Clara Thumm (she/her)
In my work, I hold a space where heartbreak is seen as part of life, not as something to hide. A space where you can step out of the pressure to perform and just be. To arrive, feel, process – and learn to meet yourself with more gentleness and compassion in hard times. From there, we ask: What would it look like to live and love in a way that’s more true to me?
Qualifications
- Certified Feminist Coach
(Feminist Coaching Academy, Berlin) - Certified Systemic Coach & Mediator
(Institute for Management Consulting, Berlin) - M.A. Sociology and Cultural Studies, with a focus on Feminist Theory
(Free University Berlin)
(University of Pennsylvania, USA) - Co-founder of theater improv group and performance collective
My Motivation
During my studies, I engaged passionately with feminist theory for many years, especially around unpaid house and care work. I knew very early on: I wanted to continue working with feminist theory. But the path was anything but straightforward.
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I know what it feels like to be lost. To hit dead ends, run into closed doors, and question everything again and again. After graduating right in the middle of lockdown, my transition into working life didn’t go as I had hoped - or rather it didn’t go at all. At the same time my long-term relationship ended. What followed was a period of extreme restlessness and many, many heartbreaks. Eventually I found a coaching program that shifted everything and the vision for what would become the Heartbreak Club was born.
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With the Heartbreak Club I offer feminist individual and group coaching for FLINTA+ navigating crisis and life transitions. For when your plans fall apart, or when things did work out but you still feel empty. Heartbreak isn’t just about love and relationships. So many things can break our hearts: job disappointments, friendship rifts, the weight of societal expectations. The voice that keeps saying we’re too much or not enough.
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Since completing my systemic coaching training in late 2022, I’ve been supporting people in one-on-one sessions to help them live with more freedom, compassion, and self-trust. In October 2024, I launched the Heartbreak Club and have been running group coaching for FLINTA+ ever since.Â
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I believe tenderness is strength. That vulnerability is courage. I don’t believe in one-size-fits-all ideas of how life, love, or healing should look. Let’s find out together what’s right for you.
What does feminist coaching mean?
Feminist coaching means exploring and processing personal experiences and placing them in a structural framework. Many of us suffer from similar issues in this society, so they should not be individualized but rather viewed structurally. The pain we experience is often an understandable reaction to our experiences in this system. Feminist coaching aims to empower us and give us new courage by taking personal responsibility and challenging restrictive societal norms around gender roles and life paths. It allows us to uncover how we can live and love authentically.
Especially in the community of group coaching sessions, we can experience a sort of feminist utopia where we engage with each other with radical openness, acceptance, and tenderness – making feminist principles tangible in practice.
What does feminism mean?
We live in a patriarchal and unjust society. Feminism, for me, means fighting against structural exclusion, oppression, unequal power dynamics, and unjust distribution of resources, while fostering solidarity among people. This involves acknowledging the commonalities and differences of their experiences in this society while preserving their individuality and autonomy.
Feminist practice includes acknowledging both structural discrimination and one’s own privileges. As a woman, I experience discrimination in this society. At the same time, I benefit from privileges that have paved the way for my life journey thus far, including the founding of the Heartbreak Club.
Photo: Angelika Pientka
To process pain and create loving connections is a profoundly radical and feminist act in this society.
FLINTA+ Focused
The Heartbreak Club is a space centered on the experiences, needs, and well-being of FLINTA+. A kind of feminist oasis within the patriarchy.
Friendship Centered
Friendships are, for many of us, sites of long-lasting and ever-growing love. I resist the common hierarchy that places them below romantic relationships.
Relationship Inclusive
I support people regardless of how they live their relationships. I don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all ideal partnership. I believe in the many ways connection can take form.
Queer Friendly
I understand gender and sexuality as diverse, fluid, and shaped by society. They can change, and evolve themselves without ever needing to be justified.
Systemic
My work looks beyond the individual to include the social and structural conditions we live in. Together, we explore new spaces for action and possibility.
Photo: Angelika Pientka
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Contact
hello@heartbreak-club.com
+49 157 5782 9902
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