My journey

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Hi, my name is Mara!

Who are you?

What is your purpose? How can you live a meaningful life for you, others, and the planet?

What is the one promise that it will kill you to break?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

How can you use your thoughts, emotions, feelings, needs, and desires along your journey for a more fulfilling life?

These are some of the questions that awaken joy and passion inside me. They make me want to support others to find their answers!

And some things about me:

I was born in Eastern Europe, in Romania where I also grew up and lived until the age of 23 when I moved to the Netherlands for my studies.

Growing up I had a normal middle-class Romanian experience (post-communist era, yes) with few bumps along the way. I was a resilient child and one that had always good grades. I mastered very early the art of being a good girl in the world. But I also had a very wild and rebel upbringing hehe

Since I was very young I was in love with books and reading and traveling through stories. My favourite activities were spending time in nature with my friends and family and reading. I always loved summer because I could just roam around or read all day long.

Before I was 8 I have tons of awesome memories and I remember only one happy kiddo that is eager to play and explore. Around that time, my grandmother died, I was diagnosed with a genetic chronic skin disease, my family was much more unbalanced and things seemed to not follow the same happy path. But I’ve learned how to roll with all that life brought and I kept my “wild and eager for adventure” heart. I started dreaming about a big and meaningful life and all the great things that I will live.

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At 19 I left home for university, being one of the first in my extended family to study at university. I decided to study psychology because over the years I’ve met amazing human beings that really inspired me and I wanted to be like them “when I grew up”. I was also very fascinated by the mysteries of life and human beings.

My inspiration for human mysteries and human suffering brought me to want to study legal psychology with an open heart for helping the ones who are most in need. So, in 2012, at age 23 I left Romania and moved to the Netherlands in order to pursue my dreams and to follow a master’s in legal psychology.

At this point in life, I discovered another passion of mine: research and after finishing my master’s, I worked in legal psychology research in the Netherlands.

I loved my work, but my life in the Netherlands was deeply unfulfilling at the time. I had a hard time creating meaningful, profound connections with people, things were advancing slowly in academia and my wild and adventurous spirit was howling for different experiences.

So, I packed my things and I moved to Barcelona, Spain. I fell in love with Barcelona during my first week there.

I tried for a while to pursue my career in research without success and instead, I started working in a corporation and life took a different path. I learned how to enjoy life, I started dreaming about a prosperous life, a fulfilling romantic relationship, and just living the picture-perfect life. I found a great man and I thought this is how life will be from now on: making money, travelling for holidays and weekends, maybe having a family.

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But here is when all started to really change.  

Even though I was daring and brave and wasn’t following exactly the “normative society’s dictated path” in life, making a lot of money in the corporate world or having a picture-perfect relationship wasn’t really working for me. Why? Because my life was far from the deep fulfilment that I’ve dreamed of since I was a kid and also my relationship was far from the perfect, happy one.

And at 28 my inner & outer world came crashing on me with the end of my relationship and feeling stuck professionally.

However, a call to adventure reached me during that period: the first part of it was called “Wild Woman Unleashed” hehe.

It might sounds like some spiritual mambo-jumbo, but in reality it was more than 3 years of deep transformational work with myself, with amazing support (online coaching programs, offline trainigs and workshops, mentoring etc.), work that was focused on healing my past and to help me feel and be more empowered. 

I looked at all the parts of my life and I made big and bold changes. 

So 4 years after deciding to dig deeper and make some changes, what actually has transformed for me and my life?

Career/Purpose/Meaning: I moved countries again. This time in order to pursue my PhD studies in psychology, I moved back to Romania. Then due to the pandemic, I relocated to Spain, doing my work online! And stay tuned for more hehe

Being back in Romania, I had the opportunity to reconnect with my roots and my family and for the past two years, it has been a lot of healing and reconnecting with myself again.

I discovered new methods and tools for working with others and I worked online, supporting other women in their transformations. I am also working as a researcher and psychologist on a great project on creating healthier relationships.

I am making money from doing the work I love, it is meaningful and fulfilling instead of just making money and hating my days.

Relationships: My relationships both with men and with women are healthier, more fulfilling, and more authentic than ever.

My relationships are nourishing and life lasting, even when at a distance. We have fun, but also take care of each other and we are committed to having healthier relationships. My relationship with my family improved immensely. More important for me: I have many people in my life that I can count on and we are purposely investing in our relationships.

Community: When I decided to change my life, I had a couple of people around me and the rest I would just connect with from time to time.

For two years, I lived in a community house with 9 more adults and 2 kids, in a big house with a garden, in the city. I also lived in an artist residence with approx 20 people that has also a community life and I am actively getting to know eco-communities around Spain that share my values. Still haven’t found my long-term tribe, but definitely, I know a lot more about what I am looking for and what not hihi.

I am more confident, happier, and more connected with myself than ever. And this is a lifetime journey and it gets better and better.

And what is difficult gets easier and easier. But no, I am not happy all the time and everything is perfect. Still some depression, anxiety and more structural systemic issues are challenging me.

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And now I am extending an invitation to you to have an amazing, meaningful, and fulfilling life!

P.S.: I still have some pretty shitty days or unpleasant emotions and some tough-to-break patterns and that coaching program was fun, but also a lot of work on myself and facing my shit, almost literally. I don’t want to pretend everything is perfect now. That is toxic positivity and yeakes, we don’t want it!!! But it is much better every day and in general and I definitely have the tools to bring myself faster in balance and to feel good again, even when life is not going my way hehe (for example, travelling during the pandemic).

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Professional Bio

Mara Georgiana Moldoveanu is originally from Romania and she lived for the past 9 years in the Netherlands, Romania and Spain.

She completed her B.A. and M.A. in psychology, respectively clinical psychology at Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj Napoca, Romania. 

She also completed her MSc. in Psychology and Law at Maastricht University, the Netherlands, where she worked for two years as a research assistant on two important projects, studying human memory! Her work was published in international high-ranked scientific journals such as Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice (Otgaar, Scoboria, Howe, Moldoveanu, & Smeets, 2016) and Memory (Otgaar, Moldoveanu, Wang & Howe, 2017).

At the moment, she is pursuing her doctoral studies in psychology at Babes-Bolyai University (Cluj Napoca, Romania) and Maastricht University (Maastricht, the Netherlands) and working independently as a start-up member, counselling psychologist and coach.

Her professional training is in cognitive-behavioral therapy, but she uses different tools and methods from more psychological approaches focusing more on the client and what works for her than on the technicalities of the different approaches. She is also certified as a psychology teacher, a practitioner in Emotional CPR (emotional crisis assistance), and trained as a youth worker in Ecocentric Development, Positive Psychology, and Nature-Based Learning, tools that she integrates in her everyday practice.

She works mostly online, with women from all over the world.

She also took part in an expedition in the desert where she combined body and somatic practices with nature as a way to work with and understand our emotions (see more details here). 

During her professional career, she also worked as a volunteer in NGOs and grassroots activist movements, where she was in charge of team building, community management, and personal coaching; as an intern in a women’s prison, and in an international company where she was an employee engagement officer for a team of more than 200 colleagues from 7 different countries. 

When she is not working, she loves to spend time with her community, travel, read, take photos, be in nature, and write. 

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© photos taken by Mara Moldoveanu