"I really like who I am": Becoming Yourself While Losing Everything

🎤  Season 4 Episode 1 Guest Niki Borger 

"Despite everything that happened, despite everything I've been through, I really like who I am."

In 2018, Niki Boger left Germany and moved to the United States to pursue a career in acting. But while she was building something new, she was losing everything familiar. Over the next seven and a half years, she lost nearly every parent figure in her life, along with the relationship she thought was heading toward marriage, all while navigating a new country, a pandemic, and an industry that kept shifting beneath her feet.

From the outside, people saw the actress, the writer, the playwright. They didn't see what it cost her to keep going.

This is not a story about grief alone. It's about what happens when you're becoming someone new while losing so many of the people who knew who you were.

📝  Key Takeaways

• Sometimes the most defining part of a story is the season no one can see.
• Grief can strip away identity, but it can also reveal the core of who you are.
• Healing is not linear. It often requires releasing old beliefs and rewriting your internal story.
• Transformation is possible even when life keeps taking things away.
• The hidden chapter may not be what happened to you. It may be who you became because of it.

📖  About Niki Boger

Niki Boger is an actress, writer, and playwright whose work is shaped by deep personal experience, reflection, and transformation. Her creative projects include the play In Between, which explores the space between life and death, drawing from the emotional truths of grief, identity, and growth. She is currently in pre-production on a new TV show.

🎧  Listen If You're Interested In

• Grief and healing
• Identity and reinvention
• Immigrant stories
• Creativity as a form of processing pain
• Personal transformation and resilience

🎤  Episode Summary

Sometimes the chapter underneath the story is where we discover who we're becoming. For Niki, after losing so much of what once helped define her, the hidden chapter wasn't simply learning how to keep going. It was discovering that she really liked who she had become.

💛  Connect with Niki Boger

If Niki's story stayed with you, share this episode with someone who might need to hear it too. You'll find links to her work below, including her play In Between and everything she's created from this chapter of her life.

🌐 Website: https://nikijborger.com/ 

🎭 Her Play, In Between, and other works: https://nikijborger.com/plays/

📩 Reach out to Niki: niki@firewolfent.com 

📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NikiJBorger 

📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nikijborger/ 

▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO8kBxwCdcLCjttdZi3X12A

Podmatch.com


Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Niki (00:00.428)
Despite everything that happens, despite everything I've been through, I really like who I am.

Genevieve (00:10.946)
This is Hidden Chapters. I'm Genevieve Kruger. We all have parts of our story that shape who we become, often in ways no one else can see. Today, we're looking at the chapter underneath her story. In 2018, Niki left Germany and moved to the United States to pursue a career in acting. But while she was building something new, she was losing everything familiar.

Over the next seven and a half years, she lost nearly every parent figure in her life, along with the relationship she thought was headed toward marriage. All while navigating a new country, a pandemic, and an industry that kept shifting beneath her feet. From the outside, people saw the actress, the writer, and the playwright. They didn't see what it cost her to keep going. This is not a story about grief alone.

It's about what happens when you're becoming someone new while losing so many of the people who knew who you were.

This is Niki's hidden chapter.

Genevieve (01:23.554)
Welcome Nikki. Thank you so much for being on the Hidden Chapters podcast and taking time to share your story with me and the audience.

Niki (01:31.0)
Well, thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor.

Genevieve (01:33.806)
Thank you. All right, well I'm gonna go jump right into your story because you have a lot of great value that you bring to the experiences in your life. So when people meet you today, they see an actress, a writer, and a playwright. But before those roles or titles even existed, there was a person becoming. So when you left Germany and you boarded that plane to start a new life in the US, what version of yourself do you think

Niki (02:04.962)
What a great question to start with. I think the version of me that got on that plane was the little girl that wanted to prove that she could do she set her mind to, even though everybody doubted her and even though that was not her experience growing up. So I think I really well, while I really do love what I'm doing, and I do think it's the right path for me.

It was also a huge part that just wanted to prove herself.

Genevieve (02:36.684)
Yeah. About how old were you?

Niki (02:39.66)
When I boarded the plane, I mean I was not that young. I was thirty, I think. Yeah.

Genevieve (02:48.386)
What did you envision that next chapter of your life going to be like or going to look like?

Niki  (02:55.762)
I thought it was gonna be auditions and leading people and more auditions and getting better on sets and working on my craft and none of that became true.

Genevieve (03:13.642)
Well, it's always what we think, you know, we have this vision but there's always other plans that come about.

Niki (03:21.174)
I had no idea what I was getting into. Yeah. Yeah.

Genevieve (03:25.47)
What parts of yourself did you carry with you in that new beginning?

Niki  (03:31.618)
I think a huge part that I carried with me was really that desire to be seen for who I am and to be met and a self-worth that I perceived but didn't feel reflected in real life. I was always confronted with so much adversary, I guess, or criticism from my own family and people around me that I really wanted

someone to say that, you know, yeah, you you deserve this, or you're gonna make it happen, or it'll work out because you're working your butt off. Yeah. Hmm.

Genevieve (04:13.954)
Wow. I'm just sitting with that one for a minute, sorry. Yeah, 'cause you wanted the validation. You wanted in the encouragement that

Niki (04:24.994)
I just wanted to be accepted for who I am, I guess, and or for who how I perceive myself. And I know I have a lot of flaws and have a lot of issues, but I also know I work really hard and I'm very dedicated to the things and the people I choose. So not being chosen back to that extent was where I wanted to prove them wrong. Now of course I understand that this had nothing to do with me, like their criticism was. a limitation of their own and just a reflection of themselves onto me, right? But at the time I didn't know that.

Genevieve (05:02.478)
Right. Yeah. Well, I like that before we even got to record this, we got to have a conversation. And I remember you said something that really stayed with me. That you said that over the last seven and a half years it felt like you were trying to build a life while losing the foundations of where you came from. So as you lost each member of your family, did it ever feel like pieces of your own history were disappearing with them? And what were the foundations that started disappearing beneath you.

Niki  (05:36.424)
It honestly felt like everything. It felt like my entire identity and my entire foundation being ripped from me. Because just looking at the facts of, you know, moving to a country that is on the other side of the world, yeah, where things are four times more expensive than where I come from, where I did not know anybody. It's not my native language.

I do not have anybody to ask for advice or how to figure even the simplest things out that may be common knowledge there, such as credit scores or insurance and all these things that are just very different by country. And some of them are so simple you can't even Google them.

Genevieve  (06:24.854)
Right. Yeah, it's like it's something that if you were in the US you would just know them. Yeah.

Niki  (06:30.196)
Exactly, exactly. And I did not have any reference for that because I didn't know anybody going there. I also did not have any reference while being there because people were either American or German and nobody could understand the other side. So everything I experienced, I didn't really have anybody to talk to that would understand what it felt like. And then my parents, my mom specifically, was obviously

The closest thing to that, she and I were as close as mother and daughter can be, I think. And her death happened suddenly. She was my my backup plan. She was the one where I knew if anything goes south, I could call her. She will buy me a plane ticket and get me back home. And given just the scope of what I was attempting and the risk with that and the general

Genevieve (07:17.942)
Yeah.

Niki  (07:25.976)
perceived danger at least of moving from Europe to the US, you know. That was that gave me so much security and then suddenly it was gone out of nowhere.

Aside from that, I also just, you know, everything I did to that point was to make her proud. And even though I wasn't aware of that, it became very evident in the weeks after because I just couldn't get myself to get out of bed because I was like, What's the point in doing anything if my mom's not there to witness it?

Genevieve (07:56.918)
Right. Wow. So you did mention losing both your parents and grandparents. I mean it I have not lost my parents yet, but I have lost my grandparents that I was very close to, so I can understand that grief and loss. But losing your parents and grandparents, what did losing those relationships mean beyond just the loss of them itself?

Niki (08:23.224)
So to clarify, it was my my mother, my stepdad, my two granddads, I had never met my grandmothers, and then my biological father and the woman who I thought was gonna be my mother in law. Those are the parent figures that I lost in that time, right?

Genevieve (08:40.366)
Mm-hmm.

Niki (08:42.557)
And we also the guy that was acknowled like involved in it, we also broke up. So

Genevieve (08:50.638)
Also you had quite a you had a bigger loss than I had even thought about. Because when I was reading that I was just thinking it was parents and grandparents, but it was both sides of parental and the loss of a relationship, yeah, to add. My goodness. Yeah. Unpack that for me then. So what was that losing all those relationships?

Niki (09:04.919)
Yeah.
Niki (09:17.386)
It was very I mean it's very intense and just in very different ways, right? Because the need of the person that goes through the process of dying, if it's through disease, through prolonged disease, that's very different. It's very individual. Like my stepdad, my biological father, and my mother-in-law were all severely ill for a very long amount of time. And that in itself is already very intense when you're nursing and caring and you know taking all your vacation time that you have and all your money to fly out there whenever you can and not doing anything else. And so that in self is intense, like the process, the aftermath is super intense. There's always so much to take care of when somebody passes away and you're in charge, all the legal and estate things.

Genevieve (10:01.388)
Yeah.

Niki (10:17.644)
all the paperwork, everything that you have to find out afterwards, which is so awkward because you're unraveling another person's life with things you may not even have wanted to know.

Genevieve (10:29.646)
You know.

Niki (10:31.758)
And and then there is the personal loss, which I think is always a reflection of the relationship that you've had with the person. And is usually a lot of complex emotions. There's grief in there for sure, but also a lot of other things, right? And figuring that out for yourself, how you actually feel about it. The shock when you realize that there are parts where you feel relieved and then you feel horrible about feeling relieved.

or whatever else emotion, like whatever other emotion you may have that you judge yourself for, all of that creates an intensity that moves you away from who you are because there's so much going on. So for me, it took me years to even remotely feel like myself again. I had no sense of self in the meantime, and then you're just surviving and trying to get by.

Genevieve (11:31.628)
Wow. That is a lot to carry. I can imagine that in you have a sibling, I remember you had said, correct? So it was just you and the sibling, but you were doing a lot of this overseas.

Niki (11:45.024)
I was, yeah. And we had a really good work split, you know, he would take care of the things that had to happen on site though. Nowadays with technology you can do a lot together. And then I would do a lot of the emotional carrying and the hard conversations and the reaching out to other people. Yeah.

Genevieve  (12:05.484)
Well, I appreciate you telling me all of that that it took years to kind of come back to yourself. I'm curious about what did it feel like when you lost the people who carried your history and you didn't have them? I know you said there was that sense of relief, but when those people who knew you the most or knew you the best, who carried your history and then suddenly were gone, what did it feel like to lose the people who carried your history and knew where you came from?

Does that question make sense?

Niki  (12:37.57)
Totally. And I'm really glad you're asking it, because that is a really valuable question, I think. when you leave your country and go someplace else where nobody knows you, you're already leaving behind a lot of your identity. In your home country, you are established and respected, and at the very least, you're like everyone else. When you arrive in a different country,

Genevieve (12:54.018)
Yes.

Niki  (13:06.388)
In the vast majority of cases, especially the United States, you're suddenly an immigrant with comes which comes with stigma.

Genevieve  (13:14.902)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Niki  (13:16.682)
On top of that, you are very restricted in what you can do or cannot do, which creates a lot of fear and anxiety. And now when the people who know you the best and the most drop out, it felt to me like my existence was threatened through that. Like I didn't know who I was anymore. Because I

Suddenly I wasn't a daughter anymore. Yeah. And I wasn't. There's also the part, you know, when you leave your home country that people kind of resent you for doing that as well. So they don't really count you as one of their own anymore. So I wasn't really German anymore, but I was not American either. Right. I was no longer, you know, somebody that was acknowledged for their hard work and respected for everything they had accomplished.

But someone at the very bottom of the food chain trying to survive for scraps because it's such a mismatch of what you can do and what you're allowed to do. So that entire the social identity is gone. The work identity is often gone, especially if you do what I did. The financial identity, so to say, is gone. And then what's left, right? You're left with with yourself.

with your core and no more ego, no more facades, no more perception of self. So you really have to figure out who are you without all of these things.

Genevieve (14:59.628)
Wow. That's a lot that you had to carry. Wow.

Niki (15:04.268)
Yeah, thank thank you for acknowledging that.

Genevieve (15:06.51)
Course. So how was, just out of a curiosity, since you did lose a lot of the family and that side, what was it like at least having your brother as the last of the family surviving unit for you?

Niki  (15:20.416)
My brother is my biggest blessing in my life. Okay. And has been for so many years. We obviously we were close before. We got super close over these last seven and a half, eight years, because we also had to work so much together and coordinate so much together and had so much responsibility together. When you're responsible for a parent's survival, yeah, over several years, you have to be close and then you just have to hope that you

get along really well. Cause if you don't, that can get miserable. And he really was the biggest blessing for me in this.

Genevieve  (15:57.068)
At least you had him there and he was in Germany at the time.

Niki  (16:00.566)
Yeah. Okay. He's in Germany. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And just to add to that, I think when it comes to the perception of the people that you're leaving behind, nobody ever well, a few people told me to my face that they think the whole thing is a stupid idea of going to America and I shouldn't do it. Some people try to talk me out of it also several times. It's not like

People are openly hostile towards what I did. But there is this resentment of dreaming big and going for it that I felt very strongly coming from Germans. And that created a strong distinction between them and me. While in Germany it's so socially acknowledged to be normal and average, that is an issue that

It's triggering, right? So I don't even think they were or are consciously aware of what is going on because Germans generally, in my experience, are incredibly unaware of their emotions. So it's not even something I could address, but that was just happening, you know. And sorry, go ahead.

Genevieve (17:21.73)
I was gonna ask you, so if that was the culture, how where did the drive come from for you? Where did were you able to kind of step out of that and jump into what your dreams or what you wanted in life and dream bigger?

Niki (17:39.926)
I think part of it came from the fact that I felt very limited in Germany in what I could do and what I was allowed to do and to become. I obviously always loved storytelling and Hollywood still is a much bigger film industry than the German one, which is also very restrictive. And I also just don't vibe as much with

their style and their storytelling. I think I'm a much better fit into the American society than I am in the German society. And then I had accomplished a lot already. So I felt like I was confident to to try that and just to, you know, recklessly see what happens.

Genevieve (18:17.774)
Mm-hmm.

Genevieve (18:30.392)
Wow. Well that perfectly leads me 'cause I was gonna ask you next about y you have created success and accomplishments and people have seen the things that you've created now as you've made a life for yourself in the US, but what they haven't been able to see, first off, just by looking at you, of course, would be the loss and the hardship and the struggles that went to get to you to this point. So what would you say was the hardest part?

about carrying that season that people just couldn't see.

Niki  (19:04.248)
People assume that you just wake up and you snap your fingers and everything works out greatly. Because that is what they see. That's what they see in media and social media, in you know, press or anything. They see a shortened version of the story which leads to this massive success, and then they assume that.

The person, you know, had a nice mix of working hard, being talented, being special, and getting lucky. And what they don't see is that the other 99% of that path that are extreme struggle, a lot of failure, a lot of questioning yourself, life ripping things from you that you've outgrown.

Controversy. People, especially from your own circle, attacking you because you're outgrowing them. The amount of times, things that don't work out, the amount of hours in the day that you spend thinking about how you're gonna make it work. And that's not a nine to five. That's a 24-hour thing. Every entrepreneur knows that you dream about what you do. Right. And you can never let that go. And people

Don't see that it literally takes 10 years at least to become an overnight success, if not more.

Genevieve (20:41.718)
Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So what did you have to carry privately? I know you mentioned a little bit of it, but there was a lot that you had mentioned in that small bit that I wanted to just unpack some of the small stuff. What did you have to carry privately while still showing up publicly? What were some of those little things?

Niki  (21:04.742)
I cried more tears than I ever thought I would. I I cried so much over the last seven and a half, eight years still do a lot. 'Cause it's still hard, right? And there are these moments where things don't work out, something didn't go right, you don't know how to move forward, 'cause another path closed, you know, on on top of all the personal hardship that I was dealing with and the

immigration and visa constraints, there was also all the change in the industry. Going to streaming, the strikes, the pandemic, now the shift with AI, right? It felt like you had found a path and two weeks later it was not an option anymore. Which was very, very frustrating. And the little times are that you have to, you know,

Force yourself to get out of bed in the morning sometimes, and you have to force yourself to do that workout. And you have to smile even when you feel like crying. You can't just cancel a podcast or a press or any sort of engagement just because it's another day where everything you have to carry feels too much. You still have to perform. And life also won't let you stop. Like

Life is not gonna let you settle in your misery, right? Life will push you forwards in those things. So it's billion tears and a billion questions and a million at least moments of questioning yourself and doing all that inner work it takes to find yourself again when your outside reality is completely stripped away.

Genevieve (22:55.864)
Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot there too. I think that's part of the reason why Hidden Chapters was something that I felt down to the core of why this needed to exist is because we all carry these things that people look based off of the way we look today or a big smile on our face, thinking our life and path has been easy and people look and say the comments, Well, you look like you have it all together.

But man, do they never have any idea of what we're dealing with and the things that we have to carry just to survive.

Niki (23:34.284)
I do have a theory on that. I do think successful people are people who suffered more but decided to grow from it instead of letting it shut themselves down.

Genevieve (23:43.99)
It's a choice. Absolutely. It's a choice to go, well, I can sit here and I can wallow in this. I've become handicapped and this is my life now. Or I can choose to go, okay, well, what can I do now with that handicap? Or what can I do now with the loss that I have had? So absolutely. I think that's a wonderful perspective and something that it's a choice. Absolutely. So when you think or when the things that helped define us do change.

And we often have to ask ourselves, okay, who am I now? Which is a question I've asked myself often too. Did you have a season? And I know you spoke about it, but did you have a season where you had to redefine yourself? And in those, what parts of yourself did you discover that maybe you didn't know were there?

Niki (24:36.168)
I am a huge fan of energy work and personal transformation through meditation. That is the tool I use for coming back to myself and finding out what there is of me beneath all the noise and pain and trauma. And that is a tool that I have been using consistently for the last

I'd say thirteen years at this point. And especially through the last eight years of going through this hardship, it's would help me get through and I don't think I would have without it. So yeah. My process in that is that I sit and breathe, basically, and through various techniques manage to release.

Genevieve  (25:09.441)
Okay.

Genevieve (25:28.172)
Uh-huh.

Niki (25:35.862)
whatever pain, trauma, fear is conscious in my mind at that point, and reconnect with a deeper truth instead. And usually what I uncover is something that I was not aware of before, that I didn't know existed, and I probably wouldn't have found otherwise. So because of that, there's always growth coming from every negative experience. And

Within that, I'm capable of choosing what parts I want to focus on. Like right now, I am starting my pre-production of a TV show with a new production model that has not been done before, like this, as far as I know, and that I've never done before. But I'm able to take my the way I manage the last eight years.

And how I made the best of what I had, I can take that confidence and put that into my next project. Because I've worked through it and because I know I'm stronger now. I'm not the victim of what happened to me. I'm the person who grew from it. And that is what makes a difference, I think.

Genevieve  (26:55.106)
the mental shift. Mm-hmm. Wow. So what were some of the things in doing this you said what had to be released in order to move forward for you?

Niki (27:06.744)
Woof. I can tell you I probably work on a different topic every five to eight days. Really? And I've done that, yeah. And I've done that over the last, you know, at least eight years. So just to give you some examples.

Genevieve  (27:22.543)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, 'cause I'd l' like to know how that works for you. Yeah.

Niki (27:25.944)
The more superficial things are obviously self-worth and you know, the belief that I am worthy and deserving of all the success I seek. I am worthy and deserving to receive without having to suffer. I am worthy and deserving to be valued for the worth I bring to my work and the conversations. So self-worth was a big one. I also, because I lost my parents.

I dug a lot deeper and went into all the patterns that I inherited from them.

Genevieve (28:02.194)
that's a sting. I do actually want to hear how that works. So you started with declarations of just so with self worth, but yeah, tell me about that one.

Niki  (28:10.52)
Well, I did it with energy work, right? So I always I don't just keep it in my mind. I find the feeling place of it in my body and where that natural awareness sits within me. And then I heighten that because I don't think it's enough to have it just in your mind. You want it to be embodied and you want it to be in your energetic field, not just in your thoughts, right? Right.

Genevieve (28:35.534)
'Cause our body does carry the stresses and the thoughts of various things they say. Yeah. And

Niki  (28:40.478)
resistance that is there from previously. Yeah. Right. Because you don't just switch into something else. Most of us were formed in strong ways and carry strong patterns from where we come from. So I took a really deep dive into that for my mother specifically. This is really interesting and super personal. But

Genevieve  (28:53.932)
Yeah.

Genevieve (29:02.658)
I'm interested. True. Yeah.

Niki (29:04.928)
I get it. One pattern that I noticed was that my brother is happily married with two children and makes really good money. While for me, I've now been single for years. I've never been in a relationship that could have led to marriage because none of the guys were ready. And I'm not nearly making as much money as he does, even though I think we're equally qualified. Right.

And the question that arose was, okay, if we grew up the same way, why is it different? And I dove into this and realized that even though we did grow up strongly under the influence of my mother, we did not grow up in the same way at all. Right. Because I was the woman and he was the man. So I inherited my mother's patterns of selecting men that were okay, but were more in a role of a son.

rather than the role of a husband. So she was always the caregiver. She always had partners that were really unable to do things on their own without her. She worked hard, but she did not make a a lot of money as a physical therapist. She sacrificed herself for her surroundings. And all of these patterns

I had inherited. And all of those I started to work through. And there's some that I'm still working through. Like I'm so much clearer on the type of relationship that I want now. For example, I'm better at spotting men that don't want a partner, they want a mother. So I'm better at spotting that now. So as to not repeat the mistake again. It's not like I haven't repeated it enough times already.

Genevieve (30:35.01)
Hmm.

Niki  (31:03.426)
And with the self-worth that goes with that, I'm better at spotting whether I'm actually recognized for my worth or whether I'm getting taken advantage of with, you know, promises or anything else to compensate for that. So I work my way through a lot of my mom's stuff. I'm working my way through a lot of

Genevieve  (31:22.2)
Yeah.

Niki  (31:30.008)
The things of my dad that I copied, though the relationship there was obviously different. But because there was no healthy father figure in my life ever, I did not have a good example of what to look for in a relationship again, you know? And again, that is different for my brother because he was the man. So he may not have had a good role model within the family to copy, but he

did see what a good mother looks like, right? And also I realized it was an aspect where he, you know, he had a daycare place that he went to every day with, you know, within a family where he saw that, how they worked. And I never got that. So

Genevieve  (32:01.26)
Right.

Genevieve (32:15.15)
So you had a different influence bracket waking up or growing.

Niki  (32:18.988)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And yeah, so those were some of the so those are some of the things I'm working on.

Genevieve  (32:25.614)
Wow. Okay. All right. So I'm going to move into your play real quick, because this is really interesting too, how you were able to process a lot of your experiences. And I love how everybody has kind of a like you said, you either, you know, wallow in it or you do something with it and you creatively did this. So your experience, you said eventually became the inspiration for your writing.

In including your play which is called In Between, which explores the spaces between life and death. So when did storytelling become the way that you became or you began making sense of what you were experiencing?

Niki  (33:07.978)
Arriving in Hollywood, started to understand pretty quickly how much storytelling shapes what we believe and how we live. And so much of that is subconscious. And it never stood out to me to that extent. But the eye-opener was that I, as a tall, blonde, blue-eyed woman, was only given stereotypical roles. And I got tired of that really, really quickly. And

I realized, you know, at first you're not aware of it. It does take some insight until you, you know, start to see the patterns of what is in those stories. And I looked more into that. I looked more into Hollywood storytelling in general, into the statistics behind that. And I realized, gosh, there is so much power in this. And at the same time, there's so much recreation of existing stereotypes and beliefs.

That I don't want to be the one adding to that. That's not what I came here for, right? I came to inspire. And so when my mother died, I was really, really upset with my stepdad. And the precise context here is that he had gotten sick. They couldn't figure out at first what it was, but he was in and out of the hospital.

Eventually they realized it was pancreatic cancer and they did an emergency surgery. And he barely survived, but he did. And that whole process was about two, three months. And throughout that time, he forbid my mother to talk about it to other people. And she would expect her to carry him through all of this without getting any help for herself.

She wasn't even really allowed to talk to us about it, about the details. She couldn't talk to our friends. I wasn't there, like because we didn't fully know and he didn't want us there. We couldn't go back to support her and him with that. And then she had a heart attack, like or most probably a heart attack. She crashed her car, probably because of a heart attack or a stroke, but I do think it's a heart attack, which in that context

Niki  (35:31.874)
I largely blamed on my stepdad's behavior. And I was really, really, really upset about that. And at that time didn't really have a way to process it because all of this happened five months before the pandemic hit. Yeah. And so we were all stuck at home.

Genevieve (35:54.518)
And yeah.

Niki (36:00.76)
There was nothing to do. Yeah. And that was when I wrote my first full-length feature film about what happened with my mom. And I called it my mother's shoes and framed it in a way where I was living the same limiting beliefs and experiences of her. And that because of what happened, I was able to break out of it.

And I rewrote that script in so many different versions because you can't you tell a different story with each of them, right? So I realized I get to choose which story it is I want to tell here. Because all of them are true. It's just a different angle that you're taking, right? Exactly. And so with all the experience that I had with

Genevieve (36:47.554)
Yeah.

Genevieve  (36:52.664)
Point of view, yeah.

Niki (36:58.58)
lost and accompanying people through the process of dying. I had a bunch of major realizations or shifts in beliefs that I have no idea of verifying whether they're true, but I do think they're more beneficial and they create more happiness. For example, that I don't believe death is a hooded figure with a sickle that comes to take us to hell. I think it's one of the most detrimental beliefs we can have. I believe

Death is coming home to where we actually come from. And I believe that there is nothing but love in that space. And those were the beliefs that I wanted to form the world of in between, because I thought it was so important to share these. And I wanted to, you know, frame it in a way for me to make sense. So I wrote one act play at first.

Mm-hmm. 97 beats. And then that one got produced at a theater festival in Los Angeles. The director really, really liked it and encouraged me to write more. And so I wrote these eight interconnected one act plays that form in between. So all of them together are this one big play, so to say.

Genevieve (38:20.203)
Wow. And that was all during the pandemic that you did this?

Niki (38:23.764)
No, this was way later. This was yeah. This was let's see, twenty twenty five. Okay. Twenty twenty five was the year that ninety seven beats went up, the first play of this. And then I released the book earlier this year. Yeah, there was quite a bit of writing in between of other things, TV shows and stuff. Yeah.

Genevieve (38:43.384)
Wow, what a creative way to take all of that experience and really reshape a thought of that. Cause I think the I don't know if these are quite relevant now because they you basically covered it, but it is interesting because I was gonna ask, were you writing because you had answers or because you were trying to understand the questions? And I think you kinda covered that already. So it's just interesting where you decided to take all of those feelings into writing.

Niki  (39:12.098)
Well, it is kind of both to me, right? It's I have answers, but I'm also asking questions. When I get into a certain state while writing, yeah, I can allow my truth to flow through me in a way that I wasn't aware of it yet. So it becomes an enlightening experience to me as well, which is really beautiful.

Genevieve (39:29.228)
Yeah, I can see that 'cause yeah, when my husband was going through and he was writing his book, a lot of the things that he had experienced he'd just written down on paper, but he was reliving them or rehashing the feelings in the stories. And some days he would literally pull himself away from the computer and go, I'm not doing this today. It would stir those things. But then he would have to come back, refresh it with the editor and go, Okay, let's, you know, go through this again. And it was in a sense a th a therapy for him, therapeutic right.

through those experiences. So I can see where you're processing it while you're still going through it.

Niki  (40:05.958)
Mm, for sure. Yeah. And I do think there's real value to that, even if you're not publishing, if you're just doing it for yourself.

Genevieve  (40:12.962)
Right. Yeah. I I love to journal right. I'm a journaler. I love doing that kind of thing. And I go back and I read those things and sometimes it's of that time and season where I'm like, Mm, I don't feel that way anymore or it's like, ooh, I haven't worked that out yet. I'm still holding on to that. So

Niki  (40:28.386)
Yeah, because you get to choose what is the story you're telling when you're writing it, right? And there's a lot of power to it because first you're probably writing it from a place of victimization and reception of the horrible things that have happened, right? Yeah. But then you go back later and you realize, okay, it's not I don't feel like that anymore. This is not my truth anymore. So let me rewrite it into something else, right? Yeah. Or let it go, leave it be where it is and be like, okay.

That was at that time and now I'm in a different place.

Genevieve (41:00.558)
I do love that. And I think that's it's helpful to get through that. So looking back, what do you understand about yourself that you couldn't understand while you were living through a lot of that that season and chapters of your life?

Niki (41:16.586)
I understand now that life is for myself, not claiming that anybody else should believe that, but for myself, I understand that life is a mix of what we create and what the people around us create and how we deal with that. Like before I

believed that I had life largely in my own hands. I no longer believe that, especially not after you know, six years of being on a visa in the US. And I do think there are there's a collective consciousness involved. There is obviously rules and laws which are informed by the collective consciousness. And there are other people's choices, such as, you know, this sounds harsh. I don't mean it that way, but I

genuinely believe that the soul chooses the right moment to pass away. I think the soul decides that I am complete in this life and I can go now. Again, not claiming that anybody else should believe that. And I hope I don't offend anybody with it, but it is what I believe. Right. And if you assume that, right, then it works and my parents and grandparents and everybody's with their best interests.

And I was a witness and participant, aligned participant to that experience, but it does not inform who I am. Like they passed away, but it does not make me the lost daughter. Right. And there is a difference. I've learned now that I am defined by the choices that I make and not necessarily what comes out of them. And the choices that I have made.

All of them were coming from a place of courage, of love, of inspiration, and of alignment alignment. So I have nothing to blame myself for. And even though things did not work out the way I wanted them to so far, that's not my responsibility because I am still the person who acted from courage, love, inspiration, and alignment.

Genevieve  (43:32.504)
I love that, Nikki. My mom used to say, and it's a quote she used to tell us often when we were growing up, that the choices you make dictate the life you lead. And I carried that with all the different things and choices and a journey in my life of all the things I've gone through. So that's great advice and a good way to look at that.

Niki (43:55.352)
Mm-hmm. Thank you.

Genevieve  (43:56.654)
For someone listening who feels like the ground beneath their feet has disappeared, what do you hope from our conversation that they hear from your story?

Niki (44:08.342)
If it's okay with you, I would love to address them directly for this because I think this part is so important. All right. First of all, I want you to hear that I understand where you're at. I understand that life right now is probably so much harder than anything you've ever imagined, that things have happened that you never thought were even on an option and that other things have fallen away that you thought were always gonna be there. And that's really, really, really rough.

And most likely the people around you do not understand even in the slightest what you're going through. And that's really, really rough as well. But being having been in a similar situation for so long, I fully believe that life or God or whatever you believe in would not put you in a situation that you couldn't make it through. I fully believe that you won't make it through this.

You will survive this. And not only will you survive it, but eventually after some time, you will grow from this and you will become stronger. You will become brighter. You will become a bigger light than you are already for yourself and for the people around you. And you will carry your scars with pride and with courage so you can light the way for other people who may not be there yet.

And I fully believe that that's part of why you're being put through this. So you can become a beacon of light for others. And I'm convinced that you will. So hang in there. You got this. You can make it through this. I fully believe that.

Genevieve  (45:50.59)
Mm that's it. That is absolutely everything that you'd want to encourage others for. I want to end it here, but I do want to ask this last question because I think that was perfect. But when you look back at everything that you have experienced, what do you believe was the hidden chapter underneath it all?

Niki  (46:14.466)
The hidden chapter, I think, was that despite everything that happens, despite everything I've been through, I really like who I am. I think I've become a really cool, determined and somewhat amazing person. And I'm really happy with myself. I love myself for who I am now, way more than I did before, way more than I thought was possible. And I think that is my hidden chapter.

Genevieve  (46:43.167)
I have enjoyed listening to your journey, Nikki, and I cannot thank you enough for being so open and sharing your story with us today.

Niki  (46:54.766)
Thank you so much for having me, for providing this space and for asking so many amazing questions and leading this conversation in a way that I really hope it is of benefit for the people listening. So thank you so, so much for having me.

Genevieve  (47:10.702)
Thank you. And I will be sure to add your links to your website, your play, and your book so that anyone who's interested can reach out to you from there.

Niki  (47:21.784)
Thank you all.

Genevieve (47:27.202)
Sometimes the chapter underneath the story is where we discover who we're becoming. For Nikki, after losing so much of what once helped define her, the hidden chapter wasn't simply learning how to keep going. It was discovering that she really liked who she had become. If Nikki's story stayed with you, share this episode with someone who might need to hear it too. You'll find links to Nikki's work in the show notes, including her play in between.

And everything she's created from this chapter of her life. I'm Genevieve Kruger. Thank you for listening to Hidden Chapters.