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

Weekly Poem: HOPE

Weekly Poem: HOPE

by | Feb 17, 2026 | Poem

🌿 A poem a day keeps the blues away… 

🪴 Every poem I share is one that has moved me during the week. Today’s poem is about hope. 

I originally wrote the reflection below as an article for the Association for Coaching, for their April 2026 Coaching Perspectives edition on “The Age of Uncertainty”. Unfortunately, by the time I submitted my piece, Hope as a strategy in uncertain times, their shortlist had already been finalised.

I’m hoping (no pun intended) to submit a new article for their October edition on “The Art of reflection”. In the meantime, I wanted to share my piece on hope here with you. Although it is written primarily for coaches, I hope it will resonate more widely as well.

So, here it is:

Hope as a strategy in uncertain times

🪴 We are told we no longer live in a VUCA world, but a BANI one (Cascio, 2025).

The world is no longer merely Volatile, but Brittle. Not just Uncertain, but Anxious. Not simply Complex, but Non-linear. Not merely Ambiguous, but Incomprehensible.

Whether our world is VUCA, BANI, or some other fashionable acronym. Whether it is more uncertain today than ever before. Or whether this is just us succumbing to the “Peak Uncertainty Myth” (Fergnani, 2024). Uncertainty is a condition of being alive, and a deep and personal experience for every one of us.

So, as coaches, how do we support our clients in navigating a terrain that is continuously changing?

The literature offers many possible answers: resilience, adaptability, agility, emotional intelligence. Cascio himself proposes the “positive BANI” as his antidote to BANI: Bendable, Attentive, Neuro-flexible, Interconnected (2025). And these may all be useful.  But I want to propose something far simpler, far older, and more radical.  

Hope.

Not as a feeling, but as a strategy.

🪴 Hope through the lens of a poem

Uncertainty requires non-linear thinking. So, rather than proposing you a framework or a model, I offer you a poem as a springboard for reflection on hopeful living (and coaching).

HOPE

🌻 Hope has holes
in its pockets.
It leaves little
crumb trails
so that we,
when anxious,
can follow it.
Hope’s secret:
it doesn’t know
the destination—
it knows only
that all roads
begin with one
foot in front
of the other. 🌻

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
from “How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope”

“Hope has holes in its pockets.”

From the first line, Trommer disrupts our usual thinking. We tend to see holes as flaws—something to be fixed. Here they become a key design feature for good living.

Some accuse hope of numbing people into inaction by encouraging naïve positivity or wishful thinking. I disagree. Hope is not blind optimism.

Blind optimism is a feeling.
Hope is a strategy.

Blind optimism may ignore evidence and deny difficulty.
Hope is defiance. It recognises reality and still chooses to move.

Blind optimism leaves us unprepared for when things go wrong.
Hope is our compass to find a way when the path disappears.

Blind optimism is an autumn leaf in a gushing wind.
Hope is an anchor, rooted in depth of convictions, values, and relationships. It draws strength from the belief that what we see is but a fraction of the larger intricate ecosystem we are part of.

Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning was published with the subtitle: “The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust”. Frankl was not writing about optimism. He was writing about the human capacity to orient toward meaning even in the most brutal conditions.

Hope does not eliminate suffering.
It prevents suffering from becoming the whole story.

To live a meaningful life is to love and to hope.

As coaches, especially those of us supporting clients through difficult transitions or anxious times, hope matters.

🪴 Follow the crumb trail

Hope “leaves little crumb trails so that we, when anxious, can follow it.”

This single line could shape months of coaching: helping our clients notice the crumb trails that hope has already been leaving behind. In uncertain times, clients rarely need grand visions or five-year plans. They need help noticing what is already trying to guide them.

Unlike Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, Trommer does not invite us to follow a bright yellow brick road, but little crumb trails.

Crumbs are subtle, fragile, and easily missed.

They can be ravaged by others.

If left unnoticed or ignored for too long, they decay and disappear.

They may show up as small impulses, half-formed ideas, moments of aliveness or irritation, flickers of curiosity, quiet values, recurring metaphors, bodily sensations, or longings that refuse to go away.

Our role as coaches becomes that of a wayfinder—someone who helps expand our clients’ sense of awareness so that these crumbs can be seen and followed.

From a Gestalt perspective, this means bringing what is in the Ground (what is in the background and unnoticed) into a Figure (what can now be examined and explored in the here and now). We do this, for example:

  • by paying attention not only to what our client says, but to how they say it
  • by noticing the impact they have on us—our own perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and bodily responses—and offering these as a relational feedback
  • by using our own intuition and imagination to create small experiments that allow the client to experience their situation differently
  • by highlighting interruptions to contact—“I can’t,” “I should,” “Never”, “Always”, “No one”—that often signal where hope is being blocked
  • by exploring their convictions, values, commitments, relationships, and gently question whether these still serve them

This way of us showing up expands our client’s vision to new territories, new angles, so they can hopefully spot those crumbs left behind by hope.

And it’s work that requires “bravery” (from coach and client), and it needs to come from a place of care—and dare I say “Agape”(Zinker, 1978, p. 3, 6).

🪴 One foot in front of the other

“Hope (…) doesn’t know the destination—it knows only that all roads begin with one foot in front of the other.”

This is the essence of uncertainty: we can neither carve out a five-year vision nor a ten-step plan. And this is precisely where hope steps in.

Where clarity fails, hope offers that next possible step, one foot at a time. And, as coaches, our task is to support our clients as they choose where to place their foot next.

This might sound like:

  • If you believed this could work, what would you do next?
  • If you trusted yourself just a little more, what step might you take today?
  • If change were possible, where would you move?

And then we look at what’s preventing them from doing so: the thoughts, beliefs, those loud (or not so loud) voices in our head, the feelings and emotions trapped in our body.

Hope doesn’t eliminate uncertainty or fear.
It refuses to let them paralyze us and rob us of our next possible step.

And that step might be forward, backward, sideways, or a moment of rest for reflection and recharge.

Hope is a strategy that restores agency.

🪴 Hope begins with us

An Egyptian saying goes: You can’t give what you don’t have.

If we want to cultivate hope in our clients, we must cultivate it in ourselves—not as forced positivity, but as a quiet, steady…

… knowing that we are not alone;

… trusting that we are part of something larger—an intricate ecosystem—that can open up opportunities we never thought possible or imaginable;

… believing that meaning will emerge even when we are still muddling our way through the fog.

Hope trusts in what the Greeks called Kairos—the right time, the unfolding moment—not just Chronos, the predictability of clocks,calendars, and perfectly laid-out plans.

A hopeful coach is not someone with answers.
It is someone who can contain the discomfort of not knowing, for ourselves and our client, trusting that there is more to this than meets the eye.

🪴 A closing invitation

Where uncertainty exists, hope is necessary.

So, I invite you to ask yourself:

  • How do I embody hope when the destination is unclear?
  • How do I show up as someone who believes movement is still possible?
  • How can I be a wayfinder who supports clients to spot those crumbs and find the courage to follow them?

Hope does not promise a safe or certain future.
It invites us into the next living moment.

And, often, that is enough.

🦋 Happy Sunday everyone! 🦋

With love,
Dina 🫶🏽

References:

Cascio, J. (2025) ‘BANI 2025 — an Overview’, Medium, 01 August 2025. Available at: https://medium.com/@cascio/bani-2025-an-overview-575d92026fe1 (Accessed: 10 February 2026).

Fergnani, A. (2024) ‘Why Peak Uncertainty is a Myth’, Farsight, Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, 12 June 2024. Available at: https://farsight.cifs.dk/why-peak-uncertainty-is-a-myth/ (Accessed: 10 February 2026).

Zinker, J. (1978) Creative process in Gestalt therapy. New York: Vintage Books.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dina is a certified coach from the University of Cambridge, an advanced Gestalt coaching practitioner and trainer, a Gallup-certified strengths coach, and founder of Agape Heart & Soul. She holds an MBA and a Master’s in Communications & Media, and brings over 24 years of international experience, including a senior career in HR. Recognised as one of Basel’s Top 15 Coaches, her work integrates relational coaching, systems thinking, and leadership to support change with clarity, courage, and humanity. Former host of the AC podcast series “Coaching Beyond Tools”, she runs her own Gestalt Coaching Practice Labs and Relational Coaching Community of Practice.

www.linkedin.com/in/dinasabryfivaz

Weekly Poem: STILL I RISE

Weekly Poem: STILL I RISE

by | Feb 8, 2026 | Poem

🌿 A poem a day keeps the blues away… 

🪴 Every poem I share is one that touched me that week.
Today’s poem is about oppression. 

STILL I RISE

🌻 You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise. 🌻

—Maya Angelou,
published in The Poetry Pharmacy by William Sieghart

🪴 Angelou’s words live in many places:

in history, in politics, in identity—and this week I encountered them in the workplace.

One of the reasons I love being an independent coach is that I get to work with people and teams across industries, professions, and geographies. But I increasingly feel conflicted when I’m asked to coach people to become more “resilient” when what I encounter is not fragility, but people being slowly worn down by cultures of hidden agendas, power games, covert hostility, and unspoken fears.

This is how oppression often looks in organisations.

Normalised. Wrapped in performance language.

And then we try to fix it by coaching individuals to “cope better“.

🪴 When systems trap us all

Before we blame people or managers, it’s important to name the system they’re inside—its incentives, its silences, its unspoken rules—in which oppressors are often themselves oppressed.

Most managers do not wake up thinking, How can I make today particularly miserable for my team?
And yet, harmful behaviour keeps happening, because targets, politics, fear of failure, and fear of disposability create environments where pressure flows downward and humanity gets squeezed out.

This is the soil in which oppression grows. And it often shows up in very subtle ways:

  • unrealistic timelines with inadequate resourcing
  • decisions made without involving those who will carry the consequences
  • leaders who avoid real conversations in favour of executive summaries and soundbites
  • instructions that bypass reporting lines, creating confusion and resentment
  • people told to “stop complaining” and just get on with it
  • politics and hidden agendas replacing open, trustful communication
  • wilful blindness out of fear
  • personal attacks disguised as “feedback”
  • and the list goes on…

Over time, this becomes normal.
It becomes “the way things are done here.”

And when people begin to suffer under it, we don’t question the system—
we try to fix the individual.

This is the ultimate sign of subtle oppression disguised as a rescue.

We send them to resilience or stress-management training.
We give them a coach.
We ask them to adapt better, cope more, and regulate themselves.

There is something deeply wrong with asking a bruised nervous system to build resilience while leaving the bruising system untouched.

🪴 Survival is not the same as empowerment

Someone who shows up every day to a place that causes them pain
is not lacking resilience.
They are already demonstrating it through sheer survival.

What they often need instead is empowerment—
support to see what is really happening,
to reclaim their agency,
to speak up, to set boundaries,
and, if needed, to walk away.

Sometimes empowerment is having the courage to blow a whistle.
Sometimes it’s updating a CV.
Sometimes it’s taking sick leave.
Sometimes it’s finally saying: This is not okay—I’m out.

None of that comes from being taught to endure more.
And none of it is naïve—we all know it comes at a cost.

But the real question is:
what’s the cost of enduring vs. the cost of taking action?

Only the person enduring can answer that.

And then another question follows:
how do we influence the systems that make this kind of suffering feel inevitable? 

🪴 The fish stinks from the head

There’s a saying that the fish stinks from the head.
Meaning: if you want to change a culture, you have to start at the very top.

You can run workshops on psychological safety.
You can preach about structural transparency.
You can champion a coaching and feedback culture.

But unless your highest-ranking leaders are willing to role-model those behaviours—
and unless HR, Finance, and accountability systems are built to support them—
you are asking people to behave differently inside structures that will ultimately punish them for doing so.

And that, too, is a form of oppression.

🪴 Why Angelou’s words still matter today…

Because this is not about enduring silently or learning to endure even more.

It’s about rising:
above fear,
above defeat,
above silencing,
above injustice.

It’s about our beautiful, fragile, yet indomitable human spirit saying:
Still I Rise—as must the systems we build.

📌 What are your thoughts on organisational “oppression”?
How do you feel about trying to treat systemic ills with individual resilience patches?

🦋 Happy Sunday everyone! 🦋

With love,
Dina 🫶🏽

Weekly Poem: THE IDEAL

Weekly Poem: THE IDEAL

by | Feb 1, 2026 | Poem

🌿 A poem a day keeps the blues away… 

🪴 I started a tradition on LinkedIn of sharing a poem each week—one that has touched me in some way—and offering a few reflections on it. And, I decided that I wanted to carry that same practice into my blog as well, as a way of creating a more lasting space for these moments of reflection.

This week’s poem is called The Ideal.

It touched me deeply because it echoed a recent conversation I had—one that reminded me how fragile our self-image can be, and how profoundly that fragility shapes our sense of self-worth.

THE IDEAL

🌻 This is where I came from.
I passed this way.
This should not be shameful
Or hard to say.

A self is a self.
It is not a screen.
A person should respect
What he has been.

This is my past
Which I shall not discard.
This is the ideal.
This is hard. 🌻

— James Fenton,
published in The Poetry Pharmacy by William Sieghart

It pains me when a client comes into coaching saying they don’t like who they are—that they see no beauty in themselves, even though I can see it so clearly.

Weighted down by the image of an “Ideal Self”, they are unable or unwilling to accept their past, to accept who they are. And so, paradoxically, every attempt they make to become someone else fails. The pursuit of that ideal becomes a self-imposed tyranny that only brings even more pain.

In Gestalt, we call this the Paradox of Change. Only when I come to terms with and accept myself as I am—and my past as it was—can I finally move into new directions and let go of the thoughts that have dragged me down for so long.

🪴 But self-acceptance, and even more so self-forgiveness, can be incredibly hard.

Guilt over something we did or said can become such a visceral, embodied feeling that it’s hard to believe it can ever be overcome.

Fenton suggests that while we may keep our ideal in mind, our past is not something we need to hide from—whether from ourselves or others. We are who we are today because of, or despite, that past. It is not something to be ashamed of, for it has made us who we are: “This is where I came from. I passed this way.” And for some of us, it might even be: “I survived this way.”

He goes on to reject that self-imposed screen we use to project ourselves to the world. He invites us to embrace who we are in this moment. However flawed our past or present self may be, it deserves to be, because it’s real. “A self is a self”.

He also suggests that growing or bettering ourselves does not require erasure. “This is my past which I shall not discard.”

And he ends the poem with “This is the ideal. This is hard.”

It is hard because that ideal often fails to acknowledge our humanity, our shortcomings. It is an image of perfection no human can achieve—and so it can only generate more disappointment and more pain.

It is hard because it places guilt and shame as the birthplace of change. And while feelings of regret are allowed to be, the true birthplace of a new self can only be forgiveness…

I find myself tearing up as I re-read my words for a final check before hitting “publish”… which tells me that I, too, still need to accept… and forgive.

📌 Which parts of yourself or your past have you been shunning?
What can you forgive today?

🦋 Happy Sunday everyone! 🦋

With love,
Dina 🫶🏽

Recommended resources: