Like the ancient poets

Who actually writes with our pens? To find out more about the actual users of our pens we met the calligraphist and poetry artis Jeannette Mokosch for a conversation in our home, the Black Forest.

Decisive moments

When people say that they have made their dream their profession, they rarely mean it as literally as Jeannette Mokosch: One night she suddenly woke up, shook her husband awake and excitedly told him about a dream - a very simple dream- about a voice talking to her and the image of an old desk. At this moment she decided to make writing her profession. The next day she went out and bought all the necessary writing utensils.

Jeannette invited us on an exploration tour of her home region - and her past. Many years have passed since her "moment of destiny", but she still stands by her decision. Today she is a professional and successful calligrapher and poet. Whenever she needs a break, she goes out into nature. She loves to get on the train and travel to the place of her childhood and youth. Always with her is one of her notebooks, in which she records spontaneous thoughts, verses and drawings.

I have always written, to process things.

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Shaping experiences and decisions

"I have always written things down in order to process ideas", says Jeannette. She often does this in form of simple verses, which are almost always full of hope and positive thoughts. Those were very important and necessary at one point. Besides many beautiful ones in her homeland, she has also had her worst experiences - such as those in 2007, when she dropped out of her studies within a year, split up with her partner and lost her grandfather, who was one of the most important people in her life. "That year everything collapsed," she remembers.

The decision to learn nursing care for the elderly was taken like so many other decisions in her life here, in the woods around her former hometown Schiltach and Schramberg, where she went to school. From our view point we are able to see her former school. "I would never have thought that I would end up in there one day," Jeannette admits with a laugh. But as a volunteer for one year in the nursing home and by caring for her grandfather until he passed away, she had developed a special relationship with working with senior citizens.

Dreams require courage

Jeannette's first attempt of turning her art into a business was in 2010. After things were on the rise, the newly won stability gave Jeannette the courage to set up her own business. In Schiltach, she shows us the store where she was allowed to exhibit her own jewellery collection at that time. But the increasing lack of buyers turned the shop window into a public stage of Jeannette's failure: "I always wondered what the local people thought about me and swore to myself that I would never want to be self-employed."

A few years later, she dreamed the dream that would change her life. From then on, she "simply started to write everything down without worrying about that the result may not be perfect." Jeannette sold more and more of her handwritten artworks online, and finally held her first workshop in 2015. But strolling through the places and forests in which she grew up, suddenly everything makes sense. There is only one question that remains: What did the voice say which tore Jeannette out of her sleep? Once again, she laughs and recites: "Buy a pen and write like the ancient poets!