At the end of 2019, Boris and I suddenly found ourselves in a situation neither of us had expected.

His company was in an existential crisis and we didn't know whether it had any future at all.

Until then, I had hardly anything to do with the company. I had my own job and, to be honest, had no intention of changing that.

But sometimes life doesn't ask what you had actually planned.

We had to make a decision: give up – or find out together whether there was still a way.

For me, one thing was clear: if we take this path, then only together and with a few things that are non-negotiable for me:

Honesty. Openness. Loyalty. Trust. Togetherness.

So we decided to give it a try.

What followed were months full of challenges. We had to learn a lot from scratch, find solutions, improvise and deal again and again with situations we weren't prepared for.

There were setbacks, doubts and moments when neither of us knew how things should go on.

But there were also the small steps forward.

And at some point, those small steps turned into prospects again.

Today, a few years later, the crisis back then has long since become a new chapter. The company stands on a stable foundation again – and Boris and I have long since become a real team.

What has remained

When I look back on that time, I don't think about how strong we were.

Because for me, strength doesn't mean never falling.

I know moments when I doubt, cry or simply can't go on. And I allow myself those moments.

But over the course of my life I have learned not to stay there.

At some point I look back at all the situations in which I didn't know how things would go on either. And from that, the certainty grows again that there will be a next step this time, too.

This time with Boris has also shown me something that is at least as important:

You don't have to manage everything on your own.

Two people together can sometimes carry much more than one alone – if they are honest with each other, trust each other and stick together even when things get difficult.

Perhaps that is exactly why one sentence has become my personal motto over the years:

There is always a way – even if you can't always see it right away.

That is what Dragonangel means to me.