From Wrongly Diagnosed with Mental Illness to Funded as an Empowerment Coach
How the Alien City of Eindhoven Enabled Me to Turn My Life from a Bulgarian Horror Story into a Dutch-expat Modern Fairytale
Open and vulnerable interview on a major Bulgarian media outlet about using art for self-empowerment and living with bipolar disorder - a diagnosis rejected by the Dutch Mental Health Services a year after the interview was recorded, October 2022.
I have a dirty secret...
I don't really have mental illness. I'm only really crazy...
I'm voice recording an early version of this unplanned confession exactly where my creative Dutch-expat exponential growth began— by showing my art to a few pedestrians and becoming human canvas for a Bulgarian artist on the street where the International Creative Women once had their HQ, which sadly no longer exists.
This was a casual summer Saturday experience, which happened during a creative market in downtown Eindhoven in early August, 2022. It's also where I met for the firsts time Sandra Cortez - an amazing Peruvian woman, who later became my friend, official body artist, and creative partner in crime.
In June 2022 I arrived in the alien city of Eindhoven single, technically homeless, almost broke, and completely misdiagnosed and misunderstood by most of my old environment.
After multiple burnouts and episodes of debilitating depression in my 20s, several Bulgarian psychiatrists told me I have bipolar disorder and wanted me on a cocktail of antidepressants and antipsychotics or mood stabilizers.
I refused.
My boyfriend of almost 9 years broke up with me, leaving me no choice but to restart in the Netherlands on my own. Why this was the case is a whole other horror story that doesn't even matter anymore. But it forced me to run away from a prison that nobody knew I was in.
My ex did the best he could’ve done, not for the reasons he thought, but because it forced me to fight for my life.
In 2021, I was suicidal—trapped in financial dependence, powerless, and crushed.
But earlier this year I was invited to be guest curator for the Future Parade during Maker Days in the centre of Eindhoven on September 27-28, 2025 and almost at the same time I was also invited to assemble my 15+ years of experience and expertise into a signature empowerment program for personal and professional development of young people through social service.
Today, my debut DARE TO RE:PLAY program is supported by an MDT subsidy — a collaboration between 3 Dutch ministries in a national project for empowering young people, which I'm leading as a preparation for a team creative collaboration with 6 projects under the theme Sustainable Society, which will roll down the central streets of Eindhoven in the Future Parade starting at 13:00 on September 27-28 in front of City Hall.
INSANE!!!
No meds. No plan. No connections. No safety nets.
Don't underestimate a crazy Bulgarian woman with nothing to lose and no one to lean on.
Apparently she knows what she is doing.