I got to know myself and life quite early on. I was a dreamer, because I needed it. Only much later did I start to engage with the 'real' world.
As I look back, I realize that what I did for many years, while developing as an artist, was create a space for myself that feels safe, inspirational and free.
Once I had that, I started to tackle life.
Here's my story:
My name is Hanna.
I was baptized Hanna Guadalupe Winiarczyk-Illoldi.
Today I am called Hanna Kristall. I changed my surname to Kristall. Not to deny my roots, but rather as a symbol of transformation, similar to a snake shedding its skin as part of a natural process, symbolizing growth and a new beginning
(but that's a story for another time).
I am the daughter of a Mexican teacher / health care manager and a Polish musician / conductor.
I was born and mostly raised in Austria.
My brother Karol is older than me, but numbers never really mattered: we were like twins. And still are. We had a very happy childhood.
When I was 11, my parents divorced. And my entire life changed.
My dad left and something inside me went with him. He left a void I've been learning to understand ever since. I had always been curious, full of life and confident in who I was - but this changed me. On the outside I might have seemed fine, but inside I felt broken, and lost.
But life is always in balance and where there is darkness there is also light.
My dad did not come back, but what came to me is a deep love for writing and music.
I started writing songs when I was 11 years old.
To me, this was the moment I became an artist.
I spent my teenage years reading, writing and trying to make sense of life. For many reasons, I lived in a kind of isolation, and I did not feel seen by the people around me.
Partly because that's how teenagers feel. Partly because the absence of my dad cracked something open that not many in my surrounding had experienced - or if they had, they recovered quickly and went on to daily 'struggles'.
Short: while they were concerned about weekends and kissing guys, I was simply trying to find my place in this world and: survive.
But I did feel understood - by anyone with a strong and genuine spirit. By those, who had seen and felt life deeply.
I met them through books, music and movies. I loved reading biographies by artists, writers, designers, entrepreneurs,... All those things gave me deep inspiration, and it was all I needed.
I was a dreamer and I created a world on my own - a place where I felt understood, inspired and free.
The 'real' world remained difficult, but I had found what I needed to go on.
Days turned into months, months into years.
Over time I realized I had quietly cultivated a place within myself, where I felt grounded - and by that time I had a deep understanding of who I was and a strong connection to myself. The wounds remained. But that's part of me now. Pain gave me the ability to feel deeply, to understand and to connect with others in a meaningful way.
Back then I created for myself alone. Only later did I realize what kind of gift I had been given.
My story is what drives my desire to make art: I know what it means to listen to the right song at the right time, to feel connected to someone through a shared thought and feeling.
Or to read that one line that explains your inner world so clearly that it makes you understand yourself better, and feel alive.
As a teenager, music spoke for me - it was my connection to the world.
Today, it's still the place where I feel most alive.
When I first went on stage, at 15, it didn't feel like foreign ground. I moved as if I had always been there.
And I instantly knew: this is where I belong.
After my first stage experiences I started designing my own clothes. And my love for expressing myself through the way I dress has only deepened over time.
The toughest obstacles you'll encounter in life are the ones within yourself, and you have to resolve them all alone, within your own mind. And I made it.
If there is success: that's how it feels.
And after all these years I feel: my life has actually just started.
TBC.
Connection is real.
I didn't always feel connected.
And as I write these words I know I cannot be there for you personally,
but life is more than the physical world and
one thing I learned while being alone:
There is always a way out of the dark.
Even if we never meet, I can offer what I once needed the most:
connection and self-empowerment through
consciousness, words, music and style.
This is why I do what I do.