About

It’s not easy to sum yourself up in a few sentences.

Because who are we, really — the roles we play, the stories we carry, the choices we’ve made, or perhaps all those things we haven’t yet been able to put a name to over the years?

I am a woman, a wife and a mum. A psychologist, a coach and an author. For nearly thirty years, I was also part of the world of multinational corporations — a world of targets, responsibilities, decisions and people from whom I learnt far more than I realised at the time.

But the most important things in my life usually happened somewhere deeper.

Beyond what is visible.

I have always been fascinated by what lies hidden beneath the surface of our decisions, relationships and emotions. Why it is that sometimes we know something has ended, yet we stay anyway. Why we can be strong for everyone else, whilst at the same time hearing ourselves less and less. And what needs to happen for something inside us to say one day: ‘It has to be different now.’

Psychology has given me the language to describe many of these phenomena, but it has never confined my thinking to a single perspective.

Over the years, I’ve learnt about people in many ways — through knowledge, experience, conversations, encounters and my own life. I’m interested in what connects psychology with emotions, the body, consciousness and that incredibly subtle place within us that often knows before reason has had time to explain anything.

I’m not looking for a single truth.

I am far more interested in the moment when a person begins to discover their own.

I love travelling because it reminds me that the world is always bigger than we think. I love art, places with soul, music, architecture and everything that has something about it that cannot be fully explained.

I also love dogs — for their unquestionable presence and that extraordinary ability to be exactly where we so often find ourselves trying to return to: the here and now.

Over time, I’ve become increasingly fascinated by yet another form of art.

The art of living.

Not the perfect life. Not a life according to plan. Not a life that looks good from the outside.

Just my own.

One in which, with every decision we make, there is a little less of what the world expected of us, and a little more of who we really are.

My life has taken me through very different places, roles and experiences. For years, some of them seemed to have nothing in common with one another.

It was only later that I began to realise that perhaps, from the very beginning, they were fragments of the same story.

Today, I write about emotions, relationships, self-awareness, choices and finding our way back to ourselves. About what we discover when we stop looking for answers solely outside ourselves.

And about the questions we are sometimes afraid to ask ourselves for a very long time.

Because that’s where it all usually begins.

On these pages, you’ll find me as Ines Spera.

It’s the pen name I write under — close enough to be real, yet distinct enough to give my words their own space.

It’s lovely to have you here.