 Next speaker here is Birgit Olsen. Some people might know her as Coach Birgit, which is our Twiddlehandle. She's a moderate and she's really the youngest red model I know, but she's still very hip and moderate. She always wears our signature sunglasses and she has a, oh how do you call it again, car widow? A convictable car. Which she drives around Europe. Today she's going to give a talk about how WordPress saved, working with WordPress saved her life. So give her a warm welcome. At first I want you to ask a question. Do you know what this fancy piece is? And do you know what it means to, uh, in compassion with WordPress? I will go back later to that. Yeah. Um, at first I have to say, um, as Karen introduced me, I'm a mom of five children and since over around four and a half months I'm always a grandma too. So yeah, it was really life challenging for me, but yeah, we, I would like to, to go a little bit back into my history. My history, I was grown up on a farmer, um, farm and in a small German village and yeah there I suffered often with being not very well connected to friends, got mopped because I was a girl who grew up on a farm and yeah, it's, um, I was not that cool kid as my friends and wanted to be friends. So yeah. And, um, I got married at the age of 18 and I got my first child also at the age of 18 and my husband was, uh, owner of a gas station but after two years he stopped, uh, maintaining this gas station because of missing contracts and, um, he went to be a truck driver. This change in his, um, personal, uh, work experience had also impact into my personal life at the mom because he weren't at home the whole week. I was mostly alone with my children and, uh, as he joked sometimes why we have five children and he weren't any time at home, she said he was only there at the D day. So, um, yeah, it was quite interesting and, uh, also challenging because when you have more than one children or child, um, there's no any chance to go around and maintain other hobbies. So I tried to find hobbies, uh, which I can do by myself at home and I was very interested into building, um, websites, uh, since we have internet in 2000, I guess. And, um, so I started to learn by myself how to develop, how to build websites, what it means to be a designer or a programmer, but I don't have any higher education because I was a mom at the age of 18, so there was not any room to make a higher education and, um, yeah, everything was self-taught. Um, in the 2003, I was in a user group and I learned there, um, about WordPress. I saw WordPress. Wow, it's a new, new thing. Okay, I'm a really, really, uh, um, a person who was very curious about new things. And so I dived into it and say, hmm, okay, yes, not bad, but for building websites, it wasn't really interesting at that moment. So I went back to other CMS like Type 3, Drupal, Joomler, whatever you name it, but, um, yeah, to be self-educated is not that good to have finding jobs, especially in this industry, you want to go to work on it. And I struggled a lot to be proud of myself because I was only a mom at this moment with three children. I got four, give my fifth child, but when I, um, went forward, I specialized into WordPress training because I weren't a good designer from my perspective and I wasn't a programmer, a deeply programmer, so I decided to find the place in my surrounding I can fill in. It was training and I specialized and then it happened that my mom died, very unexpected. And yeah, this brought me back on my basics again. So I sat down and wrote a book about being yourself because I needed to find a way to maintain myself again and round myself. And having a husband who isn't really present in the daily life and you have to maintain all administrational stuff, all emotional stuff with your kids and dealing with it his bad mood when he comes at home on weekends. Yeah, sometimes I said, hmm, okay, you are not at home at all. I am always a single mom, which is married. So I cut off the married and went to be a single mom and in Germany it is so you need health insurance and I don't have a chance to go to the job office to get there because I was self-employed at that moment as a side job. So I decided to get employed. But I wasn't a designer, but I always wasn't a programmer. So I was profiled as a trainer for WordPress. And since 2010 I visited WordCams in Germany and made great connections to people there and through this connection I got my first employment as a trainer at an agency in Germany. They are all so here as a sponsor, you know, inside and we created a new training program for small businesses to educate them how to build websites with WordPress. This was a good chance for me to grow on my business perspective, but my personal life was a mess because my husband wasn't amused about it, that I have quitted our marriage. He was a little bit angry and yeah, it took about two years to convince him to say, hey, I don't want to destroy you or your life or your experience, but I want to be free and that's what I want to do and I want to expand and he was blocking me from expanding my life. Being a single mom with five children at this moment, my oldest daughter was already 18, so she moved together with her boyfriend. So I had four children at home and my second daughter had created an autoimmune disease about which was in the stomach and she was very ill, so I dealt with it to be a single mom with an ill-chilled child with an angry husband. Yeah, and I had to fill my fridge. I have to pay my rent and in several months I had only about 600 euro per month with I had to pay my rent, my insurance is filled the fridge, feed my children. I had no car and I had a luck that my mom had a business building and apartment building, so where there was an empty apartment, so I could use that but I had to pay for heating to get power, etc. But I also have to maintain myself as a Ritprostrana, as an employed Ritprostrana and the company was really good to me, but at the end of 2013 I found out that I was lesser and lesser and lesser in getting power and suffered with depression because of the fighting with my ex-husband. After the divorce it went smoother but I had to invest too much energy to fight for the rights of my children and myself and stay alive as a person and try to stay confident but when you are fighting about divorce and the rights of your children it's not that easy to say hey I'm a confident person so yes but always any end is also the beginning of something new and yeah I got ill but I ignored it, I tried to ignore it and my body told me I don't want you that you ignore me because I have also, I want to be also alive, not your shining and going to work camps and yeah say you are a very cool person so yeah and my employment with AIMSIDE we decided not to continue because of some different circumstances but um yeah and I need to find new jobs and add some kind of roller coaster getting new job new employment um yeah having also partnerships it's always a topic as a single marm you are really busy to maintain your kids and grow all your kids but also you have also personal needs finding a partner was really tricky but luckily in 2014 I found a great partner we are staying together with time so he's sitting at home and say yes but happening with all the good things I had also I learned that my body is not really happy with me I have a hypothesis since the age of 15 and um yeah that's not really helpful when you gave birth to five kids having a hypothesis so yeah it's not that easy and um yeah gaining weight through pregnancies losing weight gaining weight losing weight five times um yeah and also the stress I had with my husband and finding jobs staying employed having financial struggling and yeah my body said very good I think it's time to ground yourself again and um yeah last year I discovered that my body has a virus infection which isn't a visible infection it went into every cell in your body over 95% of all people of the world are carrier of this virus but mostly it's sleeping not really coming up my body tells me okay you're so stressed I will go into every cell of you and will fire and flammage you in every part and so I had several days where I lay down and couldn't get up I was full of pain and um yeah no energy it was difficult for me to move out of the bed to go to the toilet it's pretty awesome when you need about 10 minutes to come from your bed and go to the next room to the bathroom yes um but hey as you see I survived this and and what time I thought about if it's going more in this way you're ending up in a wheelchair are you interested in so what about quitting this sucking life but I was always working with repress in that time because repress well at that time my red line my straw in a sucking life and it happened that I asked public for help especially to attend the word camp Europe and Paris last year and I wonder it happened a friend of mine of the repress community in Germany had a spare room in his hotel and he offered me this room and he also offered me to join this ride to Paris by car so we met each other around 100 kilometers from my hometown he comes from the south of Germany I come from the middle of Germany and we went together to word camp Europe I brought my sticks with me everyone who saw me at that red camp fighting moving one step forward um yeah but this wonder encouraged me and empowered me to move forward a small steps one step after another small steps and it happened that I changed my whole perspective of my life it happened that this support of this repress community um I I learned a lot over conversations with friends on word camps and meetup groups and contributing and I also learned that I am respected as an individual as a person who deserves the respect and the the grace and the yeah respected being me and this empowers myself also to move forward and empower women and you you are here because our individuality makes a difference and even if we are seeing each other as a small piece in this world we are here to make a difference and yeah this year that's why I brought this fancy thing with me um having a hypothesis and several issues is also really um let me say you can't do things that are um natural for the most of you like putting the socks on your feet and I bought this fancy piece after considering about one year to purchase and helping to for me and after I got this and saw how fast I can put on the socks on my feet but normally it takes about five to ten minutes to bring the socks on my feet and now I have my shoes on and my socks within one minute so and this is for me an symbol to let it go that you are unable to do something but also to accept help also to ask for help and especially connecting to people be honest and show vulnerability isn't a bad thing it is a good thing and and it makes a big difference if you are um alone in a partnership or something else it doesn't matter where you are it doesn't matter how your past impacted you it matters that you are today alive and I learned from the WordPress community and the support I got from the WordPress community um it matters to be alive and I decided to stay alive and yeah and I'm I'm standing here I celebrate on daily basis my my achievements even if it's only walking from the parking spot up to the entrance without taking a break which I couldn't imagine last year and without using sticks yeah so and today I am wearing again my high heels so um yeah and that's I want to share with you my story how I got support from this friendly welcoming WordPress community you are also a part of it and it matters to me a lot that you are here and listening to my story it isn't a glimpsey story or a star shining story it contains a lot of anxiety fear loss of related this but it's it seems to seem you're interested in and my my heart wish that you got some takeaways for your perspective for your life and I will encourage you to celebrate every day every minute every second well you are here you are privileged to breathe you are privileged to be here and I will to encourage you to be grateful for that that you are here thank you sorry no I promise myself not to use any tissue do you have enough to pass around I'm sorry no it's okay I promise you to find my best yeah this is better okay let's take a deep breath before I keep going on and on are there any questions I will go one or two question please are there people who recommend what we did this morning uh after Paula I'm sorry I saw you I'm gonna come back no I mean yeah I'm well this well what happened this morning is um we also had a powerful talk from Paula and after that somebody in the audience asked who recognize who recognizes at least part of the feelings that well this morning was Paula but please are there any people who recognize at least part of the story look around look around yeah you're not the only one yeah when so please take yeah for them that and yeah yeah so I do I love you too I love you all well after a story like this oh no can you tell us more about the coach very good yes of course I was a life coach I built because of my personal history and I was very interested into psychology and how mental health issues are affecting our lives and yeah as I learned by myself what tools we have to power ourself I decided also to help other people with that as a coach and lend people a hand through such suffering situations and yeah and to combine my passion with WordPress and my learnings as a coach I am pro-women to feel confident using WordPress and moving forward and taking one step of another thank you