Alexandra Schauf

I have lived many lives

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My path was rarely planned, much less carefully thought out.

For the most part, I only made conscious choices when they became unavoidable.

I have always followed the possibilities before me and let myself be carried by them. But always with passion and full commitment, never carelessly — and perhaps that is why, more often than not, I succeeded.

And yet, that path was never entirely … me.

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What had once been exceptional achievement eventually became a downward spiral without a bottom.

Prospects and stability dissolved. Family ties and friendships broke apart. Body and mind gave out …

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Only the written word had always remained.

In countless books and stories — endlessly read, written by my own hand, but never published; always in secret, only for myself, yet with a loyalty I had given far too little attention for far too long.

Books and the pen had seemed like a given, and yet they were the only true constant.

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Sometimes you have to break completely before you can recognize true value, before you can find real depth.

And so, tragedy became something gained.

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What remained?

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The path from soaring heights to humility, the experience of being torn apart, and the lasting mark of trauma — along with the certainty that we may never fully heal, but can learn to accept — now find their way into my writing.

From the shards came depth, knowledge, and the courage to create resonance — more soul, more pain, and with it, a truer sense of honesty.

Not as interpretation, but as substance and weight, because after every break, we put ourselves back together with greater maturity.

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My stories are born in images and emotion — atmospheric, sometimes shaped by what remains unspoken.

Feelings are not explained. They are made tangible, sometimes painfully so, but always honestly.

What I write is shaped by lived experience and by the attempt to make humanity visible even where it begins to fracture.

I tell my stories from within my characters’ hearts, through their eyes, not from a distance.

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When my writing takes you on a journey you truly live through, and my characters stay with you longer than you expected — perhaps even remain — then my writing has done what it was meant to do.