It's April 5th, 2021.
Ibiza. The island that had been my home since 2015. Six years of building a life there — working as a yacht broker, knowing every harbour, every sunrise, the smell of the salt in the morning. But I wasn't living there anymore. Six months earlier, I had quit my job as a yacht broker, left the island, and moved to Switzerland to be with my (now ex) partner. A new chapter. A new life.
I was just visiting Ibiza for a couple of days — to recharge, to see my friends, to just be. It had been a rough year.
We woke up in a sun-soaked boutique hotel, flowers everywhere, a day that felt like a gift. Walking along the harbour where I used to work, we quickly grabbed a coffee to go. Superyachts I once booked for my clients drifting past. I was showing my partner the island I loved — the place that had shaped me — feeling deep gratitude and excitement to be back. I missed the island deeply.
We were about to jump into the car. And then my phone rang.
My mother's voice.
I was in a rush. We had a tight plan for the day. It was more of a quick chat than a real conversation.
I had been living with the fear of losing her since I was small. I always picked up. I always made time. I just wish I had been more present that one time…
I didn't know that was our last conversation. And if I could change one thing, it would simply be taking that moment to fully be with her.
My mother was one year old when they radiated her.
Cobalt-60. A big tumour in her tiny baby chest. 1967. They didn't expect her to live past six.
But she lived against every prognosis — because that's what she did. By the age of 17 she had survived cancer again. Endless hospital stays. By twenty-two she was pregnant with me, alone after my father left, having already carried more than most people see in a lifetime. She also survived rape as a teenager, by a stranger. She had survived so much that by the time she had me, survival was simply the air she breathed. It was normal for her. It almost looked easy from the outside.
When she found out she was pregnant with me — knowing my father was already with another woman — she booked an appointment for an abortion. For 5pm. She cancelled it by 1pm.
Since the moment of conception, she knew she would have a girl. She could not bear the thought of forever asking "what would have been…"
On April 28th, 1988, at 11:18am — I arrived. Sneezing eight times. 8 — the number that has followed me throughout my life.
8. ∞. A sign of remembrance. Of eternal life.
She gave me love bigger than I knew what to do with. But she never learned to give herself that same love. She poured and poured — and she actually needed that support herself.
I inherited that pattern completely. Especially within relationships.
Back in Ibiza. That evening, a dear friend came to our hotel. One of the most gifted massage therapists I've ever known — she works with football stars and princesses — but it is her heart that makes her extraordinary. I was so grateful to have her with me that day.
Halfway through the massage, something cracked open in my chest.
A deep sadness I couldn't name. I didn't know where it was coming from. But I let it move through me. I started crying and crying — I could not have been in better hands in that moment.
When I picked up my phone afterward, there was a message from my stepfather:
"The ambulance just came and took your mom. They've been working for a long time outside the house, inside the ambulance. It doesn't look good."
I knew that "it doesn't look good" meant it really doesn't look good.
The grief I'd felt during the massage suddenly made sense. The thread between my mother and me — the one that had been there since before I had words for it — had pulled.
I felt her pain in my body before I read the words.
It was 2021. The height of COVID. I couldn't fly directly to her. Every hour of waiting was its own kind of dying. Waiting for PCR results. Restrictions. The slowest, cruelest torture.
On April 7th we finally boarded a flight with a layover in Madrid. I first was mad that we couldn't find a direct flight, which later turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
By then her organs were failing. She could hear but she couldn't speak. It hurts me just thinking about what she must have experienced in her final hours. But thank God, she was surrounded by my family.
Layover in Madrid. I'm calling the hospital with less than a minute to speak to my mother before the doctors rushed in and had to hang up. I prayed she was capable of receiving my words: "I love you so much" and "I'll be there in a few hours."
That morning I had recorded a voice message — pouring out everything I hadn't said in our last rushed call. My love. My gratitude. That my brother and I had made peace after months of tension over our different views on COVID. I told her I was on my way. That if she was tired — she could sleep. That if she is ready to go… she could go now. And that she please always remember her promise: to send me signs. Not one, not two — but many.
After the call at the airport, I immediately sent another WhatsApp to remind my stepfather to play the voice message for her. He said "I will".
Half an hour later, a WhatsApp came through in our family chat.
"She left us… right after we played Sarah's voice message to her."
Like she had finally been given permission to go.
I collapsed in the airport line. Grief crashed through me like a wave I hadn't seen coming. As if the moment wasn't overwhelming enough, the woman at the check-in desk was asking me about my luggage weight — I had to shift things between bags — and I was completely undone, having a breakdown right there in the queue.
Waiting for a plane I had wanted to catch two days earlier, but couldn't because of COVID safety procedures that I already knew were unnecessary — that's another story for another time. I felt angry and full of grief at the same time. Facing what I had feared my entire life: losing the most important person in my world. She was only 55. I wanted so much more time with her.
And yet, beneath the grief — something else. A lifting. A strange release.
I felt the weight I had been carrying for her my whole life — trying to ease her pain, hold her sickness, fix what couldn't be fixed — begin, finally, to let go. It was the first moment I felt released from something I had been carrying since the moment I can remember.
The losses kept coming.
My grandfather — who was like a father to me — six months before her, in September 2020. My first pregnancy, a miscarriage, just one month after him. My mother — April 7th, 2021. My grandmother — the year after, in 2022. Another pregnancy and loss in the same year.
One by one, my entire maternal family line passed. And I went from being someone's daughter and granddaughter to being the eldest. The one at the top of the lineage, holding it all.
I was plunged into the deepest grief I had ever known.
It took a few years of healing to find my way through it all. But through the grief, I began to finally see clearly — and to heal deep patterns. Especially the disconnection from the Divine, and from the masculine. The self-betrayal. The wanting to save others, and the way I found a sense of "I matter" in doing so. I now knew where it all came from.
I had been running through trains as a little girl, asking men: "Are you my father?" My mom said she wanted to sink into the floor in those moments — and yet it also broke her heart. She always held my biological father in the highest light, even though she had every reason not to.
Her wounding became mine. From the age of twelve I dove into relationships — I have spent more of my life in relationships than out of them, until I consciously broke that pattern after my mother's passing. I became the strong one. The one who holds everyone together. Believing that if I let go — even for a moment — everything precious would fall.
I had been dehydrated my entire life. Not just my skin — though I was born with visibly dry skin, something even the doctors noticed. But emotionally. Spiritually. Generationally.
Pouring myself into everyone. Making everyone else feel safe. While feeling unseen. Unheard. Disrespected. Taken for granted.
My mother did the same.
This is not a character flaw. It's what happens when the most loving person you've ever known never learned to love herself fully. You absorb that. Silently. In your body. And you spend years wondering why giving feels safer than receiving.
After my mother passed, I thought about what it would mean to honour her — what symbol I would choose if I ever got a tattoo in her name.
The anchor came first. Not just because of the deep emotional truth of it — she was my anchor, always — but because of the life we shared around water. Hamburg, the maritime city where she raised us. The fish business my mother and stepfather had there. Then my years in Ibiza as a yacht broker, always on the water. The anchor held all of that — her groundedness, and the water connection we both loved. In early Christian symbolism, the anchor also means hope — the steady, unshakeable kind.
Then the heart. For the unconditional love she poured into everything and everyone. The way she loved through every prognosis, every hospital stay, every impossible thing life handed her. Love as a theological virtue. Love as the force that kept her alive. Literally.
And then — faith. The knowing she carried that was ancient and unshakeable: a faith in the goodness of life that no diagnosis, no grief, no loss could extinguish.
I held those three things — anchor, heart, faith — and let them become not a tattoo, but a brand. The symbol of Her Sovereign Waters.
And then one day I saw that symbol in a friend's story. I froze. Because I recognised it immediately.
It was the Camargue Cross — the sacred emblem of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the village in southern France where Mary Magdalene and the three Marys are said to have arrived by boat after fleeing Jerusalem. The cross carries the same three virtues: faith, hope, love. I had never looked it up. I had never been taught it. I had simply felt it — and created it from my mother's life.
In that moment I understood: my mother had carried the essence of Mary Magdalene. Unwavering faith in the goodness of life. Love as a sanctuary. A hope that anchored everyone around her, even in her darkest hours.
But the shadows — the lack of discernment and boundaries, saying no to others and yes to herself — literally broke her heart.
My mother passed at 55 years old. With less than 30% lung capacity — something she had lived with for decades. A heart that had fought without ever feeling like a victim of her circumstances. A spirit that refused to stop.
She was a Sunday child. A medical miracle. The most loving person I have ever known. She always used to say "Ich schaff' das schon!" — I can do it, don't worry! — and she did.
And her pattern became mine — until I chose differently.
This is why I built Her Sovereign Waters.
Not because I had it figured out. Because I didn't.
The dehydration I was born with — the dry skin, the thirst, the longing — was never just physical. It was emotional, spiritual, generational. Healing required more than supplements or willpower. It required purification on every level. It requires what I call in-sourcing instead of out-sourcing. Coming home to yourself.
Water became my teacher. And God — not in a religious sense, but in a deep, embodied way — became my Father. The quality of what we take in — whether water, food, love, relationships, beliefs — determines the quality of our lives.
And the framework that emerged from my own healing and held me through it all:
LIVE — healing the body. The nervous system. The cycle. The physical sovereignty I had never claimed.
LOVE — healing the relational wounds. The masculine presence and integrity I searched for in every relationship. The mother wound. The pattern of seeking safety outside myself and pouring myself dry for others.
LEAD — stepping into mission. Everything being born from my healing: Sovereign Money. Sovereign Cycle. Sovereign Water. And everything else I am currently working on. The brand. This.
Walked before it was written.
We are living water. Eternally loved. Eternally safe.
But we must protect our hearts. Set our boundaries. Trust the divine flow within us. Come home to ourselves — and stop seeking outside what can only be found within.
I saw in my mother what it means to truly love, what we have to protect, how we can truly heal.
I could only draw this map because of her. And I am eternally grateful for her love and her beautiful, beautiful heart.
This work is my dedication to her.
Mom — today and every day. To the best mother in the world, and to every mother in the world: because you all give so much more than is ever fully appreciated.
Happy Mother's Day.
You truly make the world a home.
Thank you for reading this very personal story.
If it landed somewhere in you — share it with someone who needs it.
And let this be a reminder to call your mother today and tell her that you love her.
With love,
Sarah