Stephanie Bachmair: „Process work for me is like a path that never ends, the path that is more important than any destination.“

An Interview with Stephanie Bachmair by Kazimiera Kazijevaitė

It is a great pleasure for me to talk with you, dear Stephanie. Thank you for this opportunity and for your time. Conversations with process workers is my passion project that begins with process work teachers and diplomats creating Process Work Institute in Lithuania. For the opening of the interview, could you please say something about yourself and about your connection with process work or anything else that seems important to you.

Wow! Thank you very much, Kazi, for this invitation. It touches me, because I feel invited into my role as process work teacher and process work diplomat. And I think there is something about this part of my identity I'm especially proud of. In my life there were a lot of different study paths and certificates and other things. But this is the one that really connects to my heart.

If you want to know who I am apart from being a process work diplomate, I could say that I am living in Northern Germany most of the time, I am a mother of three boys that are currently becoming or already are - young men. I am working with organizations and pioneers all kind. One of my focus topics is leadership and the sense of power. Another focus is storytelling, or how I love to call it: story crafting. All of it is connected to process work. Storycrafting means for me, to work through existing stories as individuals and groups, to be able to tell them in a new way. For example, stories about women in leadership - telling them in a new way, also power - telling it in a new way, so really to work through certain taboos and then find new ways to speak about it and to live it.

Yeah, and I am also very happy to be a part of the founding team in Lithuania, where we started an Institute: Zbyszek Miłuński, Anna Gabrijelska-Basiuk (or Gabrysia), and me, officially last year in April. It's amazing to be together with you and others in this community, to help it unfold.  It is also very exciting to host the Deep Democracy Institute’s Intensive in October 2025 in Lithuania, because it is like a resonance from the process work field and bringing a whole international crowd to Vilnius.

Thank you, Stephanie! And what is the story behind you becoming a process worker?

First part of my career was marketing, branding, communication, I was working in big organizations. When I left after 12 years professional life into entrepreneurship, I wanted to move more in direction psychology, and looked for different coaching and trainer educations. But nothing was really attractive to me. I had the feeling that most of them were again nourishing the mind, intellectual, analytical approaches, I felt already very much trained in. Then I happened to land in a weekend seminar in Amsterdam with Max and Ellen Schupbach from DDI Institute, I liked the experience very much. It made me very curious about process work, and in a way I also felt at home with it from the beginning.

There was a big Yes in me. That's what I wanted to learn, to work on different levels and in a much more holistic way. Especially important and acknowledged were my dreamer qualities. I always had them, but they were always a bit marginalized. It's not very mainstream in German culture to be a dreamer. It means you are not really grounded, a bit crazy and lost in space. Process work really helped me to embrace this part and to become aware of the power that lies in it. And I think that is also what made me feel so at home. 

How process work changed your life in general? Because it usually happens to people. Of course, if you would like to share about it.

I mean, life is continuously changing also without processwork. Just that process work helps you to get more adaptive to these changes, so the changes somehow take place quicker and maybe with the time a bit smoother. It gave me a lot of resilience to work through tough times, to do my innerwork, and it has formed more and more another skill, I somehow always had, but I trust more in it, and this is standing in the fire. It helps me to stay in difficult situations and transform them. This can be a conflict or tension or difficult stories, so yeah, I can’t do different any more than to go for the edges and work it through.

I know that becoming a process work diplomate is a long path. How many years did it take? And what was this journey like for you?

It took me many years, I mean, besides being a single mother and working on my own I was studying process work, and I think one of the most important discoveries is my joy in learning. For me being a process worker is very much about embracing a learning attitude and curiosity, because it's always about discovering something you don't know, something you are not familiar with yet. Whereas earlier in life I often had rushed through learning processes, I wanted to be quick and good, and was an ambitious performer somehow, this time I really enjoyed slowing down and staying in this learning phase.

And yeah, it was beautiful, I took several years for my research project. The research was one of my sacred treasures. So, to answer you more concretely, I think to get a diploma took me 7 years or something like that. Learning does not stop with the diploma. I like to be a learner, joining seminars of my colleagues from DDI do, or joining seminars from Max and Ellen or other process work teachers. And anyhow as a processwork facilitator, coach and trainer, it is crucial to be a learner in any moment.

For me it sounds like a learners’ path that never ends.

Yeah, that's it. Because having the diploma, it does not end. It's like every day you make a new diploma. It is like the path that is more important than any destination.

As far as I know, Stephanie, you are also passionate about storytelling, you are the creator of the World Work Journalism project, and maybe there are also other projects about storytelling you are involved in. Could you tell more about this?

I did my final project or research during the diploma class on combining storytelling and process work. I call it process oriented storytelling. With this attitude, storytelling is not so much about the result but rather about connecting to what is in the moment and pick up signals from the process. When you tell a story, you carefully listen to the feedback, and you can find as we call it a secondary process. And work with this story further. Or you work with your old stories and deconstruct them. Now you find primary and secondary processes in these stories, and you use it as a vehicle to support transformation. So, for example, I hosted a story crafting retreat last week, and there we worked with stories that appeared at that moment. It is about working through existing stories to tell them anew. So this is what could be called transformative storytelling more than normal storytelling or just flat storytelling. And I think it's really powerful because you can work through difficult experiences in a lighter and more playful way.

In this storycrafting retreat, this happens more on an individual level. Whereas in a World Work Journalism session it happens more in the collective or on a group level. There we have a virtual session as a group of 15 to 20 people, and we facilitate a chosen topic in a process work - a deep democracy way. But then, after the process, everybody is withdrawing and goes into individual writing on certain story prompts. What is coming back is a collective storytelling tapestry, a tapestry of really diverse stories, of people from all over the world, all kinds of people.  This makes it a multi-dimensional artefact, because you have much more than only pro and contra perspectives: a voice from Kenya, another from Lithuania, another from Finland, from Germany, from the US and I don't know what. So it's really like travelling through these different perspectives. Yeah, I'm very passionate about it. But the nice thing is, it's not only me. Yeah, it's really like we are coming back together again and again, because there is love for what is happening there. And this is very beautiful.

Yes, it is really beautiful. I am a big lover of World Work Journalism. Also because later it becomes like an article that can be shared with the world, and other people can read it.

Yes, exactly. At the beginning I did not really know how this could look like. So it's also about the courage to try out and to experiment. Okay, now let's go more in this direction. Let's use a padlet to have all stories featured, and only use quotes in the article, so that readers can better access the experience. Because the vision of it is a ripple effect, that the readers afterwards would then again, share about their own process, and put something in the comments. So that this is awareness building and traveling further in a way.

When I was listening to you talking about this transformative storytelling, I realized that it touches me deeply. And I hope that someday there will be a storytelling retreat in Lithuania. It is very needed.

Yes, why not. I’m just waiting for the invitation.

Sounds wonderful! And now, when we mentioned Lithuania, I am also wondering is there some dream or something else that led you to Lithuania, to co-creating of Process Work Institute there?

The invitation came from my processwork colleague Zbyszek who was already giving courses in Lithuania for several years. He was reaching out and asking me to join for a seminar in April 2024, and I did not know anything about this beautiful country. Yet, I felt a big yes, a call, yes I wanted to go there. I mean it was not cognitively, I did not really understand where it was coming from. It was coming from somewhere deep. And then, when I came for a first seminar. I understood. It was magical. I understood how much I love to connect to this very special culture I had no idea of before. You know, it's the people I met, but it's also the earth – the spirit of the place. It's the deep connection to the earth. It's the depth of the processes that happen or that I experienced happening there.

Something else is also very touching. Talking about German history, we had our country separated into two parts after war until 1989, into East and West. I grew up in the West and we didn't know much about the East, because there was a wall and all our attention and traveling went in direction West. Still today, we have a big tension between East and West. A wound that still must heal. Something like that. This East-West topic is one of the stories I want to walk through to tell it differently.

And I have a feeling that some of my inner healing or bridging these parts is also happening because of this intense engagement now in Eastern Europe. I understand some of the Eastern after-war experiences better through working in Lithuania and with my Polish colleagues. So I'm really happy to have this in depth experience and hope I can bring something back home and host more of this East-West dialogue here and there.

It was really interesting to listen about this split between East and West and building of the bridge through connection with Lithuania. Thank you for that. And coming back to the Institute I wonder what it’s like to be a part of this co-creative process? Because it's also seems to me like a path of learning something together, at least looking from my perspective.

It is a big learning. It's a bit like with the World Work Journalism project, a wildflower and you can and should not control how it grows. But you need to understand where and how it wants to grow. And I think this is also so special about this community, and maybe also the Lithuanian spirit, that there is so much independency and autonomy. That is a very special way of co-creation. It is somehow to lead by following. This is a very good skill for the challenges of our current times. Leadership in general would need more of it, because we need to navigate a lot in uncertainty, in the fog these days. And this means that we need to listen and to sense where things go and grow – and to embrace co-creative processes in it all.

Stephanie, you were learning process work in DDI Institute and now DDI Institute with DDI Intensive is also coming to Lithuania. As if all the paths are leading to Lithuania, mh.

Yes, I did my diploma path with DDI and the co-founder Max Schupbach also mentioned that Lithuania had importance for him already many years ago. So it is perfectly falling at its place, a big celebration. We as an Institute are also now going for dual studies with DDI. Students studying with Lithuanian Institute are not only getting a local process work training and diploma, but a double diploma with DDI. And DDI is non local. DDI seminars happen all over the world, and the yearly Intensive training is happening in different places all over the world. So the community of DDI and the teachers are very international. We will all gain from the beautiful diversity in teaching, learning, being and co-creating. A new story unfolding! So, yes all leads to Lithuania, and Lithuania is invited to connect with the world.