Roots and Wings 
Biographical Note

My story is about two countries and many cultures. My mother was born in Helgoland,

Northern Germany and flew to South India early in the sixties to marry a man she had

fallen in love with in London. He was a young trainee from Bengal.

My German grandfather had National Socialist tendencies and could not accept my

father. My grandfather from Bengal was a large landowner of tea gardens and

preferred an arranged marriage for my father. Thus, exclusion and inclusion, exclusion

and belonging were the themes of my life.

After the cosmopolitan school days in Calcutta, my mother, who had separated from my

father, my sister and I flew to Germany. We arrived in Mainz with three suitcases.

Soon we realised that we stood out in a homogenous environment. Racism was present

everywhere. In school, in university, in my internship, I was the only brown skin amongst

white Germans.

In no way I wanted to fit in. Being different, being brown, meant being aware and proud.

Total awareness of my resources and my choice to “invest” in them became my everyday

focus and challenge. I completed my Master of Social Pedagogue in Mainz.

A supportive partnership, a setup of a transcultural, bilingual life for the family, and

work life in the UAE on one had; a thorough and long drawn out certified therapeutic

systemic courses on the other hand, led me to build up my own practise after 10 years

of work in alcohol and drug counselling centres.

From 2006-2022 I have been accompanying various clients, families, teams and

organisations. In the first years I helped build up a mobbing telephone service and

training course for honorary counsellors.  For many years I worked in a self-help centre

leading groups of people with social phobias and the compulsive hoarding syndrome.

Then came a long stint of working in a centre with female migrants and refugees.

I worked for many years as an instructor of intercultural social work, also doing

workshops to this theme in various institutions. Being a team coach and case therapist

with a myriad of professionals constituted a great portion of my practice work through

the years.

Finally in 2020 my husband and I set up a social business project 30km from the urban

centres Mainz /Wiesbaden in a meadow and forest landscape.

There I built up a training academy: ''Haus Guldenbach'' Academy for Systemic

Workshops and offered many seminars and workshops also for a young start-up

Vinokilo.

​

Today I live in the abundance of cultures and accompany people therapeutically on their

professional and personal path and find the strength in their roots and transform them

to wings.