From groundlessness to essence: a year of transformation
How do you begin a journey when everything you knew has dissolved? Can you tap into your essence when you have no ground beneath your feet?
Transformation doesn't happen in straight lines. It happens in the messy middle of life falling apart and coming together. Regenerators alumna and Community and Ecosystem Nurturer Judit Sáez Gonzálvez shares her own year of transformation, when she was a participant in the Regenerative Leadership Journey 2023. A year she started without understanding what regeneration meant, and that initiated her into a completely new way of being, planting the seeds of who she would later become.
Winter
Istanbul, Turkey, end of January 2023.
I'm in my friend Ceren's living room, opening my laptop to access the Regenerators Academy platform. The Regenerative Leadership Journey 2023 started last week, but I missed the first session because I was in a silent meditation retreat near Barcelona, Spain. A much-needed retreat to kick off the year, after 2022 had finished with a big shock to my nervous system: seeing my co-living dreams in Portugal vanish, packing all my life and leaving without a destination, finding myself out of the full-time marketing direction project I'd been working on for a year, and navigating an earthquake in my relationship with my partner.
In such a state of groundlessness and uncertainty, I remembered the words of praise from a connection on LinkedIn who had just been on the 2022 Journey. I joined the last Taster session before the doors to sign up closed and before switching off from the world in the meditation retreat, following a deep pull towards a word—'regeneration'—which I had just heard a few months back. A word that, honestly, I wasn't understanding properly.
I left the Taster session still not understanding exactly what regeneration was about, but 100% convinced that I needed to join this experience and devote myself to exploration for the full year ahead. And so I did. Up until April, I missed a few live sessions and couldn't properly follow the content because I was traveling in Sri Lanka and India with my partner (second meditation retreat included), another much-needed healing and spiritual journey running in parallel.
Spring and Summer
Back in Europe, Barcelona became basecamp for a while. A Mediterranean spring and summer of bloom, digesting the intense first months of 2023 in South Asia, starting a new project on culture and community nurturing, and joining other learning experiences that were aligning with regenerative principles. All of this with the stark contrast of being back in my hometown, the place I had left 3.5 years ago escaping from my burnt-out past, navigating a massive identity void once again.
These were days of diving deeper into the Regenerative Leadership content, showing up to the live sessions, and hanging out with my Home Circle. We were growing stronger community roots, something that became very clear during the Wisdom Seats sessions in July and August, when we explored real cases from fellow Journey travelers. I supported two of my co-travelers, holding space for them and their cases—something that I couldn't see then but that initiated me into regenerative facilitation. The end of August also marked the first Regenerators gathering in Selgars, Devon, UK, that brought together over 40 Journey travelers from the 2022 and 2023 cohorts. Although my whole being wanted to be there too, an overlapping trip to Ireland prevented me from joining. I promised myself I wouldn't miss the next one (spoiler alert: I didn't).
Autumn
One week later, my partner and I flew to Berlin, Germany, to cat-sit at a friend's place for a couple of weeks. Berlin had been home for us before we had moved to Portugal, and we gave ourselves those weeks to sense if the city would take us for a second round. We landed an apartment in four days, which couldn't possibly have been a clearer sign that we were welcomed back again.
September was also the month when I truly started embodying regeneration: the start-up I had been working with since spring (based in Berlin as well) was closing down, and the founder asked me to organize a closure day. Without realizing it, I put together a kind of death ceremony with dynamics to honor what had been, to let go of what we wouldn't carry into our future projects, and to distill what we would take with us forward. I wouldn't have imagined myself putting this agenda together a year before, surprising myself at how coherent and intuitive it felt to approach that day like this.
I started to create new connections in the regenerative local and global field, casually meeting regenerative practitioners who months later turned into collaborators and friends. Closing professional chapters and leaving myself in a 'what next' state, we arrived at the Journey sessions about essence, connecting to the unique medicine we bring to the world. I felt incredibly grounded and in alignment as I was tapping into my essence: to hold space by sensing and responding. So simple yet illuminating. Realizing that this was how I had always been navigating my professional and personal life. I can still feel the goosebumps from that day.
This gave me the final push I needed to fully accept the new direction my career was taking: space holder for transformation, as a mentor, coach, and community builder. Nurturing regenerative spaces for change to unfold. Just like Laura Storm, Emily Johnsson, and my co-travelers had done for me in the Regenerative Leadership Journey. Just as I do today as the current Community and Ecosystem Nurturer for Regenerators.
A long, long winter
It wasn't easy to see this new professional identity materialize. Making a living as a regenerative practitioner doesn't unfold with ease in the systems we live in. In December 2023, holding the tension of seeing so clearly what I was here to do and not being able to make it happen threw me into a depressive hole. I decided to surrender to that sadness, not attend the Closing Ceremony which marked the end of the Journey, and went on the third meditation retreat of the year, in the dark winter of the Polish countryside—my own closing ceremony of a year that I still wasn't able to label or fully understand.
At the beginning of 2024, I still had to go through a few more months of shedding layers (literally as well, shaving my head completely) and navigating doubt, failure, financial crisis, and anxiety. Although, steadily and quietly, the seeds of 2023 started to sprout: how I was embodying regeneration and my essence was perceived by those around me.
My family was totally behind me and supportive of what I was trying to do. New connections were seeing me as a coach even before I started my coaching education. Old friends would show me the way when they saw me diverting from my true path. My first paid mentoring client was a fellow co-traveler of the Journey. My Home Circle was still active, and their warmth and understanding helped me navigate my pain so many times. The Community of Care and Practice for Regenerators alumni was starting to take root, and I found a new space where I was welcomed as my whole self.
And in May 2024 I received a message from Laura Storm: 'Judit, I have a proposal for you. Can you meet next week?'
My story is not unique.
Ask anybody who has been on the Regenerative Leadership Journey and they'll tell you about navigating it alongside grief, joy, doubt, success, heartbreak, and new love.
We share these stories in the breakout rooms and plenaries of our live sessions. They unfold with the Journey, as the wisdom we receive starts to get entangled with the ups and downs in our lives and the developments in our societies. Sitting around the fire with our fellow travelers, we practice a new way of seeing, we make meaning with new words, we mirror each other in a way that says "I see you. You are not alone." And even when we can't fully show up, the process of integration is still going on.
Because once you start embodying regeneration, there's no way back.
The Regenerative Leadership Journey 2026 is open to welcome new travelers until January 27. Join us now or sign up to the free Taster session on January 20 to get a sense of what this year-long experience (and beyond) is about.