The Black Panther and the Wild Child

I still remember exactly where I was.

In the waiting area of a beautiful office building in Amsterdam's financial district.

Honestly, I didn't want to be there.

The job didn't appeal to me, and I was only there because I had to apply for jobs to keep my unemployment benefits.

Then the door opened.

And I met him.

Nothing dramatic. No cinematic slow motion. No violins playing in the background.

And yet...

Something shifted inside me.

I felt it immediately. Not in my mind, but in my body.

For years, I tried to find the words for what had happened that day.

Was it love? Recognition? A feeling of coming home?

Or was it something much older than that?

After my burnout, I had lost almost all confidence in myself. The way my previous employer had treated me had left me doubting everything: my abilities, my intelligence, and even whether I still had a place in the professional world.

During one of our conversations, he said:

"Imagine someone holds a hoop two metres above the ground and tells you to jump. You jump, but you can't make it. Is there something wrong with you... or with the person holding the hoop?"

Something happened inside me that I couldn't understand at the time.

For the first time in a very long while...

I felt truly seen.

After those words, all I wanted to do was hug him and never let go.

A colleague and I nicknamed him The Black Panther. There was something panther-like about the way he moved through the office. I fell head over heels for his confidence, intelligence, humour and ambition. Under his guidance, and that of several wonderful colleagues, I slowly started to believe in myself again. Little by little, I began to show more of who I really was.

My confidence.

My intelligence.

My humour.

My ambition.

And, every now and then...

even my anger.

Looking back, I understand why I fell for him so deeply.

I believed he possessed something I had lost.

Only years later did I realise that I hadn't fallen in love with something that existed only in him.

I had fallen in love with parts of myself that I had lost along the way.

He was the first person who truly saw my qualities. And perhaps that was exactly why I believed I needed his approval. I projected so much onto him: the life I longed for, the confidence I had lost, and the sense of safety I kept searching for outside myself.

That unrequited love confronted me so deeply that I had no choice but to seek help.

For the first time, I began to understand how profoundly my childhood had shaped my adult relationships. I immersed myself in trauma, attachment theory, systemic work, breathwork, tantra and body-based practices.

Not because I wanted to become someone better.

But because I finally wanted to understand why I kept repeating the same patterns.

The greatest absence in my life turned out to be love for myself.

All my life, I had searched for love and safety outside of me.

In relationships.

In work.

In friendships.

Always with the same unconscious hope:

See me.

Choose me.

Save me.

But that is an impossible task for another person.

Slowly, I began to let go of old beliefs, protective mechanisms and survival strategies, layer by layer.

The lesson didn't end with that one man.

Apparently, I still had a few more circles to walk.

Each one taking me a little deeper.

Until I met her again.

The little girl who had once been innocent, curious, free, creative and deeply connected.

My Wild Child.

Not someone I had to become.

But someone who had been there all along.

Years later, I discovered that in many spiritual traditions, the Black Panther is a symbol of intuition, courage, spirituality, strength and transformation.

I smiled.

Because suddenly...

Everything made sense.

The real Black Panther had never been walking ahead of me through those office corridors. She had been living within me all along.

Looking back, I think I already felt that day what I would only come to understand years later: her awakening.

Maybe that was where all my relationships had been leading me.

Not to the right man.

But to a meeting with myself.

The place where the Black Panther finally came home to the Wild Child.

Where strength and softness finally met.

And perhaps...

that is what love truly is.

❤️

Reflection

Which quality do you admire over and over again in other people?

And could it be that this very quality already lives within you... quietly waiting to be lived?