Where the River Knows

A slightly different blog this time on a an issue that is so important for us all working around a higher good. It is a small story that came through on the issue why I am coaching and turning my career around in the age of over fifty. The most important path we take actually. The aim of the story is the goal of BGlobal. ❤️

"It began with the meetings, strategy calls and late-night revisions of sustainability reports that no one really read, and the tightening pressure to be both an environmental savior and a corporate soldier.

She had come into the sustainability field wide-eyed, full of fire, quoting climate science like scripture and dreaming of zero-waste office towers. She had studied environmental policy, taken field trips to glacier retreats, and once cried at a talk about soil degradation. But now, five years into her career at a global consultancy, her inbox was a battlefield of broken promises and greenwashed pitches.

Every Monday morning started the same: laptop open, reusable coffee cup in hand, smile forced, metrics ready. There was a strange numbness to it all, the way her words got polished until they lost their meaning. Net-zero. EU Taxonomy. SFDR, CSRD. Circularity. Words that once meant revolution now just filled slide decks and stakeholder decks, drained of weight, made safe for the boardroom.

She began waking earlier. At first, it was just insomnia. Then it became an unfortunate ritual.

Each morning, before the all others woke up, she walked. Past the houses, swimming pool, away from the meetings and deadlines, into a half-forgotten forest area, that the city had let grown wildly

It wasn't much. A tangle of birch and ash trees, gnarled and quiet. A river that trickled more than it roared, silver in the dawn. And birds, just a few that didn’t ask anything from her, nor did they need her to prove anything.

One morning she stood by the river and finally allowed herself to speak aloud.

“Who am I doing this for?” she whispered.

The wind answered through the leaves. A crow cawed in the distance.

And in that moment, she remembered something she had buried deep beneath job titles and KPIs: the girl who used to walk in beautiful Icelandic valleys and memorize moss patterns, who had believed that to save the planet meant first listening to it.

The inner voice, the one she'd silenced for years, stirred like roots waking under thaw. It didn’t shout out or lecture anything. It was still, and steady, like the current of the river.

That morning, she sat down on the riverbank, took off her shoes, and pressed her feet into the dirt. The birds sang overhead, indifferent and free.

There were still deadlines, zoom calls waiting and compromised impact reports. But now, she had a place to return to—not just the trees and the river, but a space within herself where the world made sense again. Where impact wasn’t a buzzword, but more like a promise. Where her work could be slow, real and imperfect. Like nature itself.

And every time it all got too loud, too fast, too plastic, she would come back. Let the water answer. Let the birds remind her. Let the trees embrace her.

Because they didn’t care what title she held.

They only cared that she remembered.

And finally, she did."

Be kind and BGlobal in Heart & Mind ❤️
Berglind