your weekly poem on SERENDIPITY

A donkey named Balthazar… and your weekly poem on SERENDIPITY

by | Feb 27, 2026 | Inspirational, Poem

🌿 A poem a day keeps the blues away… 

Meet Balthazar. Yes, him, the donkey in the picture :)…

Balthazar, the donkey & Dina Sabry Fivaz

What was meant to be a short walk by myself turned into a two-hour stroll through the woods of Binningen with one of the most calm, curious, and empathetic creatures I’ve ever met.

Which is why this week’s poem is about SERENDIPITY.

I usually start with the poem and follow with my reflections.

But today, I want to tell you about Balthazar first.

🪴 Balthazar is a Grand Noir du Berry

(even though he’s rather “petit” for his breed).

He is 14 years old.

He is curious about the world and stops every now and then to notice things: a plane passing overhead, a group of children laughing, an old lady on a bench with her dog…

Oh—and he loves dogs. Totally unfazed by them, no matter their size. Trusting enough to let them come really close.

Horses, on the other hand, seem far more nervous when meeting him than he is when meeting them.

He is also the first donkey I’ve met who can walk for two hours without pulling me left, right, and centre to munch on a patch of grass.

His equanimity and soft character were quite something to witness.

  • Kids, no matter their age, were allowed to touch him without hesitation or worry.
  • He seemed to have trouble saying goodbye to the old lady on the bench with her dog. We had lingered so long; they’d become part of the herd.
  • And when I struggled to walk him down slopes (given my injured knee), he noticed and slowed down so I could keep my pace.

There are also a few things Balthazar doesn’t like.

He doesn’t like being touched on the face, even after he’s smelled your hand. After all: “we’ve literally just met”.

He doesn’t like being tapped on the back. He prefers long, gentle strokes across his neck and body.

And he doesn’t like it when things come from behind. So every biker, pedestrian, or car gets the right of way. He stops, waits until they’ve passed, and only then continues.
That’s how he knows it’s safe.

🪴 Now, how did Balthazar and I meet?

Serendipity, my friends!

I’ve been feeling unwell the past few days. But yesterday the sun was so lovely—not a single cloud in the sky—and the temperature was reminiscent of a warm spring day.

So I simply had to haul my butt off the couch and go outside.

My hope was to take a walk with my husband. But he had already left for his own walk, which I was initially very disappointed about.

So I pondered my choices: 

  • continue vegetating on the couch, or
  • go outside and see how far I could get with my half-baked knee and cold-filled head.

I chose the latter.

Halfway up the hill, I notice a gentleman with a donkey.

His beauty was astounding (the donkey’s that is!).

So I stopped and watched him—still the donkey!—for a little while. Then I kept going.

Given my slow pace, Fabian (the caretaker) and Balthazar soon caught up with me.

Now those of you who know me know that I love talking to strangers. So I started chit-chatting with Fabian and asking about his donkey.

After a while, I thanked him for the conversation, wished them a lovely walk, and continued on.

A few seconds later, Fabian stops and says:
“Would you like to walk Balthazar?”

And the rest is history.

A short introduction.
A few simple instructions.

And suddenly, here I am—walking the loveliest donkey, having a relaxed conversation with his kind caretaker, on a beautiful spring day, through the stunning fields and woods of Binningen, for a full two hours.

I even got to take Balthazar back home to his farm and say goodbye.

The best part?

Halfway through our walk, I could tell we were both getting comfortable with each other.

He allowed me to nudge him forward when I knew he was safe—and he trusted me to make that judgement.

He allowed me to guide him across manhole covers—something he dislikes, but that his caretaker likes to train with him.

And by the time I took him home, we were friends.

I hope to see Balthazar and Fabian again on one of my walks—I do know where they live now!

But whether I do or not, I’ll always carry the memory of the kindest, calmest, most empathetic donkey I’ve ever met.

And I’ve met a few.
(No euphemisms there!)

🪴 I also had a few more serendipitous encounters yesterday and today that will probably shape part of my coaching and training practice quite significantly—but that’s a story for another post.

For now, I leave you with this week’s poem—an ode to the quiet magic of unexpected encounters.

————————

IN THE SERENITY OF SERENDIPITY

🌻 In the realm of chance and fate’s embrace,
Where destiny weaves its intricate lace,
There lies a place of wonder and delight,
A realm where serendipity takes flight.

Oh, Serendipity, you are a muse divine,
Guiding us through life’s labyrinthine,
With your gentle touch and whispered call,
You lead us to treasures, great and small.

In moments unexpected, you suddenly appear,
A serenade of joy, a symphony so clear,
A chance encounter, a meeting of souls,
Where hearts entwine and destiny unfolds.

Your magic lies in the unexpected surprise,
A meeting of minds, a meeting of eyes,
In the crowded streets or a bustling café,
You join together two souls astray.

Your presence is felt in the gentle breeze,
In the rustling leaves and the dancing trees,
In the golden sunset’s ethereal glow,
You reveal secrets sure only you know.

You are the spark that ignites the fire,
The inspiration that fuels our desire,
To chase our dreams, to follow our hearts,
To embrace the unknown, where serendipity starts.

Oh, Serendipity, you are a gift divine,
A reminder that life’s tapestry is intertwined,
With threads of chance and moments unforeseen,
Where miracles happen, where dreams convene.

Let us now celebrate your wondrous grace,
In every unexpected turn life may trace,
For in the realm of serendipitous delight,
We find the magic that makes our spirits take flight. 🌻

—Solomon Walker
published on medium.com

————————

🪴 Serendipity rarely knocks loudly.

Sometimes it happens when we decide to step outside our comfort zone (in my case, my ever-so-beloved couch).

Sometimes it happens when we openly encounter one another (I-Thou).

Sometimes it simply walks up the hill behind you.
With a donkey.

📌  When was the last time you allowed a serendipitous encounter or moment to happen?

🦋 Happy Sunday everyone! 🦋

With love,

Dina 🫶🏽

Resources:

  • Where to visit Balthazar: If you live nearby Binningen (CH), you can visit Balthazar (and Fabian) at the Sur Vojo farm (survojo.ch). You will find two Grand noir du Berry there – Balthazar is the smaller one. The other, and much larger one, is Lotus. 
  • This week’s song is Serendipity by Laufey