Trailblazers’ Stories: not-your-average Blog
Here you’ll find more than 450 full-lenght articles, most 4000 words+, about subjects that would interest people who are navigating huge life changes, challenges and crises and are starting the next chapters in their lives. Most articles feature the story of someone who had to cope with a life-altering crisis. Maybe you’ll find the story of someone who survived the exact same crisis as you are facing? You can use the search function below to find inspiring stories:
Here are the main themes:
1. Retreats – Stress Dissolvers & Direction Finders – The transformative power of retreat experiences for people navigating major life transitions, career pivots, and personal crossroads. Explore how stepping away creates space for clarity, renewal, and intentional next chapters.
2. Horses – Partners in Transformation – How equine-assisted learning can accelerate emotional healing, build self-awareness, and guide stressed professionals toward their next chapter with wisdom that only horses can provide.
3. Navigating Life Changes, Challenges & Crises – Practical strategies and emotional support for weathering life’s storms—from unexpected upheavals to planned transitions. Learn to navigate uncertainty with resilience and emotional adaptability during pivotal life moments.
4. Burnout & Stress Management in Transition – Understanding why life transitions amplify stress and burnout risk. Science-backed approaches to managing acute and chronic stress when you’re already navigating significant personal or professional change.
5. Life Purpose – The Foundation of New Beginnings – Discovering and reconnecting with your deeper purpose during times of change. Explore why clarity of purpose is essential when reinventing your life, career, or identity.
6. Emotional Intelligence, Empathy, Self-Awareness & Mindfulness – Developing the inner resources that make transitions smoother. Cultivate emotional maturity, self-compassion, and mindful practices that support you through life’s most challenging passages.
7. Reinvention and Reconstruction after a Major Life Change – Navigate relationship shifts, empty nests, health scares, career pivots, redundancies, retirement, relocation, professional success without fulfillment, and find clarity for your next chapter.
8. Grief, Loss & Legacy – Honouring what’s been lost while creating meaningful legacy. Process grief from death, relationship endings, or life chapter closures, and discover how loss can transform into purposeful living.
9. Nature, Sustainability & Slow and Solo Travel – Reconnecting with natural rhythms as an antidote to modern overwhelm. Embrace sustainable, intentional living that supports well-being during life transitions and beyond.
10. Writing, Reading & Storytelling – How words heal and transform during major life changes. Explore writing your story, reading for solace and inspiration, book reviews, and storytelling circles as powerful tools for processing transition.
Margaretha Montagu
Are Your Ingrained Money Myths Secretly Sabotaging Your Progress? During life’s big transitions, we would all like to think we’re making cool, calculated financial decisions. But here’s bad news: your limiting beliefs about money—the ones we picked up from childhood,...
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Margaretha Montagu
Explore stories and strategies that inspire resilience in the face of uncertainty. Life transitions—moving to a new city, starting a new job, or surviving a break-up that feels straight out of a Netflix drama are like plot twists - they...
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Margaretha Montagu
Book Recommendation: Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May Wintering: a time of Rest, Retreat and Renewal This book is at the top of the recommended reading list for my From Troubled to Triumphant:...
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Margaretha Montagu
Featuring 12 tailor-made excuses to use when you need to dodge yet another Christmas party Even though it is only the middle of November 2024, I am already planning for the Christmas season. My Book Lover's Christmas Binge Reading Retreat...
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Margaretha Montagu
Frameworks to help you navigate personal or professional life transitions with confidence I recently re-read Bruce Feiler's excellent book Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age, in which he describes life transitions as a three-phase process: The...
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Margaretha Montagu
Introverts often get labelled as the “quiet ones,” the “deep thinkers,” the “observers” in a world that seems to worship those who can hold court in a room and sell ice to penguins. Introverts actually have a unique superpower when...
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Margaretha Montagu
Maybe you’re getting through your “transition” with a survival kit of coffee, Netflix, and the occasional breakdown in the bathroom. Your motivational mantra sounds something like, “Today… we did not cry in public. Small wins.” Maybe you’ve Googled “how much...
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Margaretha Montagu
Ready to officially kick the old chapter to the curb and usher in something new? Here’s a lineup of rituals—some quirky, some classic—that’ll help you mark the end of your old life and throw open the doors to whatever’s next.
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Margaretha Montagu
Discover powerful ways to mark major life changes by connecting with the natural world around you. Involving Nature in new beginnings Rituals always makes them somehow more real (and definitely more poignant) to me. Reconnecting to Nature, just when you...
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Margaretha Montagu
Find out if you are Thriving and Striving during a Major Life Change Are you thriving or striving on the life transition rollercoaster? Maybe you're that person who’s “embracing change” with a green smoothie in one hand, and a motivational...
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Margaretha Montagu
A Guide to Living with Purpose Through Life Transitions: When Sarah retired, she pictured her days unfolding like a cosy Pinterest board: endless brunches, maybe a vegetable garden, and mastering the fine art of companion planting. But the reality was…well,...
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Margaretha Montagu
12 Weird but Wonderfully Effective Ways to Turn Your Quarter-Life Crisis Into a Quarter-Life Adventure Setting the Scene At 26, Tyler hit what he would later refer to as “The Quarter-Life Catastrophe.” It started late afternoon on a Tuesday, in...
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Margaretha Montagu
Introduction Imagine this: you’re in the midst of packing up your life, surrounded by mountains of boxes, immobilised by heart-wrenching memories, when through the window, you see your elderly next-door neighbour struggling to carry her groceries into her house. You...
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Margaretha Montagu
Making Sure Our Friendships Survive Major Life Changes Your friends are your anchors during periods of change. When everything else is in flux – whether it's moving cities, changing careers, starting a new business, or going through a divorce –...
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Margaretha Montagu
Discover the Surprising Ways Different Generations Cope with Change—and What We Can All Learn from Each Approach The scene: Four friends from different generations are sitting around a table at a coffee shop, catching up on life. Baby Boomer: “You...
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Margaretha Montagu
Finding Yourself in the Strangest Places Life Quake Series They say travel broadens the mind, but here’s a lesser-known secret: it also closes doors. Yep, the ones that need closing—like the door on a marriage that’s run its course. Forget...
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Margaretha Montagu
Life Quake Series: Divorce More than 12 actually, because when I researched this some of the proposed solutions made me laugh out loud. This reminded me that humour is a powerful antidote to anguish and getting divorced is one of...
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Margaretha Montagu
Life Quake Series Enraged. Terrified. Adrift. Betrayed. Losing a job isn’t just losing a paycheck; it’s watching a piece of your identity slip away, too. There’s the gut-wrenching sting of rejection, the ever-echoing fear that asks, Was I not good...
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Margaretha Montagu
How to Find Solid Ground during a Life Quake When life throws me in at the deep end — a major change, a sudden shift, an unexpected curveball - or all of these simultaneously - my first thought often is,...
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Margaretha Montagu
Focus on what matters most to You Sometimes life feels like an out-of-control carnival - especially to us introverts - lights flashing, crowds pushing, the whole place buzzing with deafening noise. Somehow, you’re supposed to stay balanced, find your way,...
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Margaretha Montagu
Reconstruct Your Story, Reconstruct Your Future We are all living in a movie we scripted ourselves. Every setback, every triumph, every “I’m not good enough,” and “this is just the way I am”— we have written into our stories ourselves....
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Margaretha Montagu
The Anti-Ageing Benefits of Travel Forget the wrinkle creams and kale smoothies. If you really want to stay young, start packing your bags. Travelling isn’t just about sightseeing—it’s a full-on youth serum disguised as an epic adventure. Why jet-setting and...
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Margaretha Montagu
Unhurried and Unbothered: The Art of Savouring Every Step Ever come back from a trip feeling like you need a holiday from your holiday? If you’re an introvert, chances are the bustling crowds, the nonstop itinerary, and the pressure to...
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Margaretha Montagu
The Search for Meaning During Life Transitions Alright, so here you are—smack in the middle of a life transition. Maybe you’ve just left a job you had thought would be the job of all jobs. Maybe the relationship you’d bet...
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Margaretha Montagu
A Roadmap to Resilience Life transitions, or life quakes, as I like to call them, that mental rollercoaster you didn’t sign up for, but here you are, buckled in, white-knuckling it like you’re on the world’s most terrifying ride. Ah,...
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Margaretha Montagu
Why Introverts Are More Susceptible to Burnout (and How Self-Awareness Can Help Them Avoid It) Burnout is something more and more of us have to face sooner or later in today’s fast-moving, always-connected world. Especially if we are introverts. As...
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Margaretha Montagu
Walking Meditation is an essential part of my life-changing Camino de Santiago Walking Retreats. What is Walking Meditation? Walking Meditation can dramatically enhance your experience of walking the Camino de Santiago because it: 1. Makes the Walk More Meaningful The...
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Margaretha Montagu
For many years, I have been encouraging my Camino de Santiago Walking Retreats guests to practice both walking meditation and breathing meditation, alternatively, while they are walking the Camino. Most of my guests found this hugely beneficial and continued both practices when...
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Margaretha Montagu
Imagine this: you've finally mustered the courage to quit the job that’s been slowly suffocating your soul, or you're ready to leave behind a life that no longer feels worth living. The excitement of a fresh start propels you forward—until...
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Margaretha Montagu
Life transitions and major life changes, like losing your job, starting a business, ending a relationship, relocating to a new country, becoming a parent, coping with the loss of a loved one or an empty nest, retirement, or a significant...
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