Kintsugi Heroes
Endre Hoffmann · 55 min
After forty years of running to the other side of the world to escape a toxic father and a crushing sense of worthlessness, Endre Hoffmann finally stopped fleeing and started healing — and turned his pain into a mission to restore self-worth in others.
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For forty years, Endre Hoffmann carried a story about himself that wasn't true: that he was worthless, that he didn't belong, that nothing he did would ever matter. The story started with his father, a man he could never please, never connect with, never feel safe around. When the weight became unbearable, Endre did what made sense at the time: he ran. First to Ireland, then Thailand, then halfway across the world to New Zealand with a girlfriend and a plan to start fresh. But running doesn't work. The story followed him.
Alone in Auckland without a work permit, rejected from every job, even cleaning work, Endre spiralled into the same patterns of desperation and self-blame that had driven him to flee in the first place. A stranger's kindness, a chance conversation with a woman at an airport rank, a Friday phone call confirming his visa extension: these moments kept him alive. But they didn't heal him. He built a career, married, had children, but the core belief, that he wasn't enough, poisoned everything. He became his father: absent, chasing work, disconnected from the people he loved most.
It took his wife's ultimatum and his children's literal slaps in the face to break through the denial. When Endre finally committed fully to changing the story he believed about himself, everything shifted. Working with someone trained in NLP, he dismantled decades of limiting beliefs within a year or two. The man who spent forty years running, working himself to exhaustion, and carrying worthlessness as identity became someone with purpose: helping others break free from the same invisible chains. His marriage transformed. His relationship with his children became a source of real connection. He stopped proving himself to a father who could no longer hear him, and started building a life he actually wanted to live.
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Kintsugi Heroes · Registered Australian not-for-profit · kintsugiheroes.com.au ↗