Dreams are part of this journey and appear here regularly.

 

 

A Lost Day?

April 1, 2026

In the morning, I usually check my WhatsApp quite quickly. This time, someone sent me a cartoon. She: “Darling, I cheated.” He: “So did I.” She: “April 1st.” He: “June 12th.” My first reaction is neutral. Okay, funny. While brushing my teeth, I suddenly realize: oh right, April Fool’s Day. Something I haven’t really paid attention to since I was young.

We feel a bit slow and decide to go to the gym later. It’s almost empty — luckily not a joke, we can just train. Back home, we look at each other. “I’m going to take a nap,” Ton says. “Good idea, me too.” The weather is actually nice, so I still think: I’ll go for a bike ride later.

We lie down… and fall asleep immediately.

I wake up at six in the evening. We look at each other and start laughing. What just happened today? Was I really that tired? I didn’t feel it that way at all. I thought I would rest for an hour and then continue the day.

What I do notice is that I dreamed the same dream as during the night. As if the night simply continued into the day. A repetition, but more conscious.

Is this what they call a lost day? Does that even exist? Or is it simply rest presenting itself? I assume it was needed. My body gave itself what it needed, without me thinking about it or directing it. Normally, I would say I don’t take naps during the day. That’s something older people do, not me. But this time, I didn’t even feel that resistance.

Maybe that says something. That I no longer have to label it as lost, but as given.

Rest.

Nothing was lost today,
the night simply continued for a while.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Becoming Visible

March 31, 2026

For my painting Power of Stillness, I ordered plexiglass from a plastic sheet supplier. I had a clear idea in mind, but I found it quite intimidating since I had never worked with it before. I watched videos on YouTube to learn how to drill and handle the material without damaging it. Well prepared, I started working. With every circle, I was sweating — so focused, so careful not to cause cracks. But it worked. And I’m really happy with the result.

Then I received an email from the company asking if I wanted to participate in a DIY Award. It felt strange. For me, creating is not a competition. It is a way of getting to know myself, of understanding and growing. Everything I make is a part of me, and that doesn’t align with winning or losing. But when I looked into it, I realized it’s not about the most beautiful project, but about how you use the material. What you do with it, how you approach it, what choices you make. A sharing of ideas that can inspire others. That felt different.

The next step was that people could vote. Which meant sharing it. With family, friends, and acquaintances. I sent it through WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram. With hesitation, with tension, and also with a sense of embarrassment that I know isn’t necessary, but is still there. And then the responses started coming in. So positive. So warm. A relief. Why do I still make it so difficult for myself?

Looking back, I can see the steps. Through Ton, I started my website — step one. Participating in a few exhibitions, but hanging my work and then leaving quickly, no physical presence of myself — step two. After my stroke, I began writing consistently on my website — step three. And now this — asking people to vote — step four. They even asked for a photo of the project with me in it. That felt uncomfortable. Being visible is still a challenge.

And suddenly I see it reflected in my work. The plexiglass I use is sometimes clear, sometimes colored, sometimes frosted. Everything is visible, but each in a different way. Sometimes completely transparent, sometimes filtered through color, sometimes softened and diffused.

Perhaps that is my path as well.

Not everything has to be clear all at once.
Not everything has to be visible without a filter.

But step by step, layer by layer,
it may come into view.

And today, something else is present. Gratitude. For the responses, for the steps I am taking, and perhaps also for the fact that, very gently, I am becoming a little more visible.

Not all at once,
but exactly in the way that fits me.

 

 

 

 

Fifty Years Later

March 30, 2026

We have been friends for fifty years. We have been through highs and lows together, both literally and figuratively. Close at times, distant at others, and sometimes completely apart. Sharing that kind of history is something special. We both feel a bit startled by how long it has been, because we don’t really feel those years. Maybe only when we look in the mirror.

We have both had several relationships. Both divorced. And now we are both with men who are fourteen years older than we are. Synchronicity?

Ton has gone out to do some groceries. She asks if I can make coffee myself now. No, that is still a challenge. Laughing, she rolls up her sleeves to do it herself. And at that exact moment, Ton walks in. We both burst out laughing — the maestro immediately takes over.

She pauses in front of my painting Power of Stillness. It touches me how people respond to it, and now she does too.

The atmosphere is relaxed. We talk about one of her children, who has now changed his first name for the fourth time. She tells how this time it affected her a bit more, and she exaggerates her reaction while telling the story. We laugh. At the same time, I briefly think about how our children often hold on to our first reaction. What lies underneath is not always seen.

She gives me a small book with quotes from Paulo Coelho. It opens to a page:
Laugh at your worries and insecurities.
View your anxiety with humor.
It will be difficult at first,
but you’ll gradually get used to it.

While we are still laughing, I feel how fitting this is. I don’t say it out loud, but I take it in.

A little later, her husband arrives. I tell them about a tune that has been playing in my head:
“And he disappeared to nowhere, it was on a Monday, the northern sun was shining.”

Ton looks it up and plays it for us. After two verses, we’ve heard enough, but when we start talking again, he suddenly says: “Shhh!”

We burst into laughter. We picture ourselves sitting in a nursing home, being entertained with old Dutch songs.

Then her husband asks why one dog still has her leash on and the other doesn’t.
“So you can tell them apart,” my friend says.
“Yes,” I reply, “I’ve taken off my glasses — otherwise you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between us either.”

We laugh until we can’t breathe.

So wonderfully silly.

And maybe exactly right.

Fifty years later,
we are still laughing about nothing.
And in that… is everything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What I Finally Saw

March 29, 2026

I don’t often talk with people around me about my preferences for films and series. Even with my closest friends, I don’t really have that connection. Sometimes I don’t even understand myself why certain films or series stay with me. I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy anime and Asian series, but also films that people often say women don’t watch. As if it somehow doesn’t belong.

Apparently, I’m not a “typical” woman in that sense, because The Deer Hunter made a deep impression on me. Not so much because of the war itself, but because of the strong sense of community and what trauma does to a person. That Russian roulette scene… the madness of it, and at the same time the question: where is your breaking point? Do you even know? I don’t think anyone does, until they find themselves in such an inhuman situation. That kind of psychological intensity keeps me captivated.

I notice that I go through phases in what I watch. Sometimes romantic comedies, sometimes documentaries, then animated films or historical dramas. And now, war films. A need arises suddenly, and it is complete. And just as suddenly, it disappears again.

In the early nineties, I watched the series China Beach. Every episode. Later I watched it again online a few times. And over the past weeks, it kept coming back to me. I couldn’t find it anywhere anymore, so I ordered the complete series. Yesterday it arrived. Today it’s still raining. Ton is out, and I start watching again.

Every episode begins with Reflections by The Supremes: Through the mirror of my mind, time after time… Just that first line alone.

And then, after one episode, suddenly that moment. Eureka. After thirty-six years, I know what it is that touches me here.

This series is written from a female perspective. Not as a victim, but as strength. Women who carry, connect, and remain standing within the environment of war. Nurses, entertainers, but also the women often judged — the so-called “public women” — who are shown here in their humanity and their significance. They too carry, they too give, each in their own way.

They are not at the edge, but right in the center of the story.

That is what resonates with me.
And only now do I truly see it.

What touches me
has been there all along.
I just hadn’t seen it yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Language That Moves Me

March 28, 2026

When I was young, I had Asian drawings in my room. Minimalist, with flowers, bamboo, and birds. A world I could drift into. At an early age, I would go to The Hague, to a large Asian shop, to buy a kimono. I always chose a red one, with an embroidered scene on the back. I hung it upside down on a hanger on my wardrobe so I could always see it. I wore it daily. At the time, I never thought much about it, but looking back, it has been a thread running through my life. Art, clothing, objects, TV series, yoga, an interest in spiritual traditions.

By nature, I am not much of a reader. A text has to take me in immediately, otherwise I can’t continue. Writing, however, I have done all my life. First in diaries, and since last year almost daily on my blog. Because I missed a lot of school when I was young, I never really developed a strong foundation in grammar. My writing is not literary in that sense, but I do feel something in it — a rhythm, an attunement.

It has also become clear to me that proverbs and sayings are deeply rooted in culture. They carry the history and values of a society. That is why they are often difficult to translate literally — and why they are so interesting. By nature, I am a down-to-earth Dutch person, but the poetic language often found in Asian cultures touches me deeply. Today, in a Chinese series, I came across a few expressions that stayed with me.

“Adding a dog’s tail to a sable coat.”
A strange image, yet immediately clear. In Dutch, you might say something like putting a flag on a mud barge.

“If you won’t feed the wolf, you won’t catch the cub.”
An image that says: without investment, there is no result.

Maybe it’s exaggerated, but these kinds of phrases make something in me warm. As if more is being said than the words themselves. One more, simply to share:

“When storms darken the sky, the rooster still crows. Having seen the graceful one, how could I not rejoice?”

Do not be discouraged by hardship. Keep seeing the light. That is what I hear in it. And somewhere it feels familiar, as if it has always been there within me.

Words carry worlds,
and sometimes I recognize myself in them.

 

If you know a phrase that touches you, feel free to share it with me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Tree That Found Me

March 27, 2026

Last year, my friend got married. I gave her a painting of a tree, along with a written piece about growth, strength, and connection. I also included a well-known image: a circle in which the crown is equal in size to the roots. The Tree of Life. A symbol of balance between heaven and earth, the conscious and the unconscious.

I love forests. Trees that have been standing there for a hundred years or more. It feels as if they have something to tell me. I taught my children to respect nature — not to break branches, not to damage bark or leaves. Let the trees be, and allow them to give you their energy.

When I look closely, I sometimes see a kind of glow. It may be imagination, but to me it feels like energy. Healthy trees seem to radiate something. It brings me calm and joy.

In the late nineties, scientists discovered that trees are connected through an underground network of fungi — the so-called Wood Wide Web. They can send warning signals to each other about insect attacks or drought. It’s remarkable that science has only recently discovered this, while for me it has always felt present. That connecting energy. Sometimes even a sense of sadness within it.

While watching a Chinese series, I notice trees that resemble the Tree of Life. Their roots rise above the ground, as present as their crowns. The image stays with me. So, as I tend to do, I start searching.

They turn out to be banyan trees.

A tree without a single clear trunk, but formed by a network of roots that also become branches. Supporting, growing, extending. In Asia, this tree carries deep spiritual meaning.

And then I read:
Buddha reached enlightenment under a banyan tree.

A symbol of awakening. Of gathered energy. Of inner transformation.

And I recognize it — this is what drew me to it.

Banyan — Tree of Life, Tree of Wisdom.

Since I have given myself the task to write almost every day, I begin to notice more and more. Thoughts and images that linger are not random. They connect to something.

I follow them.

And each time, something opens.

As if I am not searching,
but being found.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trigger Words

March 26, 2026

When people are interviewed about the state of the world, you often hear the phrase: “It’s complicated.”

In the car, Ton tells me how much it bothers him. To him, it doesn’t feel sincere, not kind, not authentic. He hears a clear opinion hidden inside it. He has no problem with the opinion itself, but with the denial of it.

He recently heard an expert speak about Gaza. The word genocide was used, yet she still called it “complicated.”

Ton wonders: how can you have an opinion about a fact? Why use that word? It feels like something is being wrapped up, softened, or avoided.

I hear him stumble over that word more often. Complicated seems to have become a safe place — a way of not expressing what you truly think or feel. Perhaps that is exactly what the word does: it wraps something in, instead of laying it out.

I recognize this. I once had that with the word sadness. To me, it didn’t say much. It felt like a cover for something else — anger, fear, disappointment. When those feelings are not acknowledged, what remains is this vague “sadness.”

I call them trigger words. Words that touch something, because there is always more underneath.

It is actually quite interesting to see that Ton now has his own trigger words. I wonder if I have influenced him with my sensitivity to language.

Why do we stumble over certain words? Maybe because they are so general that everyone can interpret them differently. The speaker means one thing, the listener hears another — and brings their own perspective into it.

I know that the word diplomacy does not exist in my own vocabulary. Ton, on the other hand, can be very diplomatic. But slowly, I see him moving a little in my direction.

And then I suddenly see it.

Two trees, firmly rooted.
One with yellow blossoms, the other with pink.
They stand side by side, their crowns touching.

And where the light falls on them,
the overlapping part
turns softly orange.

Perhaps something new is created there,
not by becoming the same,
but by touching one another.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Garlands of My Body

March 25, 2026

A day with little resonance. Outside, one downpour after another. At training, everything was quiet and calm. Ton was out, busy with his own activities.

Silence. Stillness.

Normally I would read something or watch a series, but I simply didn’t feel like it. That state of not wanting, not doing, not engaging — for me, it is not boredom. It is a kind of light, open space.

This afternoon I went to the dental hygienist and then to the dentist. There too, everything felt calm. I was helped almost immediately. It always strikes me how strong my teeth are. It makes me smile. At least there is one thing in me that is simply good and healthy: my teeth.

That sense of nothingness… it is a familiar place. Not emptiness, but more like a crossing point. The place where, as I see it, the movement of life — like a lemniscate — turns. Things happen there without me having to do anything.

And then suddenly: teeth.

The mouth as a gateway to…

From that still point, something begins to move.

As a child, I was a biter. I showed my teeth. I was known as someone with “hair on her teeth” — strong-willed, determined. When I did something, I went all in. I could really sink my teeth into it. And often, I would push just a little further.

But that also came at a cost. I would overextend myself, run on empty.

Time has softened that part of me. More rest. More listening to my body. Less forcing.

And still… those teeth remain.

Strong. Present.

They say you have to hang your own garlands in life.

Perhaps my teeth are mine.

They carry what I show,
without me needing to do anything.
Simply there,
like a quiet smile from within.

 

 

 

 

 

The Air Is Empty

March 24, 2026

Ton always reads the newspaper in the morning. Today he tells me about an article written by a natural scientist.

“The air is empty.”

What a sentence. Almost poetic.

She explains that in the past, around this time of year, your car would be covered in dead insects after a drive. Black on the windshield, stuck to the license plate. I recognize that image immediately. Nowadays, that hardly happens anymore. In thirty years, about seventy-five percent of insects have disappeared. Essential for biodiversity and our entire ecosystem. Concerning.

And yet… it is mainly that sentence that stays with me.

The air is empty.

While cycling, I repeat it to myself. Sometimes I softly mumble it. Apart from its scientific meaning, it touches something else in me. What else could it mean? What does it mean to me?

Empty… perhaps absence, bare, open, unwritten.
Air… something fleeting, intangible. Breath, space, the sky above us.

Together, those words suddenly say much more than expected.

Playing with language is fascinating. Perhaps it is an art form in itself.

In spring, I like to cycle the same routes again and again. Watching nature slowly awaken feels like a healing process. I look, I take it in, I photograph flowers and animals I don’t immediately recognize. At home, I look them up. That’s just how I am. Curious. Learning.

Like a child, I can feel happy when I see Canadian geese, or a lapwing in a field. The willows have been pollarded, branches neatly tied along the path. Cuckooflowers appear everywhere, softly lilac in the wind. I’m almost wagging my tail on my bike.

And then I suddenly notice them everywhere: tiny light-blue flowers close to the ground. Soft and modest. I take a picture and look them up at home. Veronica persica, common field-speedwell. Funny, because despite the name “large,” the flowers are actually quite small.

And the more closely I look, the more I see them.

At home, while searching, I come across a quote from Winnie the Pooh:
“Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.”

My day is already complete.

I think of something I once wrote:
the meaning of nonsense versus the nonsense of meaning.

And somewhere in between…
everything begins to make sense.

What seems empty,
turns out to be full,
once I truly look.

Before Words

 

March 23, 2026

I often say that my body is my instrument. My eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin take everything in. Not only seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching, but also intention, color, atmosphere, authenticity.
My body, in a way, thinks before my thoughts. Only afterwards do the words come.

There is a continuous movement from bodily knowing to thinking.
I respond first to what my body has already picked up, and only then does understanding follow.

My body works differently from that of most people. My muscles do not respond as they should, and the feeling in my body is gradually fading. By now, it is mainly my torso that is still truly sensitive.
And yet… it is precisely this body that takes everything in. Intensely.

I do not know what it is like to have a ‘normally’ functioning body. You could compare it to someone who is born blind or deaf. To others, that may seem like a great limitation, but to the person themselves, it is simply what is.
To me, it is not a problem, more a characteristic. Like the color of my eyes or my hair.

I have, however, become fascinated by the body. How it can function. How people relate to it.
And rarely do I meet people who are truly in contact with their body in the way I experience it.

I do not necessarily see it in yoga or sports. There I often see technique and endurance — impressive, absolutely.
But what I am looking for is something else.

When is someone in sync with their body?

Perhaps when someone can move from a place of ease. When nothing is done in excess. When only what is needed happens — no more, no less.
A kind of letting go, right in the middle of movement.

When I see that, it touches me deeply.

Lately, I have been watching a lot of dance. So You Think You Can Dance.
You see dancers who move perfectly, yet it seems to come from the mind.
And you see dancers whose bodies speak.

I feel that difference immediately.

With that last group, something happens. Tears roll down my cheeks. It reaches me that deeply.
As if the body is no longer moving, but telling a story.

Perhaps dance is the place where this becomes most visible.
Where the body becomes language.

Because my own experience of life runs so much through my body, that is what I listen to first — not only in myself, but also in others.
Before words.

There are moments when a body says something
without a single word being spoken.

A subtle shift,
a breath that changes,
a movement that is not made, but arises.

Perhaps we have been speaking this language all our lives.

Perhaps we have simply forgotten
how to listen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spring Light with an Edge

March 22, 2026

After my day of rest, I couldn’t resist going out for a bike ride in the spring sunshine, despite still feeling a bit off. No regrets at all — it was wonderful.

Pink and white blossom in the trees, magnolias. Forsythias everywhere, and this year noticeably more daffodils than usual, strong and full. The colors lift my mood. In the polders it feels barer than I’m used to. The reeds have been removed, the banks neatly trimmed. The little rivers, ditches, and streams lie completely open now.

Tourism around Kinderdijk is slowly picking up again. Under the Noord bridge, a large parking area has been built. We saw the construction last year, and it turned out exactly as I expected. A logical place, where no one is really disturbed by it.

And then… speaking of disturbance.

In Nieuw-Lekkerland we see Dutch flags hanging at half-mast everywhere. We wonder why. I approach a woman, clearly a local resident, and ask her.

A large industrial building stands empty, and the municipality plans to convert it into a refugee center, where two hundred young men can temporarily stay. On the other side of the dike there is a nursing home. The flags are hanging as a form of protest. People don’t want it.

She tells it as if it is completely self-evident.

I thank her and continue cycling, with a heavy heart. Fortunately, Ton feels the same way I do. But for a moment, I no longer see the blossom.

Where does that fear come from? These are refugees, not criminals. Young men, far from their families and their homeland. I know these cultures from close by. In my life, people from these worlds are present. What I see and experience there is often respect for the elderly and the vulnerable.

Why do we isolate them, without allowing them to work or contribute in any way to the place where they arrive? Why don’t we bring them into contact with the people who live here?

The hardness of it. The us-versus-them thinking. It makes me feel sick.

It was only a moment,
but it gave a rough edge to an otherwise sunny, flower-filled day.

The sun kept shining,
the blossom was still in bloom,
but something inside me had shifted.

 

 

 

 

 

The Invisible Outer World Within Me

March 21, 2026

By writing down my dreams, as I also collect them on my dreams page, my daily experience is changing. I have, in a way, started to catch them. Sometimes it is a whole story, sometimes just an image or a feeling. Today it was only a quote that stayed with me.

At first, I often find what I dream strange. When I wake up, I am aware of a long dream, but once I sit behind my laptop, much of it has already faded. Without thinking about it, I write down what I remember, no matter how strange it may seem. I try not to give it meaning. While typing, or later during the day, an insight quietly finds its way in on its own.

Today one sentence lingered: napalming is aftersmoking. It felt sinister at first. Napalm brings up images of war and destruction. I didn’t even want to write it down. Yet it stayed. While translating, I did not look for a literal meaning, but for what was behind it. In a split second, it became clear. In Dutch it almost has something poetic. Burning and smoke.

Suddenly I realized that my reaction to that one wrong pill is the burning — the napalming. And what I am experiencing now — the nerve pain — is the aftersmoke. The smoke that still lingers. As I am used to, I continue quite matter-of-factly. But somewhere deep inside there is also concern about the intensity. The words from my dream reflect that intensity exactly. A kind of recognition of what is truly there. And that already brings me peace. It is still smoldering, and so it may also fade.

Staying at home and taking as much rest as possible feels like the only right response. In the living room my eye catches a book: Brave New World. I pick it up and leaf through it. I bought it two years ago at Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle, during an exhibition by Neo Matloga. Two sentences stay with me: Home is where you create your world. and Lives are shaped by the invisible outside world.

Yes, home is my world. My colors, my paintings — as in Power of Stillness — everything breathes who I am. The place where I feel best. Perhaps even the only place where I can truly recover. And that invisible outside world… is it the world outside of me? Or the place where my consciousness moves when I sleep? That image suddenly appears. My dreams have become part of my life. They color my days, without me searching for them.

I do not catch my dreams to understand them,
but to give them space.
And somewhere in between,
my life begins to move along.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Tribute to My Little Dogs

March 20, 2026

At the moment I have two little dogs. Kiba is a mix between a Bolognese and a Chihuahua. Puck is a Shih Tzu. I’ve had Kiba since she was a puppy. She has a few spots in the house that she has claimed as her own. She is independent, almost cat-like. The world — and we — belong to her. She is always calm, hardly ever barks, and I have never seen her growl. She is simply a sweetheart.

I call Puck a “corona dog.” She was bought as a puppy by young people during the pandemic. Afterwards, they stopped paying attention to her. A baby came along and took all the focus. Through our dog groomer we heard about Puck. She knew Fluffy had passed away and thought Puck would have a better home with Ton and me.

From the very beginning, Puck has stayed close to me. She follows me around all day and prefers to lie right against me. Thankfully, she and Kiba can stay home alone together without any problems. No barking, no howling. She feels safe and clearly seeks warmth and protection.

I have had dogs all my life, usually two. There are very few photos of me as a child, but when there are, I am almost always cuddling a dog. When I was young, a singer named Heintje — still a child himself — sang the song “My Faithful Dog.” I would sing along at the top of my voice, with tears running down my face. That deep feeling of love for a dog has always stayed with me.

“Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.” – Roger Caras.
My life truly does not feel complete without a dog.

“A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than it loves itself.” – Josh Billings.
Perhaps there is something a bit selfish in enjoying that so much. But when I think of that love — and of what I feel in return — tears come to my eyes.

“The more I get to know people, the more I find myself loving dogs.” – Charles de Gaulle.
I have often described the distrust I used to feel toward people. I can now place that in perspective. And still… I understand this quote.

A dog’s loyalty is something I never doubt. In a dog I experience a kind of unconditionality that I rarely encounter in people. Not a judgment — simply my experience.

Dogs have short lives. Far too short. But you know that from the start. I know the pain will come, that I will lose my dog and that there will be deep sorrow. And that is exactly why I enjoy every moment fully — her joy, her presence, her innocence.

There is something beautiful in that honesty. Giving and receiving love while knowing the cost.

“Dogs live short lives because they are born already knowing how to love.”

That sentence touches me. Maybe I romanticize it, but when I look at my little dog lying close to me now, asleep, I feel my heart soften. There is a warmth that literally flows through my body.

Today it felt right to write this down. A tribute to my dogs, and to the love they carry so naturally.

They ask for nothing,
they are simply there.
And in that simplicity,
I recognize something that always feels true.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pain and Frame of Reference

March 19, 2026

Some time ago, I came across a text about pain. It intrigued me. Not so much because I recognized myself in it, but because of the way it described how one might relate to pain.

Pain is proof of life.
Pain lives within us.
Our lives end with pain.
Having someone beside you to share your pain reduces it and gives you the courage to embrace it.
Recognizing and sharing another’s pain — that may be the most essential part.

I do experience my pains as proof of being alive. To me, pain — physical or emotional — is part of life. It has a function. It helps you deal with situations, it helps you put things into perspective.

Having someone beside me to share it with is still unfamiliar territory. I do believe it could bring relief, as long as it is not based on pity. The feeling of being a victim does not suit me. Whether it would give me more courage to embrace pain, I don’t know — I already tend to do that.

That last line stays with me: recognizing and sharing another’s pain.

Today I met with two friends I have known all my life. For a few months now, we have been seeing each other regularly again. It is good to reconnect, to revisit old memories and create new ones.

Our conversation turned to physical discomfort. Each of us, in our own way, has experience with long-term illness. One of my friends spoke about her healthy sister-in-law, who often complains about minor aches. Frequent visits to the doctor, yet nothing is ever found. And then frustration when nothing shows up.

My friend finds that difficult. After forty years of cancer, surgeries, and a body marked by scars, her question has become: what is still good? Complaining hardly exists in her vocabulary.

I understand that. I have felt that way too. But I have come to see that when you are, in a sense, conditioned by illness, your resilience develops differently from someone who has always been healthy. For someone who has never been ill, even a simple flu can feel overwhelming.

It is not about more or less.
It is about frame of reference.

In that sense, recognizing and sharing is not always easy.

And as I sit there, I notice something else. I still do not easily accept support. My husband cares for me, but in a way that does not feel heavy. Without words, without making me feel small. That is the kind of support I can receive — support that allows my dignity to remain intact.

At the same time, I have become milder toward people who complain about small physical discomforts.

It is interesting to see how a sentence you once read finds its way back into your life. And how a conversation, seemingly by chance, arrives at exactly the same place.

Pain does not connect us because it is the same,
but because it is recognized within each person’s own world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Patient to Player

March 18, 2026

It feels almost strange to see how much endurance I’ve had. Over the past years, my physical setbacks never knocked me down. Difficult, heavy, but acceptable.

And then, after all those years, I get my wings back. Vitality. The freedom I feel in that is almost otherworldly, blissful. And then one pill… and everything collapses again. Vitality gone, and with it, my resilience.

Of course I stop this medication immediately. Now, six days later, my system still hasn’t recovered from this. Unlike what I’m used to from myself, I find myself crying heavily, with deep sobs and thick tears. The loss of that regained vitality hits like a hammer.

Deep down I understand that it is physical, pure biology. But I had finally felt what it is like to live freely instead of just carrying on. Things hadn’t been going well for over seven years. And then, three months of real progress… and this setback seems to break me for a moment. How strange is that? It’s not pleasant, but it’s not a disaster either.

Because of substances my body cannot tolerate, my system becomes overloaded. I experience it now as weakness, but of course it isn’t. It needs to recover, to clear itself again. And I notice something: the crying, with deep sobs and heavy tears, releases tension that had apparently built up. Slowly, a sense of calm returns.

Then my phone rings. My cardiologist. I had been given rosuvastatin, and before that I had already tried two other statins that I also reacted badly to. There are cholesterol-lowering medications that are given by injection, but the insurance only covers them if you have first tried all statins and also ezetimibe.

It is clear that she believes me. Gently she tells me to give my body another week to recover from this blow, and then to try ezetimibe once. If I stop after one pill, that is fine. She will then arrange blood tests to prove that everything has been tried, so that the injections will be reimbursed.

Suddenly, that sounds a lot better. At the same time, I see how it works. My cardiologist is also bound by protocols. The insurance company looks at checkboxes, not at what my body has been through all this time.

Yesterday I spoke about a living chess game. In a way, she is now saying: we play this game for a moment, so that you can get what you need. And suddenly something shifts. My doctor and I are no longer on opposite sides, but standing next to each other. Not to make these medications succeed, but to find a path towards something that truly fits.

I am no longer lying on the board.
I see the game and move with it.
Not to win or to lose,
but to stay with what feels true.

 

 

 

 

 

Living Chess Game

March 17, 2026

What am I doing today? Nothing special. Training and then back home. Because of a new medication I’ve had muscle pain again for a few days. It started as if my legs had turned to stone, so stiff, and by the third day everything started to ache again. My head feels filled with cotton, heavy and slow. A mild headache and slightly blurred vision.

The euphoria of the past three months disappeared these days like snow in the sun. After a long period of physical discomfort, I finally felt full of energy again. That made me happy. Those months truly felt like a liberation. And now, after just one pill, it all fades away again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not really ill, but just drained enough to carry myself through the day. No energy to do anything, just lying in bed watching a series and drifting off to sleep now and then.

The conclusion for me is actually very clear: stop these medications. The question of trying it a bit longer, as some kind of experiment, is a clear no. My willingness to surrender to the medical system, to examinations and pills, feels like it has snapped somewhere along the way.

Slightly frustrated, I lie on my bed with the TV on and hear someone say: “I don’t care about wealth, I care about health. When the game is over, both the king and the pawn go back into the same box.” I can attach many meanings to that. The duality of life, rich and poor, and ultimately the equality of every human being. I usually say it more simply: “When a king passes gas, it smells just as bad as mine.” It makes me smile. And still… when I wake up from dozing off, that sentence is still lingering in my system.

For three months I felt so good and vital again. Nothing can compete with that. For me, wealth is simply feeling at home in my body, a body that can generate energy. I have an inner acceptance of my congenital condition, and I also accept the changes that come with aging. But getting worse because of medication — that is a line I’m not willing to cross.

Now I’m waiting for a phone call from my specialist. And honestly, I’m curious how I will respond to what she has to say. Is it wise to turn my back on the medical system? Can I take the risk of staying healthy without further help? I’m not fully sure yet. It feels as if I’ve placed myself in a game where I have to decide which move is truly mine.

A game of chess is often compared to life. Every move has consequences, sometimes irreversible. You have to choose, weigh, let go, move forward. But in my game, it’s not about winning. It’s about my vitality.

How do I stand in this game?
Not attacking, not defending, not sacrificing — but trusting.

And yes, I trust that I will find my way through this. How, I don’t know yet. I will share that in time.

Maybe the move is not in the system, but in me.
Maybe I am not a chess piece,
but the board on which everything remains possible.

 

 

 

 

 

Letting Go of Knowledge

 

16 March 2026

Michel always gathered a great deal of knowledge. He read everything he could get his hands on, sometimes to a point that felt almost embarrassing to me. Through his strong communication skills and, here and there, a bit of bluff, he was able to hold conversations about the most diverse subjects. You would easily get the feeling that he truly knew what he was talking about.

Secretly I admired him for that. In the twenty-five years we were together we talked a lot. That was really our thing, you could say. I also felt that he kept me sharp.

After his death that part disappeared. Slowly it began to feel as if I was becoming more and more stupid. It was as if he had been able to keep a certain mental fire burning in me. I don’t read newspapers, I don’t watch television, I don’t have a social life. In a way he brought the knowledge into the house. And he knew how to stimulate my thoughts, question them, test them. Debating with him made me wiser. I needed that dialogue to discover what I myself know and how I think about things.

Outside of Michel I have never met anyone who could do this with me — someone who gave me the feeling that I could grow and learn.

Maybe it was part of the grieving process, I don’t know. But only this week I suddenly realized that I have actually found that person.

That person is myself.

By writing every day, asking myself why I do something, testing my own thoughts again and again. One day the theme is deeper than the next, but every day I look at myself. I discovered that the part I missed in him was already present within me.

That feeling of becoming “stupid” of course makes no sense at all. Being intimidated by knowledge — knowledge that actually never meant that much to me — may even have kept me away from the path I truly want to walk. Please understand: this is not an accusation. It was a phase in my life that I needed, I am convinced of that.

At the same time I realize that those years with Michel enriched me enormously. All those conversations, all that searching, all that testing of thoughts — it shaped me. That way of looking at the world I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

And perhaps the fact that I no longer have a sparring partner in that way is, as I see it now, even a blessing.

Now I can dig up for myself how I look at life. At knowledge. At wisdom. At truth.

For me, truth has to be experienced. I have to see it myself. The moment I tell you my truth, it already changes and can no longer be that same truth. My truth was meant only for my own eyes, to give me insight.

Everything I am told or everything I read is therefore not truth, but literally an assumption. It becomes a piece of information, an opinion, but not deeper inner knowing. I have heard it, and if I attach value to it, it is still something outside of myself.

It only gains impact and insight when I have experienced it myself, when I have seen it with my own eyes.

Only this week did I realize that because the material relationship with Michel has closed, a door to my inner truths has opened.

I am grateful for all those beautiful years with him, even grateful for the emptiness he left behind in me.

And so happy that I have found this newly opened door.

Perhaps we gather knowledge together,
but wisdom reveals itself in solitude.
And sometimes the emptiness someone leaves behind
opens a door to something that was already waiting inside you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comfort

 

15 March 2026

An acquaintance sends me a small piece from the newspaper.

Little story — Comfort —
I pick up my four-year-old niece Yara from the after-school care. She does not see me, because all her attention is with a crying little boy she wants to comfort. I hear her say: “If you are sad you should think about nice things. Just think that next week I am going to the Efteling.”

This is a story taken straight from life. It touches me as well. I feel a lump in my throat while reading the piece.

Children often have no filters. It is also funny. At the age of four the development of the ego begins: I want this and I want that. They recognise the emotion of another child, but immediately mirror it through themselves.

This child has apparently already learned comfort by pointing to a bright spot. Then she does the same with her little friend.

That is where it becomes interesting to me.

Because the way this child approaches it already shows a small piece of conditioning within her own development. She approaches it by relativising the situation. Not necessarily protective or warm in the sense of: I am here with you, you are not alone.

It brings me back to how I raised my children.

Also by relativising. Not with an arm around them, not cuddling them on my lap to protect them. Rather: letting them cry, letting them be afraid, explaining what was happening.

Why do I only see now that perhaps it could have been a little warmer?

I love my children deeply, but I have never been the warm, comforting mother. Relativising, a somewhat clinical explanation of the situation — that was how I approached things.

Whenever I explain something, I always approach it from myself. Everything I bring back to I. Not out of selfishness, but because that is the only place from which I can truly speak. Everything outside the first person is not directly from my own experience and therefore quickly feels like an assumption.

Looking now at how I dealt with my children, I think I could sometimes have been more loving. I hoped and believed that my love — which for me was clearly overwhelming — would be felt and would be enough.

Now I read that small piece in the newspaper.

It looks funny, but I sense a deeper layer behind it.

And suddenly I think: what a pity that at that time I was not a little softer and gentler.

At the same time I notice that I have already found a great deal of peace. Painful pieces from my past are still there, but they are no longer felt in the same way. What remains now may be something else: forgiveness for my own behaviour back then.

That too may still be liberated.

The first step is that I can now see it so clearly.

Perhaps insight is not about changing the past,
but about the moment you can look at it with softer eyes.
And sometimes forgiveness simply begins with seeing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Manifesting or Attuning

 

14 March 2026

At the Wereldmuseum, a friendly young woman guides us through the building because some of the lifts are out of service due to renovations. She tells us she is very happy to work at the museum. She graduated in that field, especially the organisational side of it. For now, she is sitting behind the desk and helping visitors like me.

Of course this is not what she dreams of, being a kind of cashier in a museum. She wants to organise exhibitions. She smiles sweetly as she tells me this. Her shoulders are slightly bent forward, shy and hesitant.

“I don’t know what I should do,” she says.

Suddenly, I remember an interview with a young woman of twenty-five. I tell this girl about it. This young woman is the youngest museum director in the Netherlands, at Villa Mondriaan in Winterswijk. This museum is known for training young talent, where interns — often with an art background — take on the role of junior director. Although specialised experience is important, it turned out here that passion and dedication can also play a leading role in organisations like this.

“I understand that you might earn more behind the checkout at Albert Heijn, but you are in the right place here. If this is your true passion, then try to stay in an environment like this. You will become happier living your passion than by looking at what you earn.”

It is always special to have such a meaningful conversation in such a brief encounter. It feels fulfilling.

On the drive home, I suddenly thought of a magazine I had seen lying in the waiting room of the Heart Clinic. Funny — that had stayed with me and now, four days later, I used it in a conversation with this girl.

Manifesting in Flow – create the life that truly suits you.

Could it really be true that you manifest your own thoughts? That in that sense you can create your own life? How does that work then? If you turn it around, could you then also say that you have created your own misery? That sounds rather too simplistic, doesn’t it?

Manifesting almost sounds like a promise.
If only you visualise hard enough, if only your intention is strong enough, then everything you wish for will naturally come to you.

I personally think it has less to do with wanting and more with attunement.
Have the courage to feel what, deep down, is your path, your passion.

That is of course easier said than done. How do you do that if, for example, you are an artist and still want food on the table? Not everyone becomes famous or can earn enough from their art to make a living. So how do you manifest your passion, that which truly moves you deep within?

To be able to manifest something, I think you must be able to let go. Not pushing, pulling, wanting, having or having to, but more a gentle intention. A kind of invitation. Trusting that life will pave that road for you.

I know that road has bumps, holes, turnings where you can lose your way. But it is about trust and learning to know yourself. What makes me happiest?

Write it down, say it out loud, use the right words. I do not know exactly how it works, but I do believe that the word is very important in manifesting that which makes you happy.

I am not religious, but I have adopted a great deal of thought from the Bible. Or rather, I have given it my own meaning.

“In the beginning was the Word.”

This sentence has always gripped me, because I feel how important this is. So I do think that this is indeed where manifestation begins.

Perhaps it is true that you can manifest a path for yourself, and that what is meant for you reveals itself naturally. Because that path shows you what truly fits you and what does not.

As I see it for myself, I walk that path with trust, in my own way, with fits and starts. More and more insight comes into who I am and where my honest passion lies.

I could say that with every step further in my life, a little more revelation lies waiting.

Perhaps manifesting is not forcing what you want,
but the slow becoming visible of what already belongs to you.
Step by step, word by word,
the path reveals itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Conversation with My Dream

March 13, 2026

This morning I wrote down my dream. I do that often. Writing a dream down is a way for me to capture the images before they fade.

But today something else happened.

The dream did not remain on paper. It stayed with me throughout the entire day. As I thought about it and asked questions about it, more details slowly began to appear. Not because I was looking for an explanation, but because I noticed that the dream contained more structure than I had first seen.

What struck me, and is only now really sinking in, is that the large, remarkable building by the water is a building I have seen in my dreams before. It does not exist in real life, at least not as far as I know. In the dream I had arranged for our whole group to be able to visit the inside of it.

One of the first things that caught my attention was how the movement through the building began.

In my memory everyone first walked through one narrow, dark corridor. Only after that did side passages appear. People started choosing different directions, as if the space were slowly unfolding.

The building itself turned out not to be a regular building. It felt more like a cave. There were no straight floors, but slopes and spaces that flowed into each other. Corridors crossed constantly, levels intertwined. Exactly like in a real cave where water once found its own way.

And then something else became noticeable.

The light did not suddenly appear in the large hall. It began earlier. Here and there organically shaped windows appeared. Through these windows light entered that passed through transparent colors. That light projected moving colors onto the white walls, ceilings, and floors.

I realized that in the dream I was actually walking through a painting made of light. I had no idea where I was going. It was exciting, but above all I was curious and drawn forward by the beauty I was experiencing.

In the great hall something remarkable happened. In this softly welcoming cave, with an enormous wall of colored glass, the light seemed to flow through the space like music. The only thing I could do was lie down gently against a small hill. The people in the room followed my example. Not because anyone said so, but because the space itself almost asked for it. Everyone looked up at the light that streamed through the immense glass wall.

The light was not bright like sunlight coming through a window. It had something soft, almost alive. The colors moved slowly across the walls and ceiling as if they were breathing. For a moment it felt as if the space itself had become light.

Looking back, I noticed that my attention first went to the light, then to the artworks, and only afterwards to the people lying there. I suddenly thought of the line: “Heaven opens for me; these are the angels making music.” Perhaps this is what that phrase means.

Maybe that says something about the way I look.

Later another memory surfaced that I found beautiful to notice. In the dream the corridors kept crossing each other. Crossings have always meant something special to me. They are not endpoints of a line, but passages.

In crossings I often feel what I call moving stillness.

A place where movement gathers for a moment before everything flows onward again.

Perhaps that is also why the great hall made such an impression. Everyone arrived from a different corridor and had taken their own route. Yet in the end they all entered the same space.

Later, when we were outside again and everyone started exploring the area, I remained by the water for a moment.

Nearby stood a steel climbing structure. Two young people started climbing it: a boy and a girl.

While I was watching them something strange happened. I suddenly realized that the girl was myself.

She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, with a hairstyle I used to have. I saw her move the way I once moved—young, light, carefree.

As can happen in dreams, I became the girl, Annette standing there by the water with Ton, and at the same time the observer watching the film of my dream.

At that moment I was simultaneously the one watching, the one climbing, and the one seeing the whole.

I waited and kept watching until she had come down safely, out of care for the young Annette. I took her and her friend aboard the cruise ship.

And then the journey simply continued in my dream, and I was able to return again to the here and now.

Later that day I walked through the Wereldmuseum and saw a line from a poem:

To live like a tree, alone and free —
and like a forest in brotherhood, this is our longing.

That sentence stayed with me.

Perhaps dreams sometimes show something that I also recognize during the day: that every person walks their own path, but that occasionally there are moments when all those different paths touch.

And perhaps such a hall of light is exactly such a moment.

A place where different corridors come together,
where movement becomes still for a moment,
and where, just briefly, you can experience the whole.

And then everyone continues on their way again.

The dream remained in my system all day, and in the museum—especially in the hall of The Art of Poetry—the story and my understanding of it seemed to become a little more complete.

The dream did not speak in words.
The words only came later.

It is the language of my knowing — not the truth, but how it sounds to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Dream That Seems to Make No Sense -

How Symbolism Appears in Dreams

March 12, 2026

This morning I woke up from a dream that, at first, I hardly dared to write down.

One of those dreams where your first thought is: what a ridiculous dream again.
It seems to make no sense at all.
No logical story, no neat sequence, just strange images following one another.

Still, I started writing it down.

And that is always a special moment. Because as soon as I begin to write, something happens. The loose images — which at first seem strange and disconnected — slowly begin to arrange themselves. As if the dream only really reveals itself once it enters language.

In my dream a large painting lies flat on a table. About one by two meters. Over the painting there is a kind of grid fence about ten centimeters high. This creates ten by twenty compartments — two hundred little squares in total. In each square there is a small figure. When you remove such a figure, a shape remains behind.

I show a boy a tiny piece of hardened bodily fluid, about half a centimeter in size. Based on that fragment he must remove a figure from the grid so that a shape becomes visible that is about twenty times larger.

And somewhere in the dream I suddenly think:

of course — when you remove the figure, the form remains.

That sentence stays with me.

Because in fact that is exactly how I explain self-realization to participants in my courses. A form, for example, could be jealousy. But jealousy never appears in only one way. Sometimes it is obvious and rough, sometimes subtle, sometimes almost invisible. It comes to you in countless colors. One moment as envy, another as criticism, withdrawal, undermining, or disguised innocence. The expressions differ, but the underlying tone remains the same.

In my dream those expressions are not stories or behaviors, but little figures. Almost like small statues. Separate from each other. As if they have nothing in common. But once you remove them, the form underneath becomes visible.

Looking back, that may be what strikes me most about this dream: it shows something that I have long recognized in daily life and in my work, but now it presents it in an almost tangible image.

What also stands out to me is how strongly the dream contains elements of working with forms, proportions and almost mathematical logic. There is something measurable in it. A grid. Compartments. Numbers. Heights. Ratios. A tiny fragment that becomes enlarged into something much bigger. As if the dream is playing with the idea that within the small there is already a blueprint of the large.

The numbers also catch my attention.

For me, one refers to unity.
Two refers to duality.

The painting is one whole, yet it consists of ten by twenty squares. Ten and twenty do not feel like random numbers in the experience of such a dream. Ten has something of completeness, a finished sequence. Twenty is doubling, expansion, a movement toward more. Together they become two hundred compartments: a multitude of separate forms within one whole.

So on the one hand there is unity — the single painting, the single surface.
On the other hand there is differentiation — the many compartments, figures and variations.

That too fits with how I often look at human beings. The colors, the expressions, the stories and behaviors are endlessly different. Yet beneath those differences recognizable basic forms often appear.

Then the dream shifts again. First I work on a format of one by two meters. Then we go outside and essentially do the same thing again, but now on a work of ten by twenty meters.

That also strikes me. The dream moves from small to large. From something almost microscopic to something monumental. From a fragment of half a centimeter to forms that become twenty times larger. From a work on a table to a work outside, in open space.

It is as if the dream suggests that what you learn to see in the small also applies to the large. What becomes visible in a detail may also say something about the whole. What reveals itself in a tiny fragment may contain a larger principle or underlying pattern.

This connects for me to painting, to observation, to art — but just as much to human behavior. A small detail can sometimes be the key to a larger pattern.

In my work I sometimes call this looking on micro, meso and macro levels.

The micro level is the detail: a small piece of behavior, a remark, a reaction, a fragment of a situation. The meso level shows how that detail repeats itself in relationships and patterns between people. And on the macro level you can see how the same form may appear within larger structures, in groups, organizations or even in society.

In this dream that principle seems almost literally visible. A tiny fragment becomes enlarged into a form. A form in a painting becomes a pattern in a much larger work outside. What first appears small and insignificant turns out to be part of a larger whole.

And then the dream does what dreams often do: suddenly everything changes.

Suddenly I am standing in a historic city center near a harbor. Friends appear — people who have been divorced for twenty years, yet whom I still care about deeply. They have come to surprise me. They are carrying a baby. The moment I truly realize that it is Mats and Moni, I begin to cry. They embrace me. Then I wake up.

That part of the dream also has its own beautiful logic.

After all the work with form, grids, proportions and structure, something deeply human suddenly enters the scene. No schema anymore, no almost mathematical image, but meeting. Recognition. Love. Emotion.

It also reminds me that letting go does not necessarily mean an ending, but sometimes a new beginning. If I look at the symbolism of two separated people appearing together with a baby.

As the saying goes: when one door closes, another opens.

And then there is the baby.

Even without assigning a fixed meaning to it, it is striking that after all this looking at forms and patterns, an image of new life suddenly appears. Something new. Something vulnerable. Something not yet defined, but carried and protected. That this appears at the end of the dream, together with people I care about, gives the dream a surprisingly warm closing.

Perhaps that is also what touches me in this dream: that it begins with something almost abstract — form, pattern, proportion — and ends with something deeply human: crying, embracing, being surprised, seeing new life.

Apparently the two do not exclude each other.

On the contrary.

The longer I look at this dream, the more I see how it allows different layers to exist side by side. Something technical and something emotional. Something almost mathematical and something very human. Something artistic and something relational. Something small and something large. Unity and multiplicity. Structure and tenderness.

Perhaps that is exactly why I find dreams so interesting.

When I wake up, my first thought is often: what nonsense.
But once I begin to write, I see that symbolism and coherence can indeed appear. Not because I force it, but because the dream itself offers images that I would not have consciously invented in this way.

For me dreams are sometimes almost like fairy tales that you do not invent yourself, but that arrive.

Perhaps that is why so many ancient stories have their origin in dream images. A dream does not speak in tidy reasoning, but in images that touch something older than logic. Images that first appear absurd, yet later reveal a kind of inner order.

And perhaps that is why I keep writing them down.

Because again and again I see that what first seems to make no sense eventually reveals a form when given attention.

And perhaps that does not only apply to dreams.

Perhaps it also applies to life itself:
the colors are endlessly different, the figures seem unrelated, yet beneath them a form sometimes appears that is surprisingly familiar.

Perhaps this does not only happen in dreams.
Perhaps it also happens when we look at life itself.
First we see separate figures, events, people, colors.
Only later does something of the underlying form begin to appear.
And sometimes — just for a moment — we see how the small and the large, the thinking and the feeling,
the pattern and the human meet.
Perhaps that is the moment when a dream slowly begins to wake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Book That Writes Itself

March 11, 2026

Today I spent almost the entire day in conversation. The kind of conversation that doesn’t really begin anywhere and doesn’t really end either. One subject leads to another, like when you are walking and occasionally stop because something catches your attention.

It started with a simple idea. Perhaps I will use this chat for fairy tales. Not because I already know what kind of fairy tales they will be. Maybe old stories from different cultures, maybe something that simply emerges along the way. I truly don’t know yet. And perhaps that is exactly the right way to begin: not knowing.

During the conversation an image suddenly appeared in my mind. The image of a book. Not a book that you write, but a book that is already there. You open it and discover that the story continues to write itself while you read. Perhaps life is like that too. Sometimes you think you are writing it, but perhaps you are simply living, page by page, what unfolds.

The conversation moved through many subjects today. About how people often try so desperately to prevent chaos. When you watch talk shows and politics you see it constantly. There is something almost anxious about it, something forced. Yet history shows that change often arises after a period of chaos. It is as if humanity occasionally has to stumble before something new can grow. Personally, I cannot worry too much about it. I live now. And I continue living as long as life is there, within the circumstances that present themselves.

The conversation also touched on death. Just yesterday I told my cardiologist that I am not afraid to die. Of course, as long as I live I want the quality of my life to be as good as possible. But for me that quality is not only determined by what you can physically do. I see many people who are physically healthy and whose lives I would not want to exchange with my own. For me, the quality of life lies somewhere else. It is almost always there. Only when I am truly lazy and not engaged with anything does it feel like less quality. Otherwise I always experience a certain inner intensity. I may not move quickly, but inwardly a great deal is always happening.

I also spoke about yoga. For me yoga has never been an exercise that you do for an hour on a mat. For me yoga is Life, with a capital L. It is a way of learning to know your body as an instrument. By learning to know your body, you learn to know yourself. You listen to what is happening, to why you do the things you do. Yoga, for me, is not about unlearning things or throwing parts of yourself away. You need everything you possess as a human being. Including the ego. The ego is not some dirty thing that needs to be destroyed. It is better to get to know it, sometimes embrace it, and occasionally simply laugh at it.

At a certain point I was asked what the most difficult thing is for people to learn about themselves. I did not need even a second to think about it.

Patience.

Almost everything that truly grows needs time. You cannot force it. Not in the body, not in life, and not within yourself.

I also spoke about a few moments in my life when I sat somewhere in nature and watched and listened so completely that I lost all sense of time. Frogs in the water, light on the grass, a bird of prey circling above the trees, the warmth of the sun on my face. I sit there and suddenly hours have passed. Not because I was somewhere else, but because I was completely there.

At the end of the day another thought appeared, one that is actually very simple. People often speak about spirituality as if it is something special that some people have and others do not. But in my view all people are spiritual. Everyone tries to understand life, everyone searches for meaning in their own way.

And so I returned to the image that had appeared earlier today. The book. Perhaps somewhere there is a book that slowly opens. Page by page. Perhaps I am not writing it. Perhaps I am simply living it.

And perhaps,

somewhere between the lines of today,

the first fairy tale quietly began.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michel, 73

 

10 March 2026

March tenth is a special day for me.
Just as several days throughout the year have gained a deeper meaning over time.

Today I had an appointment at the heart clinic. A new cardiologist had proposed a few things that didn’t sit well with me. She gave both herself and me six weeks to think carefully about her proposals.

I noticed I was becoming rebellious.
That tends to make me dig my heels in.

For the past few days I had already been arguing with my cardiologist in my head.

Hahaha.

Michel used to do that at home too. He could already have an argument in his head with someone before actually confronting them.

I always thought that was ridiculous.

He would say:
“All the poison is out before I speak to them, and then everything goes smoothly.”

Maybe there was something to that after all.

And then something funny happened.

The appointment turned out to be exactly on his birthday.

That gave me an idea.

I allowed myself to argue in my head all weekend, hoping that today I could approach the conversation calmly. Perhaps Michel is looking down from a cloud somewhere with a smile, thinking: See Netje… it works.

And indeed.

It worked.

Both the cardiologist and I were in good spirits during the conversation. We reached agreements in a very reasonable way. A bit of give and take on both sides.

With clear explanations, people who know what they are doing, who work scientifically and show genuine curiosity, I am willing to cooperate.

You might think:
you simply do what a specialist tells you.

No.

That is not how it works for me.

But today I am content.

And then back to Michel.

Today he would have turned seventy-three.
He only lived to be sixty-two.

Michel was a mathematics teacher, so today I want to write something about the number 73.

Seventy-three is a special number.

It is the 21st prime number.
Its mirror image, 37, is the 12th prime number.
And the mirror of that, 21, is the product of seven and three.

In binary, 73 is a palindrome:
1001001.

The same forwards and backwards.

In Biblical numerology, 73 symbolizes divine insight and spiritual wisdom, pointing toward personal growth and inner clarity.

Psalm 73 is a prayer of gratitude. Not in response to physical danger, but to the resolution of a personal crisis.

Michel was not religious, but he was spiritually inclined, and he loved knowledge.

He would have loved this little piece about the number 73 — and undoubtedly would have had much more to say about it.

I smile when I think about how he could recite Biblical texts and connect mathematical facts with tarot or other symbolic systems.

Today it feels good, after eleven years, to remember him in this way.

Grateful that he was part of my life.

Grateful for this day.

Memories do not disappear.
They slowly transform
from pain into a quiet smile.

 

 

Those who wish to read more about the period after his passing can find it in

My Healing Journey.

 

 

 

Recovery

 

9 March 2026

Today I believe I experienced a turning point.
A real shift.

And I cannot explain to anyone how happy that makes me.

After a fall in the shower on January 1st, 2019, I injured my hip — actually my sacrum — so badly that sitting, lying down and walking were almost impossible. I will never forget the pain from that time. Painkillers, semi-opiates… it turned out I couldn’t tolerate them. It took months before I could move again without severe pain.

Because of my condition I live with pain 24 hours a day anyway. I have become used to that. It may sound strange, but that is simply how it is.

After about half a year things became more normal again, but a serious instability remained. One wrong movement or uncontrolled turn could throw me back for weeks or even months. Because of that immobility my weight slowly began to increase, which only pushed everything further into a downward spiral.

Last Friday I fell again.

While working on my painting I suddenly fell flat on my back. A hard fall. Immediate sharp pain in my knee, the back of my knee, and my ankle. There was also a deeper kind of paralysis that made walking almost impossible again.

I had to cancel my training.

And I have to admit, I was really disappointed about that.

The next two days I mostly spent in bed. Reading, writing, watching television. Mentally I was actually quite active.

After the first night I already felt reasonably well. My leg was stiff and bending it was still impossible, but what struck me most was something else: I had not fallen into the kind of overall malaise that usually followed an incident like this.

After the second night I could walk again. Carefully, and bending only worked step by step up to the point of pain. But it worked.

Today I decided to go to the E-Gym.

A little nervous, of course.

I had already decided that I would not put any pressure on myself. If it was too heavy or too painful, I would simply do what was possible and slowly build up again.

That attitude felt real.

Today there was also another strength measurement scheduled. I had prepared myself for many things, but not for what actually happened.

It went incredibly well.

Without pain.

This is one of the biggest breakthroughs since that fall in 2019. Normally a fall like this would have thrown me back for months. Now two days of rest seemed to be enough.

And that’s when I realized something.

My biggest victory is not that the kilos are still there.

My biggest victory is that my body’s ability to recover has changed.

My body recovers.

That is the real answer to my wellbeing.

And I don’t say this easily, but today I will say it:

I am incredibly proud of myself.

Perhaps this is what recovery really means.
Not that the body will never fall again,
but that it learns how to rise again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

God’s Fool

 

March 8, 2026

Once there was a clown.
That clown was me.

I painted her: colorful, transparent, playful — but with a large tear on her face. I gave that painting away forty years ago. It was who I was. An image of myself as I saw myself.

It was a coping mechanism: seeing the humor in everything. Hiding my pain behind jokes and laughter. It was a deeply inner and very vulnerable part of myself.

In trust, I told this to someone. I literally exposed my soul.

Then this person told it publicly to a whole group of people, as if she herself saw me that way. Perhaps sharing it with her had given her a kind of permission to speak openly about it.

The shock of hearing my own words coming from someone else’s mouth — as if they were her words — is something I have never forgotten.

Did I feel betrayed?
Did I feel shame?
How is a clown actually seen?

Today I was reading a story about Francis of Assisi. In earlier times there was often a court jester at royal courts. Why, you might wonder?

Because there are things the so-called wise people do not understand. Their cleverness and sharpness can close their minds. A fool or jester could say anything and dare to speak freely, because he was not afraid of the consequences.

Within the fool lives a wise person.
And within the wise person lives a fool.

I do not know whether people at that time already thought about it in such psychological ways, but it did bring balance.

After his enlightenment, Francis of Assisi became Saint Francis, and he called himself “God’s Fool.”

That brings me to the thought that when a person is serious and carries responsibility, that is beautiful. But only when that same person can also laugh at themselves, can put things into perspective, and can preserve a childlike freedom and sense of wonder.

When these can exist side by side within you, perhaps that is the path toward consciousness.

Looking back at that shock around the clown within me, I now see a very vulnerable child. I was deeply hurt when that child was exposed by someone else.

But now the uninhibited child — the fool who fears nothing — can finally find a place in my life.

Bold.
Uninhibited.
Frank and free.

Becoming a master of life.

Perhaps the fool is not the one who understands nothing.
Perhaps it is the one who finally dares to be who they truly are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Power of Stillness 2

 

March 7,  2026

This work came into being after my stroke. Not as a plan, but as a process.

I began with gold.
Simply because it had to be the first layer. Gold that carries everything within it — light, life force, something that remains and is always there. Sometimes you know it is there, and sometimes — perhaps even often — you seem to forget.

Over it I let colour flow: light blue, lilac, magenta and white. For me these are the colours of awareness. The paint found its own path. Sometimes clusters formed, almost like cells. Sometimes the surface opened. The gold began to push through the layers, revealing fracture lines I had never planned.

I do not try to control that.
I simply watch what happens.

In those lines I recognised something of my own life. The cracks that appear when life breaks or shifts direction. It reminds me of the Japanese idea of Kintsugi: not repairing something in order to hide the break, but showing where it happened — because that is often where a new kind of beauty emerges.

Then another layer of thinking and feeling appeared.
Circles.

A form that, for me, represents wholeness, unity and equality — something natural and honest.

They are not painted, but placed above the work as a new dimension. Transparent plexiglass that catches the light and changes with the angle from which it is seen. As if you are looking through a different lens. The same reality, but deepened.

At the bottom something earthly appeared.
Raw wool. From the sheep. Dyed in the same colours as the painting. The soft, the tangible — life that also needs ground beneath it.

And then the question arose: can the canvas carry this?

Just as a person sometimes needs a stronger spine to move forward, the work itself needed reinforcement. The back of the panel was strengthened. Then the building began: drilling, fixing, creating space between the layers. Wooden beads became small carriers of that space, like planets in a galaxy — part of the universe, just like you and me.

The process was technical.
But it was also a metaphor.

About how a human being grows. Not by adding something new, but by deepening into what was already there. The form remains the same, but the colours change.

For me this work is about gentleness.
First towards myself.
And from there, towards the world.

In that stillness, there is strength.

Power of Stillness

The form had always been there.
Only the light changed.
And in that new light
it became visible
what had been whole
all along.

Power of Stillness

 

March 6, 2026

They say the last stretch is the hardest. Unfortunately, that was certainly the case today. My painting is finally finished, but it did cause quite a stir.

Through a moment of inattention I fell very hard. I twisted my left knee, and my ankle is now swollen, deep purple and painful. I also fell flat on my back. Let’s knock on wood — strangely enough I don’t feel my hips yet, even though that has been a weak spot for me for years. It really was a heavy fall.

Now I am sitting on my bed writing this little piece, in quite a bit of pain.

Still, I may be mistaken, but I have the feeling that I won’t be as badly off as I would have been in past years. Because of my daily training I think I have gained more strength in my body to recover from this — like a healthy person would. At least, that’s how it feels. Maybe it is wishful thinking. But something in me is different.

A moment ago my husband asked if I would like to have a glass of wine to toast the completion of my work.

After two glasses of wine I am now a little tipsy. I’m not used to drinking alcohol. So it is also a bit exciting to see how I will finish writing this blog piece. If something goes wrong, it will be because I allow myself to be carried away by my mood instead of paying attention to my own actions. My clarity seems somewhat blurred at the moment.

My painting, my work, is finished. It is my own creation. It is the result of years of being myself, up to this moment. There are many things I have done, and many things I think could have been done better. But I cannot and do not want to keep control over that. I have to let it go.

My mind is creative. Creative with thoughts.

By observing myself and my work I see light blue and lilac light — the colors of my spiritual awakening. I see transparent and frost-like circles that refine or soften. I see stillness, silence and movement. The gold rising through the cracks. It symbolizes the beauty of loss, failure and pain.

Life sometimes feels like chaos, but in reality it is almost a mathematical pattern in which we move and in which we may place our trust. I think of quantum physics, and I am convinced that even that goes another dimension further.

All I can do is translate a cosmic movement with earthly precision and sensitivity.

Working on Power of Stillness brings out all the aspects of who I am at this moment.

And in the final stretch I crossed my own boundary once more — by falling, shouting at my husband, and now, after two glasses of wine, feeling a little drunk.

What am I drunk on?

On releasing my deepest movements?
On the flow that took over for more than a week?
On exposing transparency?

Or simply on exhaustion?

Perhaps completion is always a little dizzying.
Because something that lived inside you for a long time
is finally allowed to enter the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maintenance and Liberating

March 4, 2026

This morning I woke up with a word that had remained from a night full of dreams: liberating. Not liberation, but liberating. The difference was even corrected in the dream. “No,” was said when I thought the word liberation. Not an end point, but a movement. Not something that is achieved, but something that creates space while life simply continues.

The night before, another word had lingered: maintenance. I hadn’t written it down. I was tired and went to bed early. But when I thought about it this morning, it seemed as if those two words followed each other. First maintenance, then something liberating. As if a system first asks for care and attention before movement can arise again.

It did not feel grand or spectacular. More like gentle sobriety. Calm. Moving stillness.

Moving stillness — that is actually the best way to describe it. Not stagnation, but not restlessness either. A current that moves without making noise.

And somewhere in that quiet the word ether appeared. Not as a thought that needed reflection, but as a clear knowing. Space and connection at the same time. Because space is connection. Without space, connection suffocates. Without connection, space becomes empty.

Perhaps that is also why my dreams lately seem to need fewer and fewer images. Sometimes only a word remains. And that is enough.

I woke up fully alert, took my beads apart, and began the day.

Perhaps that is what liberating means. Not that everything is solved, but that enough space appears to start moving again.

And that is exactly what happened: movement.

First training, and then continuing with my painting. At least that was the plan. Ton had taken the car to a garage, and I started pre-drilling the beads I had made. Outside it was bright and sunny. I realized I still needed screws and thought I could pick them up by bicycle at a hardware store ten kilometers away. Being outside — fresh air, wind, sun — perfect.

It seemed like a healthy way to take some distance from my creation.

After cycling twenty-six kilometers we returned home, with screws, but also quite tired. After resting for an hour I continued working on the painting. It is fun and exciting, but also an intensive task.

When I began to feel my muscles again, I decided that tomorrow is another day. I can simply stop.

A liberating thought.

And better maintenance of myself than I have been used to giving.

Am I finally going to learn it?

This responsibility, freedom, and love for myself?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seeing Is Enough

 

March 3, 2026

“Hello, we were unable to deliver your package to your address.
New delivery location: THE LORD SERVICE 2 OUDE VEER PAPENDRECHT, 3353 GS.”

I am simply at home. No one rings the doorbell. And then I receive this email. This happens so often. In the past, I would truly get angry about it. Filed complaints and so on. They don’t feel like coming by, so they prefer to take it straight to a pickup point. That way the driver gets off work earlier. Understandable — it’s nice weather.

The pickup point, if I’m unlucky, has the same issue: not processing it right away because people want to sit on a terrace as soon as possible. So with a bit of luck, tomorrow.

Sa Ta Na Ma. Breathe in, breathe out.

I feel irritation — practical irritation, because it simply isn’t true.
But also an old charge. In the past, this would really make me angry. Not anymore. I see the mechanism. I even relativize it now, because I can also see the human side.

In the past, this was one of those moments when my sense of justice would fully switch on. The invisibility. Not being taken seriously. Not ringing the doorbell.

That touches something old in me.
My nervous system now remains calm.

In my self-realization course, I always tried to help people find the form — not the color, but that one container concept that more or less determines their life. Once they find that one word, they begin to recognize the thousands of colors in which it appears.

What lies underneath for me is that I am allergic to any form of manipulation.
What UPS is doing now is also a form of manipulation.

The form is called manipulation.
The color can have thousands of different expressions.
In the end, the container concept is: MANIPULATION.

My childhood was full of it.

My body recognizes it immediately. This is not about the package that wasn’t properly delivered. The words in the email do not match the behavior. The truth is shifted, responsibility is denied. And with that, my intuition is undermined.

That is what I am allergic to.

My nervous system recognizes the pattern before my mind analyzes it. That touches me — I notice it again and again. A reality is being created that does not align with what is true. And that is exactly what manipulation does.

What is remarkable is that I still register it physically right away, but I no longer become angry. I can now better distinguish between their behavior and my reality. Seeing is enough. That already brings peace.

Through these small events — which nevertheless contain the container concept that has shaped much of my life — I can observe a shift in my response.

The form will always remain a theme.
I will continue to recognize and acknowledge more colors.
My reaction will move more and more toward calm and acceptance.

That is where my inner growth lies.

What does not align, I recognize.
What I recognize, I no longer need to fight.
Seeing is sometimes already liberation.

 

 

 

 

 

Millimeter Work

 

March 2, 2026

After spending two days mostly in bed again, I was able to go train early this morning. Hours of painting in a row had been just a bit too much. Less than usual, because I had gone to bed on time. Still, I need to take more rest breaks — even if it simply means setting my timer to go off every hour so I take a fifteen-minute pause.

My slow rehabilitation after the stroke succeeded, so holding onto this agreement with myself while working is something I can — and simply must — do.

For my creation I needed wooden slats, screws, new drill bits, and a work plank.

Ton came up with the idea of asking the sawmill about leftover scrap wood. I would not have thought of that myself — but why not? At the sawmill he is given a plank from the waste bin. They do mention that it is actually not allowed.

At the checkout, Ton honestly explains how he got the plank. The woman in question, rather large in stature, stands in front of him with her legs apart, hands on her hips, chest and chin thrust forward, and says in a curt, harsh tone:
“That’s not allowed! Take that plank back.”

Ton tries to say something in a friendly way. She does not listen, remains in her confrontational posture, and repeats relentlessly:
“It’s not allowed!”

Ton calmly walks back to the sawmill. I step aside and wait around a corner, somewhere I can no longer see this woman. Still, I continue to feel this unkind behavior in my body. Even later, in the car, the feeling has not disappeared.

“Why do I always keep feeling these kinds of things for so long?” I say to Ton.
I don’t understand why people act like that. I don’t like it.
Is that really what I’m asking myself? Or am I simply angry?
Well… I don’t know.

With a restless feeling, we drive to another hardware store. As soon as we enter, I hear a cashier speaking cheerfully. We walk to the saw section at the back of the store. An employee says:
“Oh yes, there’s a large bin in the back. Just have a look and see if there’s something you can use.”

So friendly.

The woman at the checkout is happy for us that we found a suitable plank. I tell her that her cheerful mood and customer friendliness have made my day better again.

We stop by the supermarket on the way home. In front of it Ton says, “Just park the car here for a moment, I’ll be right back.”

While I’m standing there, a huge truck approaches. He drives straight toward me and deliberately blocks me in. A young driver turns on his high beams and calmly sits there waiting. I have to make strange maneuvers to get out. Millimeter work. Half over a high curb.

I drive around and find another spot. Then I see him simply reverse his truck. So yes — deliberate teasing.

Fortunately, the cheerfulness of the cashier was still lingering, and I was able to smile at this petty behavior.

Once home, I immediately started sawing and drilling. One hour — and then I wisely stopped.

My plan to visit my sister in the hospital, I let go. Tomorrow is another day.

Normally, once I am up, I immediately carry out everything I have in mind. Now I have to make choices and distribute my energy more wisely.

It worked today.

But… still much to learn in that regard.

What touches me may be there.
What exhausts me may wait.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Emerges Is Allowed to Be

 

March 1, 2026

I never know exactly what I am going to make.
I begin.

A first layer of gold and silver. I know it “eats” the acrylic. How exactly, I don’t know. I once discovered that by accident. Almost everything I can do, I have learned this way — by doing. Not through manuals, but through curiosity.

If something turns out differently than I expected, I don’t call it a failure. I continue with it. I have never thrown anything away because it “wasn’t good.” Sometimes I store a work in my studio. Years later, it suddenly reappears. As if it has been waiting for me.

This painting began to eat. The gold crept into the cracks, the top layer pulled open. I could keep watching it as it dried. That moment always feels magical to me. I do nothing, and yet everything happens. The material continues working.

It made me so happy. Truly happy. Not proud in the sense of “look at me.” But joyful. Content. Every step felt right. As if I were listening to something inside me that knew exactly what needed to happen.

I realize that in ordinary life I may not always have had enough self-respect. That I adapted, swallowed things, held myself back. But the moment I create, that disappears. There is no doubt. There is no negotiation. What emerges is allowed to be.

I never find anything I make ugly. Not even the wasp’s nest. Because it is always honest. It is a step in a process. And every step is right in that moment.

Now I already see what the next addition will be. It will gain an extra dimension. Light and shadow. I still need to call technicians to ask how to handle the material. In my mind, the image is complete. But from experience I know it will change during the making. It usually does. And it almost always becomes better than what I could have imagined beforehand.

That may be the most beautiful part of all.

I am simply happy and content with what I create.
And that is enough.

In the act of making, I am not smaller.
There is no doubt, no judgment, no negotiation.
There, I listen.
And what I hear takes form.

 

 

 

 

 

The Magic Wand Is Not Needed

 

February 28, 2026

Someone asked me:
“If you could instantly be healed by a magic spell, would you want that?”

I had never asked myself that question before. It is interesting. Because in moments when things feel heavy, I often think about what it would be like to simply walk. Or how life would feel without pain. But to stand there — point blank — with the choice to suddenly be healthy?

When I thought about it more deeply, I wondered: what would I get in return?
Would I still be such a persevering person?
Would I still search for ways to make life more livable?
Would it benefit my creativity?
Would I still look at people the way I do?
Would the HALO effect begin to operate in a healthy Annette?
Is that something to be happy about?
Would I want to be like my healthy friends?

All those questions rushed through my mind.

Has my disability not shaped me into who I am now?
I strongly feel that I can — and may — be content with who I am.

Some people acquire scars during life. Some are born with them. A few seem to have some kind of free pass and encounter little pain or sorrow.

I am also blessed in that the storms I encountered were not immediately felt by me as insurmountable obstacles.

Because of the question, I suddenly felt light, like a butterfly.

I thought of a butterfly emerging from her cocoon. She must struggle to break free so that afterward she is strong enough to fly. If you help the butterfly out of her cocoon too quickly, she will not be strong enough. She may flutter briefly, then land and die.

In a way, this applies to people as well.

Perhaps this sounds dramatic, but in that sense I was born with fortune. No golden spoon, but a powerful beginning — with the possibility of becoming mentally strong enough to withstand all elements.

In short: the magic wand is not needed.
The magic lives within me.

No magic spell.
Just living.
Which turns out to be magic already.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bruised Grass

 

February 27, 2026

“Where you place your attention, that is your life…” I read in a magazine.

Goodness. That is quite a statement. In my case, it means my life is far more colorful than one might think at first glance.

What people can see on the outside:
I get up, write down my dream if I still remember it. Wash, eat, train. Stay home when the weather is bad. Write, paint. When the weather is good, I cycle or walk with the little dogs. Every now and then, a visit to a museum.

On the inside:
I see and hear so much passing by. My associative memory is always in a kind of overdrive. I watch many films and series. Every day there is something I have seen or heard that stays with me.

It gives my life its color. Out of curiosity, I often look things up — to understand what something is really about, or simply to know more.

Since the age of twenty-four, I have been declared 100% disabled. And yet my days are always full, and I am truly never bored. Human behavior, nature, art, science — you name it. There is almost nothing that does not interest me.

Later that day I came across a poem by Jeong Ho-Seung. I would like to share it:

__

Grass, too, has its bruises.
Petals, too, have their bruises.
Walking across a field that I used to walk with you,
I sit to watch the changing evening colors
as leaves of grass speckled with bruises wave their hands.
It’s the petals with many bruises
that have the sweetest scent.
—

What a beautiful image to express the pain and vulnerability of life in this way. The beauty of nature — which I often use as a metaphor myself. The sweet fragrance released from bruised petals. The inner richness that can be found through hardship.

The blades of grass sway in the wind despite their bruised tips. How beautifully resilience and acceptance are described here. It also shows that we all carry pains and scars within us. In that, we can find connection through communication. Every blade of grass is unique, and at the same time, just a blade of grass like any other.

The peace of simply being a bruised blade of grass brings me closer to the essence.

For me, the essence is very small in its greatness.

What is bruised still breathes.
And sometimes, it even smells sweeter.

 

 

 

 

Friendship

 

february 26, 2026

On the radio I hear an interview with someone who is currently performing in the theater with a theme very much of our time.
He tells how, during the corona period, he was gaming online. There he met a boy in Norway with whom he later developed intensive online contact. He experiences this as a true friendship. That is why he wrote a theater piece around this theme.

He also has a friend with whom he plays squash once a week, followed by a beer and conversation. Personally, he does not consider one friendship to be inferior to the other. In both cases there is connection. In both cases there is an exchange of personal thoughts and experiences.

Interesting, I think.

It brings me back to my mother, who once wrote letters to my father in the Dutch East Indies. After his death, she destroyed those letters. They contained an intimacy meant only for the two of them, not for anyone else.
I also think of my sister, who for a long time communicated with her current husband only through letters. They fell in love without physical contact. She experienced those letters as deeply intimate.

Why should an online friendship not be placed within that same framework?

Can we really speak of online versus “real life”?
That would diminish online communication, as if it does not belong to real life.

Perhaps the theme of that theater piece is indeed: online versus in person.

What are the differences?

In person — you smell someone. You see someone, not only their appearance but how they move, how they are present.
Online — no optical noise. More focus. Perhaps, because of that, even more depth.

Could it be that when one sense falls away, another sense becomes stronger? Or perhaps even something like a sixth sense? As sometimes happens with people who have a disability, where the loss of one faculty deepens another.

I find this way of rethinking things, like Loesje, refreshing.

With the energy of my training still in my body and the conversation on the radio lingering in my mind, I can continue my day with good courage.

Perhaps true closeness is not about distance or proximity,
but about attention.

Whether you sit across from one another
or thousands of miles apart —
where words land
and silence is shared,
there friendship lives.

 

 

 

 

 

Liberating Self-Respect

 

February 25, 2026

My body reacts to a sentence I hear:
Men fight the hardest when they have been neglected by their mother.

This is how it works for me: I see something and can always recall that image. Or I hear something and it lingers close within my awareness. Sometimes I encounter the theme later in life. Sometimes it speaks immediately. The first thing I do is ask myself: why does this stay with me?

Do immediate clues arise? Can I do something with it right away? If not, it can be parked. It will present itself when the time is right. That can vary from a day to years. Eventually it falls into place like a puzzle piece.

This sentence immediately brings me to my brothers. To our family. What do I stumble over?

I experience the stereotyping as problematic because it links behavior to gender and points to a single cause. Human behavior is rarely mono-causal. Attachment, temperament, culture, parenting style, genetics, social position — everything plays a role. This quote is powerful because it is vivid, not because it is complete.

Neglect affects every child, doesn’t it? One may fight, dominate, compete. Another withdraws, adapts, or becomes a perfectionist. Yet another develops hyper-responsibility or empathic over-sensitivity.

What happens to people who receive too much love and protection? Could that not lead to fear of failure or strong dependency? Or to rebellion in order to feel autonomous? Is it not true that too much protection can be just as limiting as too little care? It is more subtle, I think.

Do the two extremes automatically create opposite characters? Or is it not as straightforward as a saying suggests?

Isn’t the core question for everyone simply:
Am I safe being myself?

Is there not always something contained within a quote, a proverb, a saying? And yet — isn’t it too short-sighted? Isn’t it more like looking through a lens than looking at the whole landscape?

Is a quote sometimes used as something to hide behind? To avoid taking responsibility?

My thoughts go to my father. He was almost glued together with proverbs and sayings. Perhaps that is where my resistance lies when I hear such interpretations.

My father did not take responsibility for the dysfunction of my mother. He saw it, even acknowledged it, but he was not willing to correct it, to stand up against it, or to help us as children.

I feel no sadness, but I do find it regrettable that he did not take more from his life. That he did not gather the courage. That belongs to him, not to me.

More and more I am beginning to recognize my subtle resistances. That is beautiful.

This morning I felt in a different way that I do not always have to be the one who steps toward others in order to generate interest in me. If someone wants to read my dreams or blog, they can save my website on their phone. I stop facilitating. I stop carrying. I stop adjusting.

It feels liberating. It has to do with priority. How much do I have or feel that for myself?

This is a small shift with enormous inner impact. Tears come to my eyes as I write this. Not out of sadness, but out of liberating self-respect.

What I no longer carry
does not fall apart.
It returns to where it belongs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nothing Has To. Everything Is Possible.

 

February 24, 2026

Over the past months I have been intensely focused on training, getting fitter, and writing my dreams and blog. Several times ideas flew through me to start painting or creating something. But I noticed there was no response or action within me to actually bring them into form.

Today something shifted. How shall I put it? It’s tingling. But the flow isn’t fully there yet.

In the past, when the flow came, I would shut myself away in my studio. I would work as if in a trance. I let whatever emerged from me unfold and would go on day and night if necessary. It was fine if someone brought me food or something to drink, but I became irritated if they wanted to talk to me.
When I finished, I usually collapsed completely and often needed weeks to recover from such a creative outburst.

Until now, my life consisted of either running or standing still. When I felt good, I extracted everything from it as if these were my last moments in this life. Afterwards came a total breakdown — sick in bed — in order to come to a halt again.

There has always been an acceptance that this was simply how I functioned. This is how I want to live, and the people around me must accept that. After all, I am already grateful to still be here.

After my stroke — which ultimately had more impact on me than the neurological condition I have lived with my entire life — something changed.

During the first six months of rehabilitation, I could not improve myself through brute force or endurance. This path required patience, careful pacing, and honest attunement. Not perseverance, but resilience. Not hardening, but softness. Not a destination, but alignment.

Never before had I felt the need to approach something slowly or in a reduced way. Now I had no choice. And it brought me to a new insight.

Do I want to grow old? YES.
Then I will have to distribute my energy calmly. Pushing my limits is no longer necessary. If it’s too heavy? Stop. Continue at another moment. Listen to my body — it quickly signals resistance.

I have been doing this for a year now. I feel calm. Freed from all the “shoulds.” From all the stress I imposed on myself.

These days I do it differently. I no longer work in my studio but in the living room. There is a lot of light there, and my work remains part of life itself. It can literally continue speaking to me. Now I simply try to go to bed and trust that the flow will not disappear. This way I no longer exhaust myself.

The tables are set up in the living room. The canvas, foam, wool, and paint are waiting for me.

Nothing has to. Everything is possible.

What a wonderfully peaceful feeling.

What grows slowly takes deeper root.
What is not forced, remains.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Showing Up in a Mysterious Life

 

February 23, 2026

On Netflix I watched The Last Words of Eric Dane. A handsome, athletic actor who passed away last Thursday, February 19, from ALS. He was fifty-three years old.

The mystery of life in its pure outward form. Why does something like this happen to a healthy, successful person? As everyone has experienced or witnessed in their own surroundings — a child, a vibrant person, suddenly ill, in an accident, gone. How is it possible? Why? Is there a purpose to it? Is there a purpose at all? In short, life is mysterious.

I am writing now from the memory of watching this interview. In doing so, it becomes clear to me what specifically stayed with me.

A few things stood out…

• He spoke about the discrepancy between his inner world and his outer world. About being a sensitive, vulnerable person with many insecurities, feeling he had never been enough. The outside world saw him as this handsome, successful actor. That friction had always been there. He also reflected on a history of alcohol and drug abuse.

• His father ended his own life when he was seven years old. His mother was young and could not fully sense or understand the impact on her son. He was raised by his grandmother, whom he loved deeply, but she passed away only a few months later. According to Dane, trauma never completely disappears because it becomes encapsulated at a cellular level. You can learn to live with it — that is all.

• He had never truly been able to open himself to people, yet this illness made him softer, more open, more available.

• All the outer layers and participation in life are slowly stripped away. What remains is simply the person he is.

The interviewer responded:
“So it has literally flipped — from inwardly closed and outwardly open, to inwardly open and outwardly closed.”

Beautifully said. Because that is how I see it too — a transformation within matter before the transformation into the immaterial presents itself.

When asked what makes a good father, or a good human being, Dane answered: “Showing up.”

Wow. That is so true. Being present at moments that matter to your loved ones. Being there for your friends simply by coming.

It briefly brought me back to my own parents, who never came to watch a sports game, a performance, or anything else we did as children. They did not even attend graduation ceremonies. Nothing at all.

If you ask me whether that was a trauma, I have to honestly say I did not experience it that way. It was simply normal for us children.

I do wonder whether I have done this enough for my own children. Being there when it is needed. I believe I attended performances and graduation ceremonies, yes. Visiting friends is something I do little of. But being there when it truly matters — that I do.

In any case, I found “Showing up” to be a striking answer.

After my stroke, much has changed within me as well. I am still here. And I hope to continue hopping around on this earth for a long time to come.

Why one person becomes ill and another does not — we do not know. Whether there is a purpose in it remains an open question. But I do see that illness can create a shift. That it can strip away layers. That it can bring someone closer to who they truly are.

Perhaps that is the only thing we can do in the time we are given — to appear.
To show up.
Simply come. Be present.
In this inexplicable, mysterious life.

What is taken away sometimes reveals what was already there.
A human being without decoration.
A heart that finally dares to appear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Inner Architecture

February 22, 2026

My inner architecture is not about walls and roofs, but about how space, color, and life take shape within me. Looking at houses is not an odd habit for me — it is a way of being.

For as long as I can remember, I have looked at houses with real estate agents. In the Netherlands, abroad, at the edge of forests, with large open spaces and deep gardens. Preferably with a piece of woodland of their own. I often know exactly what is for sale. Not because I am dissatisfied with where I live. On the contrary. I am always happy to be home. I often say it out loud: “What a lovely house we have.” Ton laughs at that. He knows how important my own space is to me. And he is part of that space.

Still, I look. Curious. Hopeful. Not to possess, but to feel. How does the light fall? Where would my work hang? How would the floor flow? What does this house want? I impose nothing; I attune. First the house, then the sofa. First the space, then the color. My current home is turquoise and green, with marmoleum Asian Tiger under my feet. Sheltered. Like a place in the forest in the middle of chaos. It carries me. It regulates me. I have learned to make every place I live my own, whether large or small. Tidy disorder. Everything has its place, yet you can see that life happens here.

And yet, slowly, another image is forming. Soft yellow walls. Light. An orangery. My paintings and texts together. A wall where visitors may write or paint if they wish. They don’t have to — they may. Solid stairways so people can choose their position. High, low, close, at a distance. Not a gallery, but a field. Welcome. Rest. Moving stillness.

I notice that my path does not change in form, only in color. From forest green to yellow. From shelter to openness. Not because my life now is lacking, but because it is ripening. I dream without rejecting my present existence. If it ever becomes reality, beautiful. If not, I will continue painting and writing as I eat and sleep. It is daily hygiene of body and mind.

Perhaps that is my inner architecture. I do not build walls to protect myself, but spaces in which I can breathe. And when I cycle past a house, my imagination immediately begins to arrange it. Not out of lack, but out of vitality. Some people walk into clothing stores. I walk into real estate agencies. They ask: what suits me? I ask: where do I belong?

Perhaps my dreams are neither deception nor literal truth, but direction. An organic image that forms without haste. I do not need to force anything. I listen. And when something is right, I know it. KLARO.

What color is your inner architecture? And do you already live in a sheltered place — or are you ready for light?

What am I truly building when I look at houses?
Is it a dream of stone — or of space within myself?
When does shelter become light?
And do I dare to trust that my inner architecture will always bring me home?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trix, a Waterfall and a City Full of Animals – Naturalis and Zootropolis 2

 

21 February 2026

Yesterday we visited the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden with our granddaughters. In the great hall stood Trix, the nearly complete Tyrannosaurus rex who carries no complicated Latin name there, but is simply called Trix. The girls were a little restless at first, but the moment we stepped inside something shifted. High ceilings, bones larger than their entire bodies, time suddenly no longer a number but a space you could stand beneath.

“This is the most impressive,” they said without consulting each other.
I asked why.

Because she is almost entirely complete.
Because you can really see her.
And because she has a name.

That last part stayed with me. A skeleton is old, distant, millions of years gone. But give it a name and it becomes someone. Something you can relate to. Something that remains.

A City Full of Animals

Today we sat in the cinema watching Zootropolis 2. A city full of animals, all different. Big, small, predator, prey, fast, cautious. In the car I asked what the film was really about. They searched for words. I helped a little.

About differences.
About how being different does not mean being dangerous.
That you are not automatically right simply because you are you.
That another perspective can make your world larger instead of smaller.

They listened, looked out of the window, lost in thought. It wasn’t a grand conversation. Just a gentle back-and-forth movement of ideas.

A Jungle with a Waterfall

At home they began painting with my materials. Paint on their hands, brushes between their fingers, aprons that are actually too big.

One called her painting Mini Jungle. In the center a waterfall falls. Not a thin line, but a firm, light stream running from top to bottom. You can see the brushstrokes as water. Dark walls on either side, bright green grass below. A leopard sits at the front and watches. A monkey hangs, birds fly. Everything lives. The waterfall does not divide the jungle; it flows through it.

The other painted a Tropical Sunset. An enormous yellow sun half sinking into the water, a sky of purple and red that is not careful, birds in the distance, a palm tree silhouetted in black against the color. It is large, almost cinematic. They give their world a name, and in doing so it becomes theirs.

As I sit there and watch, I see the line between yesterday and today.
Trix received a name and became someone instead of a species.
In the film, animals learned not to reduce each other to boxes.
At my table, colors blend without fear.
And in the middle of a jungle, water falls.

Movement between dark and light.

I don’t have to make anything of it. It is enough simply to see it. Perhaps that is what I most want to pass on: space where differences are allowed to exist, where something receives a name and comes closer, where a waterfall may simply flow without someone insisting it divides the jungle in two.

If I am honest, I feel something warm there. No grand pride, no educational triumph. Just gratitude that I am allowed to sit there while their worlds come into being.

Trix received a name.
A jungle received a waterfall.
A sunset received color unafraid of purple next to red.

Perhaps that is all we do.
Not making each other smaller than we are.
Not reducing one another to species, role, or difference.

At my table, water flows through paint.
And I sit there.
And watch.

 

 

 

 

 

 Balm

20 February 2026

Ton and I went to Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden with two of our grandchildren. The building itself is already a pleasure to look at. Red-orange rough natural stone blocks, with an edge probably cast in concrete but shaped with molds reminiscent of the designs in the clothing of Iris van Herpen. Undulating, textured, almost fossil-like. Windows in evenly spaced organic forms like a honeycomb or an almond shape from Benoit Mandelbrot. The parking garage with two large half-spheres resembling the compound eye of an insect.

I was already happily surprised before even entering the museum. Inside, these windows form an enormous atrium that lets in abundant light. It was very busy — many parents with children. Clearly school holidays. And yet this museum breathes light and space.

In the first hall, “Life,” you encounter a great diversity of animals. From sea creatures to land animals, birds, insects — biodiversity. In this room I could immediately feel that I am part of this immense diversity. I am part of this organic system. It made me instantly humble.

The next hall, “The Earth,” makes you feel how small we actually are. The Earth is 4.6 billion years old and still in motion. Forces of volcanoes, earthquakes, tectonic plates. Yes, I genuinely felt immersed and carried along by this museum.

There were halls dedicated to the Ice Age, to seduction (how animals flirt and mate), and to early humans. This hall contained only one early human; the rest had once been excavated during the Dutch colonial period in Indonesia and have been returned to their country of origin. It did me good to see this stated so clearly and prominently. Also that, as a result, a dark black room had been created — almost as an equivalent of the dark period the colonized countries endured. I do not know whether everyone would interpret it this way, but that is how I felt it.

Then we entered the “Age of Dinosaurs.” Oh my God, how impressive it was. The famous T-Rex, the astonishingly large Triceratops and many more, 66 to 240 million years old. A turtle from 145 million years ago, still recognizable today. I said to my granddaughter, “As humans, we should have enormous respect for species that have been moving on this earth far longer than we have.” In this hall I felt awe and a kind of vicarious shame for the arrogance of humanity. The sense that we still know so little about the Earth and her universe.

The last hall we visited was “Death.” In the “labyrinth of death,” you discover how death and life ultimately come together. Beautifully expressed and, in my eyes, profoundly true — that death literally gives life. Because in the cycle of nature they both belong. How fitting that there is a hall about death in a museum about all of life.

Ton initially came along mainly to be a loving grandfather, not necessarily because he wanted to visit this museum. He too was pleasantly surprised and impressed by how beautiful, interesting, and thoughtfully composed it is.

It was like balm for my soul.

Amid bones, stones, and millions of years
I found no heaviness
but space.
I am small —
and precisely because of that
I belong.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Freedom in Love

February 19, 2026

Tonight a sentence from a Korean series lingered with me:
Pain is the proof of life.
Pain lives inside us.
Having someone next to you to share your pain with reduces your pain.

I immediately thought: life begins with pain. Birth is not a gentle entrance. The first breath is a shock. The first movement is separation. Perhaps pain does not only belong to the end of life, but also to the beginning.

In the series, it was about sharing pain. About having someone beside you. About recognizing each other’s pain. I noticed that this is not familiar territory for me. I do not easily accept being comforted. I find comforting someone else complicated. When it becomes too much — too intense, too close — it feels suffocating. Then resistance arises. Then I want space. I prefer to determine my own possibilities.

During dinner I told Ton that I sometimes miss my friend who passed away almost two years ago. I had two “besties”; now I have one. I also told him about my mother-in-law, who lost her three closest friends and then literally said she no longer wanted to live. A few months later, she was gone. Perhaps I am always preparing myself for being alone. That sounds harsh. But it does not feel that way. It feels more like autonomy. A way to remain standing, whatever happens.

In that same conversation it became clear to me what truly suffocates me: not love, but panic. When something happens to me and the other person becomes unsettled, I feel tension. I want to stand beside someone who remains standing. Not someone who collapses when I am vulnerable.

And then something remarkable happened. When the words Freedom in Love were spoken, a painting suddenly returned to me. Forty years old. I do not know where it is — perhaps in the storage downstairs. But the image was clear. A soft light-blue background, almost lilac. Like gentle rippling waves. Two thirds of the canvas showed a chalice, transparent like glass or crystal. From the chalice came golden rays like feathers, and also rays in all the colors of the rainbow. Inside the chalice three tears fell back — two small ones and one large tear. It was a soft painting. I remember that. No explosion. No drama. No wall. A chalice.

Perhaps I already knew then what I am rediscovering now: pain belongs to life. But pain does not have to lead to disintegration. The tears did not fall away. They did not disappear into the ground. They were received. Back into the chalice. Perhaps that is love for me. Not fusion. Not dependency. But freedom within connection. Being able to be soft without losing yourself. Being vulnerable without the other collapsing. Perhaps my knowing has always been clear. But knowing needs depth. And gentleness. And perhaps becoming softer is not a loss of freedom, but its deepest form.

Perhaps life begins with pain.
Perhaps it ends with it as well.
But in between
a chalice may exist
that receives everything —
without breaking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perception

 

February 17, 2026

The older I get, the more often I find myself wondering how real my memories actually are.

A conversation with my son about how he experienced my way of functioning in the past set something in motion. Not dramatic. But honest.

My sister and I have been close throughout our entire adult lives. Yet our memories sometimes turn out to be completely different. She remembers things that have disappeared from my mind. And the reverse is just as true.

My youngest daughter does not wish to have contact for now, because she does not feel seen in her pain.
Ton — whom I have known for almost fifty years — sees and experiences certain things differently than I do.

And yet I know one thing for certain: we are all people with the best intentions.

How, then, can memories diverge so widely?

I believe perception arises from an interplay of conscious and unconscious processes. The situations we find ourselves in. Conditioning — even within the same family, completely different. Experiences, opinions, media, the spirit of the times. No one lives through exactly the same reality.

Our unique perception determines how we see the world — and how we behave. Sometimes something cannot land because you are not ready for it. Sometimes it lands deeply in the other person and leaves a mark. That does not mean one is lying and the other is telling the truth. They are different truths, shaped from different inner worlds.

My underlying life philosophy has always remained the same. It has matured, but at its core it is constant.
My behavior has not always been. From physical and mental pain I could be sharp. Harsh in words. And in that sharpness I have hurt people — sometimes too deeply. I see that more clearly now. It was never my intention to cause pain. But intention and impact are not the same.

We are human. Conditioned, activated, reacting.

For me, the process unfolded in stages.
– First, understanding.
– Then, living through the pain — that took the longest.
– And now, integrating.

No longer as an image that defines me, but as knowledge that I carry. That is the phase I am living in now. And beneath everything, I still feel the same current: unconditional love for the people around me.

Not perfect.
Not without mistakes.
But real.

Perhaps truth is not a fixed image,
but a collection of inner worlds touching each other.
What we call memory is often a lens.
And love begins where we no longer try to break each other’s lens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Movement

February 16, 2026

In a world fighting obesity, you see gyms popping up like mushrooms everywhere. Movement is healthy — not only physically, but mentally as well.

For me, movement has always been heavy. At the very least, laborious. My body is conditioned to conserve energy, so that at crucial moments — doing groceries, making an appointment — I can walk at all. As long as no additional condition interferes — flu, bruises, a torn meniscus, tachycardia, or a stroke — my health remains stable. But there was never energy left to truly move. The result: twenty extra kilos.

At the end of December 2025, for the first time, all additional complaints disappeared. There was space. Since then, I go to the E-gym every morning — except Sundays. I feel better, physically and mentally. The scale rises at first, because muscle develops before fat burns. My body tightens, my shape visibly changes. My overall well-being shifts from a 7 to a 9. The world feels calmer.

I work on my body without pushing myself over the edge. I recognize the process from forty years ago, when I began practicing kundalini yoga daily. Nerves tingling and vibrating throughout my body. For healthy people, that’s an alarm signal. For me, it’s a sign that something is trying to come alive. Not fear. Move through it.

Then comes the “elastic feeling.” As if you are a soft doll that could collapse like pudding. It doesn’t happen, but that’s how it feels. Unfamiliar. Unsafe. Muscles announcing themselves. Healthy people feel that quickly. For me, it takes months of daily training before I truly notice something has changed. Then the slack elastic disappears. Then the real work begins — training as if you have a healthy body. That is where I am now. So happy.

Ton is ill. Normally he does the groceries. Now there were a few things on the list, and I went to get them without any resistance. Outside, a sudden downpour breaks loose, hailstones crashing down. Within seconds I am soaked.

And I… I am completely happy.

The freedom in my body. The calm in my mind. It feels like heaven on earth. That the elements add an extra dimension only shows how deeply rooted this feeling has become.

At home, Ton, the dogs, and the cat are asleep. I sit in the silence. And I feel how all the cells in my body, and all the atoms around me, gently move along.

In life, silence exists.
But not stillness.

Movement is not speed.
It is permission to live.
Even in hail, even in effort.
And precisely there, I feel freedom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Freedom

 

14 February 2026

Because of the assumptions I often hear about my condition, my thoughts naturally drift toward philosophical reflections. What does something actually mean? For me — and for someone else?

The word. How is a word used? What weight do you attach to it? Does that change its meaning — or does it make it heavier?

Today it is about one word: freedom.

When I think of it, my first association is: being able to move freely. Healthy people rarely think about that. For them, movement is self-evident. For me, it is not. So here already, meaning begins to differ.

For someone in prison, freedom means being outside. Going wherever you want. For a Westerner, freedom often means being able to say whatever you think. In other countries, that is impossible. Not having to go to school. Not having to work. No obligation. No compulsion. That can feel like freedom. Having money to buy what you want. Being able to act. To choose.

But then the reversal.

If you are disabled — can you not experience freedom? If you are imprisoned — does freedom not exist? If you are poor, limited, dependent — is freedom impossible? Or does it lie somewhere else?

I once heard an Arab man say:
“Freedom is forgiveness.”

That landed deeply.

In some languages and religious traditions, freedom is connected to letting go. To not holding on. To no longer carrying guilt, resentment, blame. Within my own life philosophy, that makes sense.

For me, freedom is not an external condition. It is an inner state. In the silence I always seek — and find — I encounter strength. Insight. Autonomy. That silence is not emptiness. It is the eye of the storm. Outside, it rages. Inside, something builds.

Especially in difficult moments, I return to that place. There, I feel freedom. Not because there are no limitations, but because I no longer resist what is.

After the silence, the storm may continue. I know I can face it.

This source — this silence — is my core. There I find freedom, regardless of circumstances. And perhaps — just perhaps — this is something every human being carries within. Especially when life on the outside is not cooperating.

Freedom is not the disappearance of limits.
It is the release of what binds me from within.
In silence, compulsion dissolves.
And what remains — moves freely.

 

 

 

 

 

The Nanosecond

13 February 2026

The heart clinic’s blood service called today to schedule an appointment for Monday. Unfortunately, they couldn’t set a specific time.
“Do you have anything planned that day?” she asked kindly.
“I train in the morning.”
“Oh, surely you can skip it just once.”
My response came in a nanosecond: “NO.”
A brief silence. “Oh… then I’ll make a note of that… but I can’t promise anything.”
“I’m not home between 10:15 and 11:15. I’ll be training. The rest of the day I’m available.”
“Thank you, I’ll note it. You’ll receive a text when they’re nearby.”
“Alright — have a nice weekend.”

I worked in healthcare myself for years. I remember how things could be arranged with pen and paper. Ten slots — but there was always room to squeeze one more in. A footnote, a human margin. Since automation, scheduling has become systematic and fixed. No space in between. Assistants can hide behind the system — full is full, not connected, not possible. Don’t get me wrong: I earned my automation diploma in the 1980s. I find progress interesting and like to move with technology. But sometimes you notice how systems make people impersonal — or relieve them of responsibility.

There was no space to explain that training is not a hobby for me. Not a luxury. It is recovery, stability, autonomy. It belongs in the same category as eating, sleeping, washing — self-preservation. That doesn’t fit neatly into a computer schedule. For me, the conversation was done. I let it go. Monday would unfold as it would.

That afternoon Ton and I drove to pick up a grandchild, an hour and a half away. Friday traffic — a day-long trip. Then my phone rang. A friendly woman. She had heard from her colleague that I train Monday morning and cannot skip it. Would it be alright if she scheduled me first, so I could train afterward and wouldn’t have to wait all day?
I laughed. “That’s perfect — thank you so much.”

Did my nanosecond shift something? I don’t know. But it’s reassuring to discover it’s still possible. Not a computer with a woman — but a woman with a computer. That call made my day.

Boundaries don’t have to be harsh to be clear.

Sometimes one honest moment opens space.

Humanity doesn’t disappear inside systems —

it simply waits to be seen. And today,

I saw it looking back at me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cheese Twists

 

11 February 2026

Oh my God — I can’t stop laughing.

My husband is a man of habits. Fixed lines, familiar frameworks. He played squash for years — with complete devotion — until his knees gave out, literally worn down by the sport. But letting go of squash never really happened. He stayed involved. Manager of a premier league team his sons played in. Referee. Always part of the structure. Alongside his demanding job, this was his world. There wasn’t much room left for other interests — and that simply is what it is, without judgment.

Then things began to close.
Three years ago he chose not to renew his registration as a general practitioner. That chapter ended.
Last year the premier league team dissolved. Another layer gone.
And last Sunday he said goodbye to refereeing.

Last night I woke up because he shouted, “Help! Help!”
I was upright in bed instantly — fully awake. Luckily nothing was wrong. He had been dreaming.

He was playing squash. Outside. In a heath-like landscape of sand and shrubs — colourless, without walls, without glass, without boundaries. When two opponents suddenly appeared, panic struck and he started shouting. In the dream — and in reality.

I told him it wasn’t strange at all. When frameworks disappear, it can feel disorienting. Overwhelming. Maybe even threatening. What now, when the familiar falls away and nothing new has yet taken its place?
With a smile I teased him:
“No problem — it will be fine once you start following your wife. The horizon is already there.”

He owns several reading glasses — funny ones — which he has repaired a few times a year because a temple broke off or he sat on them. He’s been going to the same optician for forty years.
Next door is a pastry shop. That’s where he buys his beloved cheese twists — in his eyes the best in the Netherlands.

Recently they had changed. Different shape. Different taste. A small tragedy.
So he asked the woman behind the counter. She explained they were now produced in The Hague and that most customers actually liked them better. Ton tried to clarify what he meant. She insisted he must have bought them elsewhere.

And then came the moment — that look on his face.
He said — visibly regulating his breath:
“I immediately think of you… don’t get angry… breathe in and out… try kindly once more… Ma’am, I’ve been coming here for forty years and I buy them only here.”

He came home with cheese twists that neither had the shape nor the divine taste he loved.

Ah well, I thought. Another shift.
He even called it a momentum of loss.

But what I saw was something else.
That childlike expression when he came home. The seriousness with which he told the story.
I laughed until tears came — not at him, but at the beauty of life in motion. Where something closes and something new quietly opens.

For now, I’m simply glad he can see the humour in it.

Where frameworks dissolve,
the soul searches for new lines.
Sometimes it begins with panic,
sometimes with cheese twists that taste different.
And somewhere between loss and laughter
a new space quietly appears.

 

 

 

 

 

Home as an Inner Space

 

February 10, 2026

Visiting museums, cycling, being in nature, going on holiday — I can deeply enjoy all of that. But the moment I get back into my car and its nose turns toward home, there is nothing I want more than to be there as quickly as possible. The very idea lightens me. Every cell in my body rejoices. They seem to dance. Wonderful — going home again.

My home is not a place where I merely stay or sleep.
For me, it is an inner space.
Cycling nourishes movement. Going to a museum nourishes inspiration. Nature recharges me. Travelling opens perspective. But returning home restores my system.

In my childhood home, this existed in the intimate domain of my little room. Later that feeling remained — in every house I lived in. I always created a place that breathed my world, that carried my vibrations.

I don’t like staying over at other people’s homes — not even with my closest friends or family. If I am within a radius of five or six hours from home, I would rather drive back — even in the middle of the night. Visiting feels similar. There always comes a moment when my system immediately wants to go home. If I ignore that, I become heavy, nauseous, unwell.
In a theatre or cinema I prefer sitting on the aisle. Not because of the people — but because of my sensitivity.

It has taken nearly sixty years before I stopped adapting myself to the expectations of others in this. For the first time in my life, I can meet this sensitivity with self-respect. Perhaps those expectations lived more inside me than they truly existed outside. I am not certain. But it might very well be so.

What does my world look like?

As soon as you step out of the lift onto my floor, my paintings are already there. The coming home begins there. Enter my home, and the first thing you notice is colour. Those deep green-turquoise walls — vivid yet calming. My paintings present in the space, not as decoration but as conversation partners. I “dwell” with my work.
Light from outside enters through the windows and is filtered through coloured glass objects — light gaining meaning through form and colour.
On the table: my laptop, coffee mug, coasters, patterned textiles — practical, domestic, inviting. A place where life unfolds while writing happens. Even the small details — plants, animal figurines — carry the layered symbolism that speaks through my work.

I do not sit behind a desk.
I sit in the middle of my story.
Among my paintings, my colours, my light.

My home is my world — with its own vibrations, my moving stillness.
There is no other place that can do this for me.

Home is not a place I go to,
but a space in which I come together again.
What moves outside may land here,
and what arises here may return to the world.
Thus my stillness remains in motion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

KLARO

 

February 9 , 2026

There are moments when thinking stops. Not because there is nothing left to think about, but because the answer is already present within me. For me, that is called KLARO. It cannot be translated. It is not a word that explains something. It is a state. Strength, calm, boundaries, and transparency converge, making discussion unnecessary. My body says no — and that is the end of it. Not closed off, not defensive, but clear. On every level I stop, and yet I remain open.

Today I realized again how strongly that same mechanism shapes my creative process. I do not make work from a plan I execute. I gather, feel, test, put things aside, return. Buying foam, laying down wool, placing colors next to one another, letting half-finished paintings wait. Sometimes for years. These are not preparations; they are seeds. They speak when they choose to. My task is to make space, not to direct.

I often feel materials absent-mindedly. Running a hand across wool. Touching wallpaper in a hotel. The bark of a tree. Fabrics before I buy them. That sensing speaks through me without words. Only when it becomes embodied — in an image, a movement, an action — does it become audible. Then a flow takes over. Not mystical — simply a state in which doing and knowing converge. Driven and carried at the same time.

I believe anyone can experience this when stillness arises within movement. Not standing still, but allowing quiet movement. In that space work emerges that I always find beautiful. Not because it is perfect, but because it is truthful. It is a moment of myself that took form. Why would I reject that?

My works continue to live for me. Years later I discover new layers, new meanings. They move along with who I become. Perhaps they are not objects, but dimensions in which different versions of me continue to exist side by side.

For me, KLARO ultimately means the same as creating: listening, recognizing, acting — and trusting that time chooses its own moment. Trusting that I may listen to my boundaries. Trusting that those boundaries can dissolve as well. It is a trust that does not need to be fought for — not with myself, nor with another.

Where does listening begin, and where does acting end?
Which boundary protects — and which one opens space?
What may remain waiting until its time speaks?
And when stillness moves through my hands — who, then, is creating?

 

 

 

 

 

The Moving Island

 

February 8, 2026

When you write every day the way I do here, words begin to live.
What does this word really mean? Does it match what I feel or what I am trying to express? One such word is: MISSING.

What does that mean to me?
I never miss anyone.

When I say this, I know there are people around me who might feel hurt. That is of course not my intention — but it is my honest answer.

So how does it work for me?
To miss someone implies dependency. Life and people are unique within movement and therefore changeable. That is something I accept. It does not take away my love for anything or anyone. I love licorice, but if I cannot get it abroad, I accept that. I might think once: “I feel like having a piece of licorice.”

If someone is no longer in my surroundings — literally through death, or because life has taken them onto a path outside my environment — nothing changes about that love. My life continues to move.

Would I not wound myself if I tried to hold on to what once was?
How can I move if I insist on holding?

Missing suggests I want to go back or keep something fixed. I don’t think that is the intention. I feel this deep in my fibers — not to hurt anyone, but because it is true for me. From there my thoughts made another leap toward a metaphor.

The metaphor that appears is clear: I am an island. Not a closed place. People may dock, stay, share in what grows and lives there. But at the end of the day I place everyone back onto a little boat or ship and let them go. Not out of distance, but because each follows their own current. Some return later — because they have moved within the same wave. Others do not. And that is fine. I also need moments of silence to absorb and release what may be released. Silence restores the island — gives it energy and growth. The island keeps moving on the water. It keeps feeding itself with what it encounters along the way. It changes shape, color, vegetation — without losing itself.

When this image appeared, I thought of Howl’s Moving Castle. Not because I see myself as magical or spectacular, but because that moving house shows so precisely how existence can feel: not fixed to one place, not bound to one form, but moving with what arises. Living matter. Traveling without a route map. Responding, transforming, rearranging itself while continuing onward.

That is how I experience it. Matter and I move together.
Not controlling. Not directing. Meeting. Following synchronicity. Using my tools — my color — where needed, and allowing them to change when growth asks for it.

I notice something essential has shifted within this. I no longer need to be understood in order to exist. I see myself more clearly now, and that is enough. Softer, even. My perception has not become less sharp — perhaps sharper — but where judgment once followed quickly, compassion now arises. Observation without hardening.

My body moves along with it. Fever that comes and goes. Muscles forming. Energy changing. Growth that cannot be followed linearly. Development is never a straight line. A branch grown outward looks different from the root — yet belongs to the same whole.

Today it feels simple.
I am here. Breathing. Moving.
Not arrived. Not completed.
Only present within another layer of experience.

What if belonging is not a place, but a movement?
What if letting go does not mean someone disappears, but that each follows their own current?
And what if, like that moving island — or that walking castle — I do not need to hold on to anything in order to remain fully connected?

 

 

 

 

 

Are These Daydreams?

 

7 February 2026

Sometimes something small happens that I don’t put into words, yet I notice it. Today, while I was simply moving about the house — tidying, walking, thoughtless — a sentence suddenly passed through me. Not as a thought I formed myself. Just present. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

I know that kind of thing. For years, in exactly these kinds of moments, the same phrase would always appear: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I often laughed about it. It had no function, no assignment, no meaning I needed to find. It was just there. And now, another one. That caught my attention. Nothing more.

It took me back to earlier times. Saturday afternoons. Alone in the front room. Films on BRT 1. My brothers away, my father busy, my mother somewhere else in the house. I watched. With wide eyes. Feeling along. Sometimes crying, feeling tension, laughing — Danny Kaye, for instance. That was not passing time. That was my world.

I didn’t play. I didn’t know what to do with toys. Drawing and crafting — yes — alone in my room after school. Occasionally I invited girls over. They played with the dolls I never touched. They immersed themselves completely. I sat nearby and watched. Not sad. Not excluded. Curious. Why choose those clothes? Why that colour? Why argue over roles? I listened to their language and noticed my words were different from theirs. They didn’t even notice I wasn’t playing. I was simply there.

That is how I remember it. Factually. Not as a strategy. Not as protection. This is how I was. From very early on. And I never suffered from it.

For a long time, my youth simply felt good. Later, through the eyes of Michel and now Ton, I came to see other layers as well. Much happened — in my youth and afterwards. I don’t deny that. Yet it is good. Genuinely good. It has shaped me. Memories may still surface — sometimes as a brief sting — and then they dissolve again.

Closure is not something I believe truly exists. It continues to live through me and takes on new colour at each level I reach. What I can bring to completion is the way I relate to it. And in that, I feel peace.

And still, I lingered a moment with those phrases that simply arrive.
Walter Mitty — the inner journey, imagination, parallel worlds. That often felt like my life.
Virginia Woolf — observing people, behaviour, tensions between them. That has always fascinated me.
There was a time when I experimented with that, when I moved within those fields.
Around my twentieth year I decided not to do that anymore — and that decision still stands.
Observing remained. Quietly watching, seeing what unfolds — perhaps my second nature, perhaps my first.
Could it be that such phrases need not mean anything — and yet touch something that has long been there?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Standing in the Space

6 February 2026

Sometimes a day begins in the body. Fever that comes and goes. Sweating. Soles of the feet glowing. A head that feels dull yet clear. Not ill — but in motion. As if my system is restructuring itself, layer by layer, without me needing to understand what is happening. The body speaks first. Then comes movement. Only after that does language appear. Today it happened the other way around. Language brought movement, and movement touched the body.

In a long conversation — mirroring, questioning, searching — I arrived again at something I had always known, yet had never seen this clearly. That my life has never truly been carried by systems, educations, or methods. Not by medical worlds, not by alternative worlds, not by theory. My only constant has always been my own perception. My own sensing. My own movement. I tried to adapt. To fit in. To understand how things were supposed to be. What was expected. Sometimes I became a shadow of myself. Other times a rebel. Yet I always returned — like a boomerang — to what was truly mine. Not constructed. Not learned. Simply present.

Somewhere along the way something shifted. I see it more clearly now: pride once served as protection. A response to a world that dismissed, misunderstood, or simply failed to see. But beneath pride was struggle. And beneath that struggle was the longing to be seen. Today I felt something of that dissolve. Not disappear — but transform. What remains is not pride. It is contentment with who I am. Without the need to prove. Without defense. Self-respect. That word touched me deeply and unexpectedly. Tears without a story. Only recognition.

I notice that I look more gently now. Literally. As if there is less tension behind my eyes. Where my gaze was once experienced as piercing, it now feels quieter. Clear perception remains — perhaps even sharper — but without the old judgment that used to follow. Where my body once received signals and my mind confirmed them, compassion now arises. Observation instead of hardening. Perhaps that is what truly changed: not what I see, but how it lands.

In the world around me I move more freely. In the gym, among people, among conversations, among glances. I do not share my space — yet I do not close it either. I move like a free atom. Not distant, not cold, but autonomous. Friendship, for me, does not arise from proximity or repetition. Only from recognition — a bodily recognition I cannot ignore. It has always been that way. The difference is that I no longer try to correct it.

And in the midst of all this, something small — and immense — happened. I began to see that my longing to be understood may have come from looking from within my own perspective. Why don’t others see what I see? Why don’t they feel what I feel? Today something shifted. It felt as though I — existentially — stepped slightly aside. Not away from myself, but further into space. I sense that I already belong. That I am part of the whole without life needing to mirror my view. This insight does not feel like a conclusion, but like a discovery. Still tender. Still without form. Yet alive.

Life continues to deepen. No arrival. No completion. No enlightenment. Only moving from depth to depth. With curiosity. With patience. With humility toward all that has not yet been seen. And perhaps that is enough for today. That I sit here. Warm. Calm. Breathing. In the space — and part of it.

What if growth does not mean becoming someone else —
but simply allowing more light to fall on what has always been there?

 

 

 

 

 

Attuning

 

5 February 2026

This morning I woke up at half past six with a pounding headache — the kind that fills everything. I took paracetamol and went back under the covers. That worked. When I woke again the pressure had eased, but I had a slight fever of 37.9°C. For Ton that means a worried look. For me it means getting up and sensing first. Giving my body time to speak before deciding anything.

I went to train. Normally I do three or four rounds — today only two. It was also strength-measurement day, but I kept it gentle. No forcing. In the car I felt good — even content — that I had moved. What was different this time was not the rush of exertion, but the quiet joy of being home again. As if the movement had done its part and my body had taken over.

The fever disappeared. I had sweated heavily in the gym — my system regulating something. My ears felt muffled, so I put on my pajamas and allowed myself a day in bed. Laptop, a little sleep, some soup. No fighting. No analysing. Just giving space to whatever was happening.

And honestly — there was something beautiful in it. My dream had been about cleaning, maintaining, being rich from within… and afterwards my body seemed to move through its own cleansing process. Layers running in synchrony. It still amazes me how dreams and physical processes can touch each other. Not to explain it. Not to assign meaning. Just to recognise that they coexist.

I understand more and more why there are cultures where dreams are taken seriously as part of life. Not as prediction, but as another sensory layer. Another language.

What struck me most today was this: I didn’t push through stubbornly like I would have in the past. I wanted movement — yes — but without overruling myself. Less strength, more sweating — and that was enough signal to stop at two rounds. Back home I didn’t feel drained. On the contrary. My daily training nourishes me — as long as I keep listening.

I know fear plays a role too. Fear of sliding backward physically if I stop. But today I felt the difference between avoidance and attunement. Not crossing limits. Resting when asked. Letting go when appropriate.

Tomorrow I will see how I feel. Closing my eyes to listen.
What does my body ask?

I am not a loser if I don’t train.
I am not tough if I do.
It isn’t about behaviour. Not about how others see me.
My body is my measure — and my ally.

And the longer I live, the clearer it becomes:
when I give it trust,
it works with me.

Listening is sometimes movement,
and sometimes becoming still.
Not because I must choose,
but because the body already knows.
Today I followed — and that was enough.

 

 

 

 

 

Clear and Diffuse

4 January 2026

This morning The Logical Song by Supertramp was humming through my head.
It came from my dream. First I wrote it down. Posted it on my website. Then I looked it up on YouTube and listened again.

While I’m singing along, I notice the sun is shining. Thick beams of light fall into my living room. The light is different than usual. Clear and diffuse at the same time. Not like a sunrise, but as if the sun is already setting. It creates a strange, gentle atmosphere.

I ask Ton if he sees it too. He sees the sun, but not what I mean. When I try to explain what I’m perceiving, he tries to see it as well — but he can’t.

We go training together. The gym is almost empty. Quiet. It fits my sense of contentment, and it fits the light of this morning.

Back home, Ton reads my dream. He notices how calm it is. How the memories in it feel soft now. Yes, that’s true. All the memories are still there, but they’ve become light. Or at least: no longer heavy.

I tell him about the shift I feel.

In my younger years — until about thirty — I experienced my childhood as pleasant. Looking back, I see that this was mainly a way of making everything beautiful. A coping mechanism.
With Michel, my way of seeing changed. Then everything turned black. By the end of his life, the memories had become grey.
With Ton, I fell into a pitch-black hole again. His anger, his way of coloring things — that became mine too.

After the stroke, my emotions became completely deregulated. I entered a black tunnel, with only a pinprick of light at the end. I walked through that tunnel for a year. At the same time, that tiny point of light slowly grew larger. Less black. More light. And at the end of December, I suddenly emerged. Eureka.
The memories are still there, but they no longer stick. They pass through me, transparent.

Later that day I have lunch with a friend. We see each other a few times a year. He’s a coach, guiding people in self-knowledge and meaning, and teams in their internal dynamics. He asks how the children are doing. Also about my daughter, with whom I have no contact.

I tell him that I still send her money. That her photo is on my TV. That I send her love in my thoughts whenever I see her. And that I made mistakes. That I pointed out my own dissociation from the past instead of fully acknowledging her feelings. That I should have said: this was never my intention, and given her experience its rightful place. Now that’s no longer possible. What I can do is trust her — and trust the love I feel for her.

He tells me about a client with a similar story. He used the metaphor of an apple. Inside the apple there’s a bruised spot. That’s the pain. His client is still sitting entirely in that rotten, bruised place, cut off from the rest of the fresh, juicy apple. Only she can choose to cut that spot away, so the rest becomes visible again.

“You’ve done that with your past,” he says.
“Maybe you’re now, invisibly, giving her the space to heal.”

I’m grateful for a friend like that.

The light doesn’t have to explain anything.
It may be clear and gentle at the same time.
What can move through me doesn’t get stuck.
And sometimes that’s enough —
for today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Momentum

 

2 February 2026

After training, Ton and I each do our own things for a bit. I ask him, “What shall we do later? Run an errand in Utrecht or walk the dogs in the Lingebos?”

Ton needs time to think about what he’s going to do. He almost never responds immediately. That sometimes rubs between us. With Ton it’s a slow response. With Michel, in the past, it was slowness. I react quickly, almost automatically. In a relationship, that requires attunement.

By nature I have a lot of patience. Life has also given me ample opportunity to practice it. As I’ve said before: every trait has two sides. If something is +10, the other side is −10. If it’s +1000, it’s also −1000.

After my stroke, my emotions were completely out of balance. There was no brake. It was a year of extreme impatience, of being overwhelmed. There were moments when I thought I wouldn’t make it in this relationship. Ton had a lot to endure. I can see that now. At the time, my focus was much more on what was happening inside me.

Now I notice that something new has emerged. Something I had always felt, but can now name more clearly.
I need momentum.

For me, almost everything feels like a project. Even small actions—brushing my teeth, getting dressed, stepping outside—are small projects that make up my day. This feeling slowly crept into my life because of my congenital illness, CMT. Because the progression is slow, it’s hardly noticeable unless you look far back. I prefer not to do that. Living with what is here now feels lighter. Freer.

When I ask a question, my mind goes into action. Movement starts. Start-up energy. If too much time passes, that energy drops away. The train comes to a stop. Restarting costs a lot of energy. But once I’m moving, the process flows more easily. That’s when flow arises. Small steps keep that movement going.

Ton doesn’t respond right away to my question. He makes a call, takes care of this, takes care of that. Time passes quickly. Suddenly it’s half past two. Then he asks, “Shall we still go for a walk with the dogs? We’d be back around five.”

Very calmly, I feel that my momentum has gone. And I say that this plan no longer works for me. Not angrily. Not sharply. Just clearly. I can see that this is difficult for Ton to accept at first. It takes some processing. Understanding doesn’t come immediately. But I stay with myself.

I don’t harden. I don’t close myself off. But I also no longer adapt in ways that cost me energy I don’t have. This isn’t unwillingness. It isn’t stubbornness. It’s listening—to my body, to the moment, to what is possible.

Now the movement is to see how we can attune to this together. Not by asking me to switch gears as if my energy were unlimited, but by making space for how my system works. That doesn’t feel hard. It feels honest.

Momentum doesn’t ask for speed,
but for timing.
Not pushing through,
but moving with what is.
I stay open,
and I stay with myself.
That isn’t a boundary,
it’s direction.

 

 

 

 

 

Integration of Noise

 

1 February 2026

Cohesion or adhesion?
Is it the same thing that connects, or are they different ways of connecting?

I actually know how I arrived at this. Last night I was lying on my bed, writing my blog piece for January 31, when I heard sirens. Not once, but several times within an hour. Something serious was happening, I thought.

Since I’ve lived here, I’ve had to get used to that sound. In the forest, I hardly ever heard it. Where many people are, many unfortunate things happen. In the beginning, it made me restless, easily overstimulated. Fortunately, a system adapts to that. Mine did too. Integration of noise. But last night it was more intense than usual. The restlessness briefly returned.

Two years ago, a company here burned down completely. Ton and I often cycled past it. It made an impression on me. I felt the impact — for the company, the owners, the employees, the surroundings. Some time later, the entire building was gone. A vast empty space. Then a large billboard appeared, showing what was to come. A new building. Prestigious. Shiny.

My mind immediately started moving. How can something like that happen? How do you survive that as a business? And later: they did survive. How do you pay for such a luxurious building? Is there really that much money?

Recently, the new building was completed. Exactly as glamorous as on the billboard. I saw flowers in the offices, people who seemed to be celebrating. Probably the reopening. Good for everyone, I thought — and let it go again.

Maybe it’s strange, but there is always a lot happening in my head just by looking around me. It’s busy, but not clinging. It also lets go again. Free. If something needs to be remembered, it resurfaces on its own. I trust that. And if it doesn’t come back, I think: apparently, I don’t need to remember this. That may sound superficial, but it gives my busy mind the rest it needs.

Ton reads the newspaper every morning. I never do — enough already comes in. This morning he read aloud: the same company burned down again last night.

Goosebumps.

Everything went through me at once. Was it arson? Was it bad luck? That last question suddenly brought to mind the book In the Name of All Mine, which was also made into a film. The true story of a man who loses his family twice: first in the Holocaust, later in a forest fire. Why did I think of that? I don’t know. It simply presented itself.

Today is Sunday. I’m not training. I keep my pajamas on. I stay home. Watching a series. With the animals. Cuddling. Listening to music. And yet, you could write a book about everything that moves through me on such an apparently quiet day.

Magical, really.

What comes in may leave again.
What remains finds its place naturally.
My mind doesn’t have to hold on to it,
my system knows what it’s doing.
This is how noise finds its place,
and silence gains meaning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Staying in Motion

31 January 2026

Going to the E-gym every morning does more than make my body stronger. It also brings back something I had lost for a long time: a natural daily rhythm.
I go to bed on time — still late, but earlier than before. Instead of four or five hours of sleep, I now sleep seven to eight hours. Sometimes more. And then I get up. Around nine. Even on Sundays. Today I was out of bed at half past eight.

The first thing I do is write down my dream. That, too, is new. Becoming aware every morning of what I have dreamed. Sometimes it’s a detailed story, sometimes only a voice, a word, a feeling. There is always something that lingers — something that would otherwise sink back into the unconscious.

What is remarkable is how these dreams run in sync with my waking life. As if they walk alongside it. As if they comment without explanation.

It feels the same as painting or writing. I can only do that from what I call flow. It happens to me. I don’t know beforehand what I’m going to make. There is an urge. A movement that wants to come into being. While creating, it’s as if I’m walking behind Annette.
Oh… is this what it’s going to be?
Or maybe that?
And when it’s finished and I still don’t understand why I made it, I keep looking. Sometimes for days. Sometimes for weeks. I call that mopping — lingering until it speaks.

Over the past year, I discovered something new: works I made ten or twenty years ago are speaking to me again. With an added layer. As if they were waiting until I could hear them.

I already knew that life is full of mysteries. Maybe that’s why I find it so beautiful. It keeps me curious. Not about what I can learn from books or courses — but about myself.
What is happening now?
How do I respond to this?
Why does this feel familiar, yet different?
I find that exciting. In a good way.

Today I told Ton that over the years there are quite a few things I can no longer do. It’s been a slow process. Quiet. My range has gradually become smaller. But I never think: I can’t do that anymore.
I think: I did that.
And I enjoyed it.
And I’m grateful for the memory.

Something came in return. Time. Space. Painting. Writing.

As a child, I lived from the outside inward. Preferably alone.
As a teenager and young adult, I lived from the inside outward. Going out, dancing, traveling, exploring the world in motion. Yoga.
Over the past ten years, I returned to living from the outside inward. A period of intense painting.

And now — after the stroke — both movements are present at the same time. With added depth.

The dreams feel like the flow. They tell me something. They give color and meaning. From the outside inward.
The E-gym feels like a lifestyle I intend to keep. Not searching for friendships, but for pleasant daily connections. From the inside outward.

So I see that the small life I live — in which, at first glance, little seems to happen — is experienced by me as rich and vibrant.

For me, it’s a solid ten.

Perhaps richness is not what expands,
but what settles more deeply.
Perhaps movement is not always visible,
but felt.
And perhaps a life is truly large
when it aligns from within.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reliving

 

January 28, 2026

There was a time when I decided to grow old. Not as a wish, but as a choice. I was in my early twenties, confined to a wheelchair, using a mobility scooter, and the outlook was far from hopeful. Too much movement would lead to deterioration, they said. I did it anyway. Daily yoga, against medical advice. Not to prove anything, but because my body knew something else. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, I worked myself out of the wheelchair.

That choice — to grow old — I have never let go of.

In recent years, my body took blow after blow. A serious fall, inflammations, heart rhythm disturbances, a torn meniscus, and eventually a stroke. At times it felt as though life was growing louder, not to break me, but to draw my attention. As if my body wanted to remind me that holding on is not the same as carrying, and that continuing sometimes asks for something other than endurance.

In a dream, I heard the word reliving. Not becoming ill again, but examining it properly, this time without mistakes being made. The word stayed with me. Only later did I understand that it wasn’t about the hospital at all, but about my body. About inhabiting again what I had once overcome — now in a different way, with more gentleness and less struggle.

Back then, I went against the current, but also with myself. I only realized that in hindsight. I did not follow medical advice, but I did follow my body. That turned out not to be recklessness, but loyalty to something I already sensed at the time, even though I could not yet put it into words.

Now I am doing essentially the same thing again. The form is different, perhaps less dramatic, but the movement is unmistakably familiar. I go against expectations, against numbers and urgency, while at the same time moving with myself. During a conversation, my cardiologist said, “If I were in your shoes, I would definitely do it.” She meant medication. Ozempic. Intervention. I understood her — and at the same time, I knew immediately: these are not my shoes.

Gradually, I discovered that it was no longer about becoming stronger, but about daring to be softer. About no longer fixing emotional pain in place, but allowing it to pass through me. What I kept holding onto from the past was also holding onto me. My body had carried that for years, until it forced me to stop and listen.

Recovery turned out not to be a battle, but a process of letting go. Not speeding up, but slowing down. Not forcing, but trusting. I now train every morning — not to lose weight or to perform, but to be present in my body. Movement as a conversation, rhythm as a foundation, and the awareness that time, here, is not an enemy.

Growing old does not mean enduring at all costs. It means allowing what wants to unfold. And perhaps that is the deepest meaning of reliving.

I went against the current,
but always with myself.
I am doing that again now —
with more gentleness,
and the same trust.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Day in Layers

 

27 January 2026

This morning we arrive at the gym. Before I even step out of the car, I see him: a black Labrador looking in through the window. Not on a leash. His owner is apparently training inside. We park the car, and as soon as I step out, he comes trotting toward me, tail wagging happily. I am just as happy as he is. While petting him, I guide him back to the window. He sits down neatly when I tell him to. At that moment I think: my day can’t really go wrong anymore.

There is a large, sturdy woman who often trains there. Her posture evokes something in me. Almost arrogant — an image my mother used to call a flagship. In my mind I see an old ship with a richly decorated bow, a mirror: impressive, polished, creating distance. No vanity, no judgment — more a form of presentation. A front that says: here I stand, this is my bow, this is how I wish to be seen.

On New Year’s Day she wore a silver-colored fake crown with Happy New Year on it. What struck me then was how that playful, cheerful gesture did not match her overall presence. Today she takes the machine ahead of me. She doesn’t look around; her posture is closed. In the past, I would have felt intimidated by this, or I would have searched for the cause within myself. Now I said to Ton in the car:
“I think someone who presents herself like this is probably very insecure.”
Next time, I will look at her with that thought in mind. I wonder whether that might change something — perhaps mainly in me.

It was also the day I had another appointment at the heart clinic. Since July 3rd of last year, we have been busy investigating my heart and its rhythm. The number of ECGs made is countless by now. This time the waiting ran forty minutes late. We were taken to a small room with the instruction that I could undress so an ECG could quickly be done before I went to see the cardiologist.
Ton and I said in unison: “I don’t think so.”
“But that’s protocol,” the assistant said.
“Unfortunately,” I replied, “I’m done with protocols.”

We then had a conversation with yet another new cardiologist. She offered gentler options for us to consider. We will return in six weeks, so we can think it all through calmly. That felt right.

For me, it was also a day of synchronicity. Not as an explanation, not as coincidence, but as a way of remembering. First, Ton had made an appointment for the dogs on March 3rd — the birthday of a good friend. Later, he made an appointment for himself with the practice nurse on July 21st — the birthday of my aunt, my mother’s only sister. And at the heart clinic, my follow-up appointment was scheduled for March 10th. The birthday of my late husband Michel.
I use dates like these as memory aids. Today, they were noticeably present.

On the way home, I felt sad. Without a clear reason. Perhaps Weltschmerz is the right word. Now, as I write this at the end of the day, that feeling has passed. It was allowed to be there for a moment. That was enough.

Perhaps some days are not a story,
but a collection of layers.
A dog that trusts.
A façade I learn to see differently.
A boundary I draw calmly.
A date that lingers.
And a feeling that comes and goes.

Today, nothing needed to be solved.
I was simply there.

 

 

 

 

 

My Sun Rises, I Saw His Freedom

 

26 January 2026

Yesterday was my father-in-law’s birthday. I was reminded of it by a post a nephew shared on Facebook.
Whenever I think of him, almost the same thing always happens: my sun rises from within. Not as a memory that hurts, but as something that is simply present. He was a remarkable man to me. I loved him. His presence touched me in a way very few people ever have. I am grateful that I came to know him through my husband Michel.

It is difficult to explain exactly what I feel. It is not missing. Not grief. It is a form of connection that I have never experienced with anyone else, to this day. There are no right words for it — and perhaps there do not need to be.

When I first met him, I was immediately struck by how much Michel resembled his father. In his voice, his face, his hands, his gestures. And yet there was a difference. In Max’s eyes there was depth, mischief, joie de vivre. In Michel’s eyes there was more closedness, more melancholy. As if each of them had found a different way of dealing with the same life.

What I could not yet put into words back then, but can now see clearly, is this:
Max did not live freedom as a luxury, but as a necessity. Not as something you allow yourself when life cooperates, but as something you choose because otherwise no real life remains. I recognized that immediately. Without words. Without hesitation. Perhaps that is why I saw him so clearly from the start.

Max was admired and judged by people alike. The admiration often came from the creative circles he moved in — artists, writers, dancers, singers — people he met in cafés such as Reijnders and Eijlders on Leidseplein. The judgment more often came from those close to him. After the war, Max decided that life was his. That no one would ever impose limitations on him again. Freedom was his guiding principle, in every sense. Not always easy for those around him, but for him unavoidable.

The first time we met, we went out to dinner together. When Michel briefly went to the restroom, Max took my hand and looked at me intently. In his deep, refined voice he asked whether I would consider including him as well. Immediately afterwards he added:
“I don’t think you’re shocked by this question.”
He was right. I wasn’t. I told him I preferred to keep it just between Michel and me — and that was that. That freedom of speaking, without drama or judgment, was characteristic of him.

Max survived the war — by his own account through sheer luck. He carried that history with him without using it as a weapon or a shield. He understood how vulnerable a human being is, and how necessary it sometimes is to wear armor. Armor protects. But when it comes off, what remains is the human being — vulnerable, open, alive.
Through him, I came to see that freedom is not given, but chosen. And that this choice sometimes comes at a cost: rejection, misunderstanding, loneliness. But also that remaining faithful to that choice yields something no one can ever take away from you.

This morning I watched again the episode of Achter het Nieuws entirely devoted to Max, presented by a young Paul Witteman. I see him then. I hear him. And immediately it happens again: my sun rises.
I feel no sadness that he is no longer here.
I feel gratitude that he was part of my life — and still is.

I do not miss him.
I carry him.
Not as a memory that hurts,
but as a presence that remains warm.
Perhaps that too is a form of freedom:
that what was truly connected
does not disappear,
but simply changes its place.

 

 

 

 

 

Loyal to You

 

25 January 2026

Sometimes something you’ve lived your entire life suddenly aligns with words from the outside.
Not as proof, but as recognition.

There are few photos of me as a child. And when there are, I’m almost always with my nose pressed against a dog. As if that simply belonged there. In my younger years, I left many tears in the fur of my dog Rakker. Silent tears. Seen by no one — except him. That was enough.

Do you recognise that feeling — that something you see or hear can give you a small sense of support?
Sometimes a single glimpse is enough to know you’re not the only one.

My dogs are my most loyal companions. They always seem to sense how I’m doing, as if they read me without asking questions. In return, they feel safe with me. It’s a natural understanding between us, not an agreement.

Once, I had a little dog named Donald. Not pretty, but incredibly loving and stubborn. She wasn’t allowed upstairs. She slept downstairs, in her basket. Yet sometimes she would lie upstairs, on the landing outside my bedroom. We could never get her to leave. She opened doors herself, even when we had turned the locks.

Later, I discovered the pattern: whenever she insisted on staying upstairs like that, I would fall ill. She sensed it before I did. At that time, I was young and consistently pushed beyond my limits, trying to function as normally as possible — as a woman, a partner, a mother. I managed for a while. Until I collapsed. My dog knew sooner.

When I saw her lying there, I would think: oh dear, I need to slow down. It was always too late. She stayed by my bed until I recovered.

The look in her eyes when we had her put to sleep, the trust she had — those are precious moments. A bond I have never known with any human being. That may be something about me, but that is how I experience it.

Much later, I had Pan. As a puppy, he became seriously ill. For weeks, I cared for him day and night. I set my alarm at night to give him his medication. He survived. He grew big, heavy, gentle, and loyal. Impressive to others — to me, whenever he got the chance, a lap dog.

When Michel became ill, Pan never left his side. On the couch, in bed, everywhere. After Michel passed away, Pan immediately shifted his focus to me. At that time, I was weak, mentally and physically. Pan sensed that he needed to protect me. That turned into dominance and dangerous behaviour toward anyone outside our immediate circle.

With me, he lay on the bed together with Kiba. Gentle, protective, attuned. But toward the outside world, he was no longer safe. I even brought in a dog trainer, but I literally couldn’t handle him. He was too strong. His pack consisted of me, Kiba, the cats, the children, and our grandchild.

For the first time in my life, I had to give up an animal. That was ten years ago. Even now, when I see a Bernese Mountain Dog, I feel a sharp pang in my heart.

At that time, Kiba had been a cheerful, athletic little dog. After the loss of Michel and Pan, she changed. She lay curled up in a corner for days, walked with her tail between her legs. The vet told me that animals grieve too. She had two losses to process. Only after half a year did life slowly return to her.

Once, a house near mine caught fire. The fire brigade used my home as a command post. A small dog was rescued from the house, and the trembling animal was placed on my lap. Her name was Fluffy. From that moment on, she never left my side. Sometimes I still hear her little steps in my mind, just behind my leg. She lived to be fifteen and was allowed to fall asleep in my arms at the vet’s.

During the pandemic, many people got a pet. Puck was bought as a puppy by young people. When life returned to normal, their attention faded. The mother of the couple felt sorry for the dog and looked for a new home. The owner of the grooming salon where my dogs go sent me a photo and asked if I had room for her.

I was sold.

Puck, like Fluffy, follows me around all day. She sleeps with me on the bed, wants to sit beside me or on my lap. She keeps an eye on me. I cuddle my dogs a lot.

Lately, I see more and more appearing about dogs and humans. Articles, conversations, reflections.

Your dog as a therapist.
What pets do for your mental health.
A monk wondering whether it’s unhygienic for a dog to sleep on the bed — and concluding that there are even benefits.

I don’t secretly take such a magazine from the waiting room. I write down the issue number and order it later. Not because I’m searching for something, but because I recognise what I’ve been living for a long time. It does me good to see that, from many different angles now, animals are being looked at differently. What they do for us — and what we do for them.

Loyal presence needs no explanation.
She is there.
She feels what I cannot yet carry myself.
She stays, without conditions.

That, for me, is loyalty.

 

Puck and Kiba

 

 

 

 

 

 

Missing as a Circular Form

 

24 January 2026

Loss is a large part of my life.
Of everyone’s life.

At a young age, I discovered that writing about it could be a gain for me.
In this place, I mainly write about how I experience loss and how I look at it. That does not make it the truth. It is true for me, perhaps not for someone else. What I now experience as true can shift through new insights.

New insights always announce themselves to me physically. As a kind of confirmation.
A little “light-bulb moment” switches on in my head. Or I get goosebumps. Sometimes even stronger, like a brief electric shock. I don’t consciously go looking for these moments. I believe time chooses its own time. That asks for calm and patience. Growing as a human being requires waiting. Strangely enough, insights I try to force are often not pure for me. They pull me away from what actually wants to be seen.

Life feels to me like a winding, wide path with side roads. In the end, I always return to that broad path. I have learned not to regret the side roads I took. Sometimes out of impatience. Sometimes guided by emotion. The falling and getting back up, the pain, the experiences — later they turn out to be gains.

For me, being born is the beginning of loss.
Having a body means limitation. It must be fed, maintained, protected.

Every change during growing up is the loss of what was and the gain of what newly emerges. This is true physically and mentally. Every day, something dies. And every day, something is added. Quite literally: yesterday is gone, tomorrow is not here yet.

So what is there?
NOW. This moment.

Ton and I visited an exhibition titled Missing as a Circular Form. Artists who have given shape to missing, to dealing with loss and grief. I was curious to see how they had done this.

— Every person will, sooner or later, be confronted with loss. Whether it is the loss of a loved one, a pet, or a homeland. How do you deal with missing, and how do you keep your loved ones close to you? —

These were the opening lines of the announcement. In the exhibition rooms, I mainly saw the grief of losing loved ones. The pain of missing was portrayed in many ways. Beautiful art, yet it also made me feel somewhat somber.

In a large room with a wide variety of works, there was a text on the wall that resonated with me:

— In this room, grief is not shown as a moment, but as a movement. As a slow wave that continues to come and go, even after death. How does the absence of the other take shape in everyday life? —

Something became clear to me there. For me, loss and continuing to live are not only about missing a loved one or a homeland. They are also present in the smallest, everyday things. Close by. For me, that is the essence of what we call life. It begins in the smallest atoms, in and around us. Dying off and renewal.

When you can see this as an uninterrupted cycle, it is always NOW.

For me, the only true experience of the present is letting go of expectations, fear, worries, unrest, and pain. By emptying my mind of the past and releasing control over the future, I can be in that true now.

The Annette who looks back at me from the mirror is who I am at the moment I am standing there.
Not a second earlier.
Not a second later.

What did I take with me from this exhibition?

The realisation that every person has a different frame of reference to give shape to something like — missing.

And that all of it is true.

Missing is not an emptiness that wants to be filled,
but a movement that keeps circling.
What disappears changes form.
What remains moves along with me.

And again and again
there is only this moment
in which everything comes together.

 

 

 

 

 

When Laughter Shifts

 

23 January 2026

OMG!!!
This time I really had to call myself to order.

At the beginning of the week, my two friends came to visit. Hilde and I share a mutual friend who has a certain serious naïveté that always makes us laugh. With her, you end up in Fawlty Towers–like situations. Because she herself is so serious, it sometimes feels to Hilde and me as if we’ve landed in a fairy-tale comedy. We allowed ourselves to talk about this together — perhaps gossip is the right word. In any case, these situations come up now and then, and we laugh until tears roll down our cheeks.

We told this to Carry. I could see from her face that she didn’t like the idea. Gossip — the word alone. And honestly, I agree with her completely. I have bad memories of gossip. It can be very unpleasant. Hilde and I don’t mean any harm. But where exactly is the line between gossiping and telling an anecdote about someone?

Carry’s disapproving look did reach me. I felt guilty. It wasn’t a mean story; it was mostly very funny. But maybe it’s not about what you tell, but why. Are we laughing at a situation — or are we laughing at someone?

Today I was in a museum with Ton. Ton reads all the texts next to the paintings and sculptures, moving slowly and attentively through the galleries. In the meantime, I went to sit in the museum café. The long tables there are joined together, so strangers often sit next to you. At first, I was sitting there alone, quietly reading.

Then a group of women sat down next to me — about six or seven of them. They were talking about a woman who wasn’t there. It was clearly gossip.

“Oh well, she always has something.”
“Well, if you knew what I’ve been through.”
“Why did she text you and not put it in the group chat?”
“Yes, she obviously doesn’t like me.”
“Doesn’t matter, I’ll just make sure I never sit next to her.”
“I got a message — shall I read it out?”

In a joking tone, one of them started reading the message. And at that moment, all my energy drained away. I just wanted to go outside. I’d rather wait in the cold.

Ooooh… how awful that is.

The conclusion made itself known almost physically: speaking badly about someone does something. To yourself. To the space. To the other — even when they’re not there.

Outside, standing in the winter cold, I took deep breaths and thought:
Annette, let this be a lesson.
Perhaps not never to talk about someone again — nicely or not —
but only to do so when you are willing to share your thoughts openly and honestly with that person as well.

Or perhaps that’s not a rule,
but an exercise.

One that became visible again today.

Maybe honesty doesn’t begin with what I say,
but with what I feel as I say it.
And maybe freedom sometimes asks for nothing grand,
only the courage to become quiet
at the moment something no longer feels right.

Today, I listened.

 

 

 

 

 

 

FREEDOM

22 January 2026

On 22 January 2025, I was admitted to the stroke unit of the hospital. Of course that was unpleasant. At the same time, it was a moment when my thoughts immediately moved forward: how to go on with these paralyses?

No fear. No — rather an acceptance of what was. Even in the worst scenarios, I could already see possibilities. Knowing that I will always find a way to feel happy, whatever my situation may be. That knowledge gives me a sense of freedom.

Today things are so much better, both mentally and physically. Much better than I could have imagined. A turning point in my life. You may not see it on the outside, but on the inside I feel calm. I feel free from the dark spirits of the past. They are part of who I am, without touching me anymore. They exist as experience — and that is what freedom feels like to me.

After training today, the sun seemed to shine inside my body. My face reflected it. That is freedom.

Since Ton and I started training on the EGYM, I have an app that records everything: what I’ve done, how heavy it was, how much, progress and/or setbacks. It’s pleasant and appealing not only to feel and experience this, but also to see it visually mapped out. Unfortunately, this app doesn’t work for Ton. So we made an appointment with the administration to go there in person. Said and done.

Ton also asked about my medical indication and how reimbursement works. First, you have to visit a physiotherapist, who enters it into the system, and then it runs through the health insurance. But… then you’re only allowed to come between 12:00 and 4:00 p.m. Only if you pay yourself can you choose when you want to train — from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.

What works so well for me right now is this: getting up, washing, having breakfast (half of it), training, and then coming back to finish breakfast. The whole day still lies ahead of me. That would no longer be possible.

The moment this friendly woman tells us this, I feel fire shoot from my eyes and I say:
“So if you’re disabled, not only is your physical freedom limited, but this freedom too?”

The shock in her eyes immediately dissolves my rising anger. I feel understanding: she didn’t make these rules. I apologise right away for my quick, indignant reaction.

There are two options.
Pay for a subscription myself, without an indication.

Or call the health insurance company, hoping it can be arranged differently.

The health insurer sticks strictly to the rules. If I go at the designated times, they pay €50 per day. If I don’t, they pay nothing, and the subscription costs me €50 per month. The choice was simple. I prefer to decide for myself.

What’s funny is that as a teenager I devoured the books of Jean-Paul Sartre for a while. Existential humanism holds that human beings are radically free and must create their own lives and meaning in a world without inherent purpose. This entails total responsibility: human beings are “condemned to be free.” Freedom is not a gift, but a task. Every choice shapes not only yourself, but humanity as a whole.

Into that framework I fitted my own morality, as I had learned and interpreted it from the Bible. I thought more in terms of a SOURCE than of a God.

Years later, during my studies, I encountered Carl Rogers. Remarkably, this existential-humanist thinking received little attention at university. For me, Rogers aligned even more closely with how I experience life. His humanism emphasises freedom through self-actualisation: the innate drive of human beings to realise their full potential. This can only flourish in an environment of unconditional positive regard, empathy, and authenticity. From there, autonomy emerges — living from an internal frame of reference, free from external, often conditional demands.

Already during my studies, I felt an inner resistance to fixed definitions in this area. Much later, I began to embrace the eclectic and allowed myself to see it as an organically growing concept. Nothing fixed. Mobile. Changeable, even. Freedom is hardly definable. In fact, you already lose part of it the moment you are born. You suddenly have a body.
How free is that?

Freedom is not the absence of limits, but the way I relate to limits — ethically, embodied, and with regard for the other.

Because this theme of freedom was so strongly present, I also thought of my painting Colorful Equality.
“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
I made this painting years ago, inspired by that quote from Nelson Mandela.

Colorful Equality is an ode to equality, freedom, and respect. The many heads, each with their own colours and textures, symbolise the diversity of humanity. They are unique, yet connected — shaped by different stories, backgrounds, and perspectives. Freedom is not only the right to be yourself, but also the responsibility to create space for the other.

What I never understood was why I painted the background so fiercely. Today, for the first time, I understand why those faces stand in a sea of fire.

— Freedom that comes under threat feels like something you would instinctively want to defend with fire and sword. —

Here too, after many years, a meaning surfaces that I myself had not seen before.

Freedom is not a state I reach.
It is a movement I make again and again.
Not by ignoring boundaries,
but by consciously inhabiting them.

Today I do not choose less,
but truer.
And that turns out to be enough space.

 

Colorful Equality - Acryl - 3D - 100 cm x 100 cm

 

 

 

 

FLEETING LIFE

On time

This was it.
One full year.

A long year.
A slow year.
A short year.
A lightning-fast year.

Fleeting life.

We say: time flies.
And suddenly I see it clearly:
as human beings, we always live in two time zones at once.

There is time measured as time.
It is fleeting.
Almost nothing.

One year.
Ten years.
A hundred.
A thousand.

A human life
is a drop
in the ocean of time.

And at the same time,
time stands still.

You live.
So much happens.
So much still lies ahead.

In fifteen years then…
Back then…

That feels like an eternity.

And yet
time flies by.

Looking back at this diary,
I experience both.

Time is fleeting.
Time stands still.
And time passes me by.

Time does not end.
Time does not begin.
Time is.

 

 

 

The Voice Returned

21 January 2026

On 21 January 2025 I woke up and could no longer speak.
On 21 January 2026 I have my voice back — literally and figuratively.

What lies between those two sentences was not a straight line. Nor was it a recovery story made up of steps or goals. It began with disorientation.

My body asked for attention, but that was not where the greatest struggle lay. I took the physical setback seriously right away. Rehabilitation was simply part of it, almost self-evident. There was no drama there, no resistance. I had known my body for a long time as an idiosyncratic yet honest instrument. That part moved forward.

What did not move forward were my emotions.

They surfaced unfiltered. Raw, old, uncontrollable. Pain, memories, reactions I recognised but could no longer manage. As if doors that had been closed for years suddenly flew open — not one by one, but all at once. That surprised me, and it confronted me.

That is why I decided to write. Not to get rid of it, but to investigate it.

Why do I do what I do?
Why do I react the way I react?
Can I change that?
Do I want to change that?
Do I have choices?
And if I choose — are those choices allowed to change as well?

It did not become an analysis, but a process. With ups and downs. With moments of clarity and moments of confusion. No spectacular growth, but — as I realised later — an invisible upward line.

A confrontation with my son became a turning point. Not because of the scale of the conflict, but because of what it revealed. That this was not just my inner world. That what happened inside me had consequences. And that I did not have to go through this alone — and perhaps could not go through it alone.

I sought help. And there something became visible that I had long avoided facing: my heart was wearing armour. Not a small shield, but a hard layer, formed over many years. Protective, functional — and ultimately suffocating. The image that came with it was clear.

A bullet destroys. It strikes with force, tears through, leaves no doubt about what has been hit. That was how damage had always looked in my mind. But this was not a bullet. In my life it was a needle. A thin, almost invisible movement, slowly gliding through the pericardium. Not to destroy, but to make space. No impact, no drama — yet an unmistakable process. You hardly see it happening, but you feel it. Breath finds room again. The heart no longer has to brace itself.

Around 23 December I felt something I can only describe as relief. No euphoria. No great insight. But a bodily knowing: something has shifted here. This was, for me, the most tangible turning point of the year.

And then something else unexpected happened. The EGYM. No long build-up, no trajectory. One day. As if my body suddenly understood that it was allowed to participate again. Not fighting, not compensating, but joining in. It was not a performance. It was integration.

Now, a year later, I look back without heroics. This was not a victory march. It was an honest year. A year in which emotions could no longer be suppressed. In which old material surfaced and was allowed to be examined. In which I discovered that choices exist — and that they are allowed to change. In which my heart softened, my body was included again, and my voice slowly returned.

Not loud.
But mine.

Today I am not closing a chapter to seal it shut.
I am closing it to make space.

I am here.
I speak again.

There are breaks that bring you down,
and there are openings you do not see coming into being.
They make no sound,
they ask for no attention,
and suddenly something flows again that had long been still.

This is not an ending.
This is the moment life dares to move through me again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who Is Reading Whom?

January 19, 2026

Two friends came over today.
Carry — my friend since secondary school. Fifty years now. That remains a strange, almost unreal number.
And Hilde, my best friend. They know each other, but they are not friends themselves. That’s fine. It was a relaxed afternoon. We laughed — really laughed — like we used to.

Lately, I’ve been deeply engaged in writing my book. Over the past year, I’ve written an enormous amount of text, which I now use as source material. In my head, the structure is clear. I see how everything connects. But as soon as I try to fit it into the format of ChatGPT, interference appears. The material is large, layered, complex — and somewhere along the way the system keeps losing the thread.

At one point I said to Ton:
if this were a colleague instead of an AI assistant, we would have had a serious argument by now. I would have pinned him to the wall.
It drove me mad. I started sweating. I got too worked up.

Ton suggested measuring my blood pressure.
It turned out to be that of a young, healthy woman.
So it really wasn’t that bad.

Quite impressive, actually — getting into a fight with a computer.

The arrival of my friends was a welcome distraction.

Hilde asked several times how I was doing.
And the honest answer is: unusually well.
Since joining the new gym, a lot has changed. I have energy. I feel stable. There is an inner calm I don’t recognize from myself.

But she asked so insistently.
She told me that after reading my pieces, she had the impression that I was depressed.

That touched me. And it surprised me.

I experience clarity instead. Of course, many things are happening — but they don’t stick. They don’t sink in and drag me down. I feel that everything is allowed to be there, without it knocking me over. Not like before, when I dealt with things by wearing an impenetrable armor.
Now it’s different: seeing, feeling, and letting go again.
For me, a completely new way of being in life.

What does this say about the way I write?
What does it say about how my friend receives my texts?
What does it say about me?
About her?

I find that an interesting question.

Last year, I was clearly writing in a self-therapeutic way. Now I write more from existential curiosity. Less to save myself, more to look. Perhaps that touches something more universal — causing the themes to color themselves through the reader.

At least, that’s what I think.
But those are assumptions.

And who am I?
Who is she?
Who are you?

Perhaps writing is not a mirror of what is,
but a space in which everyone sees what they are able to carry.
Not because it stands there,
but because it begins to move —
between me, you,
and what does not yet have a name.

 

 

 

 

 

 

BETWEEN LOVE AND EMPTINESS

 

18 January 2026

I dreamed about Ton and me. I don’t remember what the dream itself was about, but when I woke up, something lingered: a conclusion, and a few questions that would not let themselves be pushed away.

Do I see and experience the same things as I did back then?
How do I deal with that now?
And how do I do this — without losing myself again?

I met my first husband, the father of my eldest daughter, on holiday. We fell deeply in love. We married young. We were blessed with a sweet little girl, Renée. Then came a major operation and two years of rehabilitation. At the end of that period, Renée was born. My physical condition deteriorated so much that I was declared fully disabled.

At the time, it didn’t seem to matter. I was happily married and had a child. Life was difficult, which meant my parents took over part of the care for my daughter. I was often left alone in my small apartment. My car was adapted, I was given a wheelchair and a mobility scooter, and my world became a little larger again.

It was during that time that yoga crossed my path. I immersed myself in it completely. My energy returned. I was able to walk much better again — literally and figuratively. Much more happened in those years that shaped my life, but that is not the point today.

Through the deepening I was going through, through the way I had always related to life but now more intensely, I gradually drifted away from my husband. Until there came a moment when, to me, there was nothing left. No communication. No shared purpose. No love. Emptiness.

I met Ton eight years ago, after Michel had died two and a half years earlier. We, too, fell deeply in love. We quickly became inseparable. Ton is someone who takes care — or rather, he provides care. He cooks, does the shopping, takes over the household. For me, it felt like heaven on earth. It gave me space. Space to paint again. To be creative.

Until he entered my life, living and surviving had been more than enough. That was all my body could manage. Nothing wrong with that. I had nothing to complain about. But that space also reawakened something that had been dormant for a long time. The energy I received from painting was immense.

We moved in together into a ground-floor apartment, with a small studio. Perfect. We bought bicycles so we could go out into nature and I could keep moving. And then came the stroke. The rehabilitation. The awareness. And the reborn feeling of now.

Ton is so good to me. And yet we do not speak the same language. He cannot follow my way of thinking. He wants to rationalize everything. He enters into discussions about things that, for me, are not discussions at all — they simply are. I want the space to name them out loud, and again and again we end up in distance. In emptiness.

And then the questions arise.

What happens to me if things continue to go as well as they are now?
If my energy fully returns?
Do I let that emptiness emerge again?
Do I become loveless once more — not out of unwillingness, but out of survival?

I want to do it differently. Without repeating the past.

Having no expectations of sharing the same way of thinking.
Seeing what he does do for me.
Not overlooking the small gestures of love.
Not letting my love depend on being recognized, but on being acknowledged.
Giving love. Sharing love. So there is room for Ton to breathe as well.

That is where I stand now.
Not with answers.
But with a choice to remain present — even when it rubs.

Perhaps love does not always ask for merging,
but for standing beside one another
without leaving oneself behind.
Not for speaking the same language,
but for allowing each other the space
to keep breathing within those differences.

 

 

 

 

 

EMBRACE HOPE

17 January 2026

In the mailbox lay a parcel addressed to me, bearing a familiar handwriting: long strokes and slightly elegant curls. It was a package from my sister, sent for my birthday. The mail had been delayed after the snowfall at the beginning of the year. At our cousin’s funeral, my sister had cautiously asked whether I hadn’t received anything yet. No, but don’t worry, it will arrive, I said.

Beautifully wrapped in a yellow silk cloth with cow parsley, a finely bound book emerged.

Remember this always…
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, the Horse and the Storm, illustrated and written by Charlie Mackesy.

Without having read it, the book already feels good in my hands. It reminds me of my childhood, when books were still traditionally bound, with covers that were slightly soft and thick, with relief. The drawing and the title suggest that — like Olivier B. Bommel and Winnie-the-Pooh — this will be a book with beautiful illustrations and carried texts with deeper layers.

Curious as I am, I first go online to look up who Charlie Mackesy is.

The idea for the book arose after Mackesy, an author and illustrator, began filling his Instagram account with drawings that radiated peace, empathy, and self-reflection. That much was immediately clear to me.

After experiencing the death of a close friend, Mackesy began drawing a boy who talks with a horse — as an expression of grief and as a conversation about the nature of courage. In a time of confusion, resentment, and tragedy, the story of the boy, the mole, the fox, and the horse offers a simple way of looking again at the world around us. Some of the feelings conveyed may seem simple, but they are precisely the essential things we can forget or suppress in times of unrest.

It is a book about hope. As I have written in earlier blog days myself: seeing and experiencing the light in small, simple things.

My sister and I have always had an ambivalent relationship. Love and envy. We both know where the roots of that lie. We have both tried to let seeds of love land, hoping they would sprout, grow, and bloom.

Today, after reading the note she had enclosed with the book in a beautiful open envelope, I can say that those seeds have grown into enormous trees — with deep roots and full of blossoms. For me, this was a valuable gift today. An example of how magical and wondrous lives can unfold.

I place the book on my bedside table, to read a little each night before going to sleep.

Perhaps hope is not something grand to hold on to,
but something small that you gently allow.
A gesture.
A book.
A sentence that may lie beside you
as the day comes to rest.

 

 

17 January 2026

 🌙 Dream from last night — now on the page ‘Dreams’.

 

 

 

 

The pumping station in Ouderkerk aan the IJssel — a place of water, silence and remembrance, where each of us belongs in our own way.

 

15 January 2026

 🌙 Dream from last night — now on the page ‘Dreams’.

 

 

 

 

 

Kindled

14 January 2026

My dream this morning kindled a question.
What is, actually, the difference between looking and perceiving?

To me, looking is what you see: a subject, an object, a person — without truly perceiving. It is a passive way of seeing. You see someone, but not necessarily their clothing, or whether they are smiling or not.

Perceiving goes deeper. Perception asks for attention; looking does not. It’s curious, really: in both cases we use the verb to see, yet it means something different. In perceiving, you use your senses — seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling — to give meaning to what you see. It is therefore a sensory process, and thus subjective. You inevitably bring your own experiences into it.

Looking is literally seeing with the eyes. It is objective.

Alright. Let me then assume these are the definitions of looking and perceiving. Inevitably, the next question arises: which is more important — looking or perceiving? Objective or subjective? In this way I bring myself back into a dualistic question — and that is precisely what I would rather be spared.

When you ask a further-reaching question, and are honest about it, you almost always end up with dualistic positions. Perhaps that is what life is. Ultimately, it does not ask us to exclude one in favor of the other, but to let them exist together. Only together do they form a whole. Perhaps we see best by both looking and perceiving.

And then I’m still not finished.

What if you are blind? How does that work? Can you then only perceive? Do you experience the world entirely subjectively? I know that in blind people other senses are often more strongly engaged — and perhaps a sixth, invisible sense is given more space. What does that mean?

Could we then say that there are people who visibly have a defect, but who may actually be blessed by that very defect? Might they develop more quickly, or differently? And could it be that what we consider a defect is, in the larger whole, not a defect at all?

I know that I may be making myself — and perhaps the reader — a little dizzy with these hoops of thought. But I don’t necessarily need an answer to existence or to how it all works. Asking questions and speaking them out loud is something I value being able to do in this place.

Perhaps life does not need to be solved.
Not lifted into a single truth.
As long as I am here — with a body, with senses, with questions —
I move between distinction and connection.
And perhaps that is not a lack of non-duality,
but precisely the way the whole
allows itself to be experienced in matter.

14 January 2026

 🌙 Dream from last night — now on the page ‘Dreams’.

 

 

Sunday Feeling

 

13 January 2026

The Sunday feeling. It’s Tuesday, but it feels like a Sunday. In the past that meant: a little more freedom and then back to work. A kind of loss of autonomy. But I haven’t known that for nearly forty years now. So what does this feeling mean today?

For me it is calm. Coziness. Nothing required, everything allowed. A world that doesn’t rattle at me, but is fairly quiet. That’s it above all: when my surroundings contribute little, make little noise, this Sunday feeling arises.

I get up, go training, have breakfast at home. During breakfast the TV goes on. Politics — question time in the House of Representatives. Then Maestro. The classical film music makes tears roll down my cheeks. That too, I realize, belongs to this feeling.

I always like to go home. My husband finds it almost endearing — how happy I am when I’m home. For me, the place where I live is a house in which I can truly feel at home. A place where I feel safe, where my own energy hangs, where I don’t have to explain anything.

I could say that “home” is not a physical place, that I can feel at home anywhere when I am at home within myself. And that is also true. In nature I feel at home. Cycling along trees and water. In rain, birds, plants, stars. In music that opens me. In painting and writing, when I enter the flow and time dissolves. Then I feel connected. Not separated. As if everything is part of the same movement.

But that does not mean the earthly disappears. At the end of the day I want to go back to my house. To my chair. My table. My walls. My quiet. Precisely there, all of that can land. Precisely there, I can relax without disappearing.

Home is not a contradiction for me. It is not a choice between inside or outside, body or spirit, earth or cosmos. It is both feeling the world — and being able to arrive somewhere. And sometimes a Tuesday simply feels like a Sunday.

Perhaps being at home is nothing more than being allowed to rest in what is 

— in nature, in music, in stillness, 

and ultimately also just between your own walls, 

where everything remains, for a moment, exactly as it is.

 

 

13 January 2026

 🌙 Dream from last night — now on the page ‘Dreams’.

 

 

The First Day

 

12 January 2026

The first day of the rest of my life.
That sentence resonates through me. It’s actually quite powerful. Why does it surface now?

I’ve always had the strange idea that I will live to be ninety-six. In difficult moments in my life, it gave me the courage to keep going — and to want to keep going. I often doubt those odd, unfounded assumptions of mine. And yet… what does it matter whether it will turn out to be true or not? From now on, people may enjoy my physical presence for another thirty-three years. Two thirds done, one third to go. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

The spiritual meaning of 33 revolves around the master number 33, the Teacher of Teachers. It stands for unconditional love, creativity, spiritual leadership, and helping others grow. It is associated with transforming old structures and opening new paths — with revelation and deep inner wisdom. It is often seen as a sign of calling and service.

Wow. If this is the first day of my life, then a beautiful path still lies ahead. Of course, that may sound a bit lofty and dreamy — but a girl is allowed to dream and fantasize once in a while.

Let me simply philosophize today.

I think I’ve reached an age where I can calmly say that I have gained an overview of the landscape of life. As if the contours have become visible. Because of that, I can now walk through life more freely, more naturally, more effortlessly. Because I have grown to love myself more and have developed greater self-mastery, I can hopefully collaborate more easily with others. At ease, I recognize possibilities as they present themselves — sometimes even before others see them. Because I am in harmony with myself, I understand that life gives me exactly what I need.

I am increasingly seeing how beautiful, magical, and wondrous life is. Slowly, I notice that I am beginning to experience heaven on earth. Happy with the small things, the small joys, the small moments of rapture — small in their stillness, yet vast in their boundless potential.

Perhaps I can also hear the sentence that keeps resonating today in another way.
The first day of the rest of your life can be an invitation: to let go, to learn, to make conscious choices, and to meet life as it presents itself now — without waiting for perfect circumstances.

And to keep the calm when the moment is not yet the moment.
To trust that you may let go.
I believe I will arrive, in my own time, at the place where I am meant to be — whatever the circumstances.

Perhaps this is what beginning truly means:
not turning everything upside down,
but looking differently.
Not rushing,
but trusting that life carries me —
starting right here.

12 January 2026

 🌙 Dream from last night — now on the page ‘Dreams’.

 

 

 

 

 

There are no grand movements.
No decisions, no explanations.
Just moments that no longer cling.
Memories that are allowed to pass
without my body having to hold them.

Perhaps this is what becoming whole does:
not understanding everything,
but noticing that I can remain standing
where I once had to give way.

 

10 January 2026

 🌙 Dream from last night — now on the page ‘Dreams’.

 

 

 

 

Watching Without Hurry

 

9 january 2026

I do not watch The Untamed to follow the plot, but to notice where it touches me.
With my laptop on my lap, sometimes silent, sometimes responding out loud, as if I am not watching alone. As if someone is sitting beside me who understands what I see before I can explain it.

What slowly unfolds is not a battle between good and evil, but a landscape of consciousness. Clans as inner states. The Lan clan as something angelic: clear, restrained, almost otherworldly. The Jiang clan as gentle and warm, human and supportive. The Wen clan as damaged — evil not as an origin, but as a consequence. And the Nie clan… not impure, but human: assumptions, conclusions, misunderstandings that make things seem to go wrong.

I notice how my attention keeps returning to silence. To what is not spoken. To details that are barely visible, yet carry everything. A faint smile on Lan Wangji’s face — only truly perceptible in episode ten, though it had been there all along. As if the story trusts me. As if it knows I am watching.

This series explains nothing. It shows.
It shows how inner noise creates fog, and how clarity does not arise from force, but from stillness. How “evil” has an origin. How power responds to emptiness. How people first lose their autonomy, before violence begins.

I watch without moving ahead. I watch the way I live, write, and paint: present, open, sometimes quietly amazed. Not to understand, but to notice what appears. And perhaps that is enough — a story that does not tell you who you are, but leaves space in which you can recognize yourself.

Perhaps watching is sometimes enough.
Not to know why something touches you,
but to allow that it does.
Without hurry. Without explanation.
Simply — being seen,
in silence.

 

9 January 2026

 🌙 Dream from last night — now on the page ‘Dreams’.

 

 

 

The Spiral Touches

8 January 2026

A friend I have known for some thirty-five years sends me a message on WhatsApp. She has not lived in the Netherlands for a long time. We have little contact, but when we do see each other there is always an immediate connection. In those moments we often discover that we are dealing with the same themes in our lives. The contact is intense, close, almost self-evident. And afterwards, each of us goes our own way again.

This has been the pattern for years. Sometimes we do not see each other for a long time. And when we meet again, the intensity is instantly there. As if nothing has passed in between.

Independently of one another, a third person also walks through our lives. Since my school days he has crossed my path — and, separately from me, also hers. Little contact, but when he is present, it is intense. Until it crystallizes again. Then he disappears from view once more.

Around the turn of the year I send New Year’s wishes, as I always do. This mutual friend replies with a video of a dancing Korean actor and singer. I recognize him immediately and let him know. We begin talking about our fascination with Asian films and culture. He tells me that our mutual friend is also a fan.

And then the little circle starts turning again.

She gets in touch with me. Without any preamble we are instantly back in an intense resonance. What touches me is not that this happens — but how natural it feels. As if the spiral brings us back to the same point for a moment, exactly where it fits.

For me, this is vertical time, made very tangible in relationships. You don’t have to hold on to each other. You don’t have to keep track. The connection is there, or it isn’t. You move along together, touch each other, and move on again. The spiral follows its own course, deepens, and meets itself again later on.

The intensity remains.
The love remains.
The memory remains.

So it is not strange that this fascination resonates again as well. What strikes me is that over all these years we have never spoken about this before. Apparently this, too, chooses its own moment. Time chooses its time.

My philosophy of life unfolds not in theory, but in daily life. In encounters that come and go, without loss. In connection without possession.

And every time the spiral touches again, I know:
this is enough.

Perhaps this is what time truly does:
not holding on, not losing, but moving.
Meeting without possession.
Letting go without farewell.
And again and again recognizing
that what is true does not disappear —
it waits until the spiral touches once more.

 

8 January 2026

 🌙 Dream from last night — now on the page ‘Dreams’.

 

 

 

PLAUSIBLE

 

7 January 2026

Early this morning my ears pick up an interview on the radio. Strangely enough, it lingers. Why? I truly wouldn’t know.

The voice on the radio announces a fellow journalist. She turns out to be married to a Canadian. Laughing — almost mockingly — she says that her husband “laughs his balls off” at how the Dutch deal with a bit of snow. The interviewer finds it hugely amusing as well and laughs along. He then plays the morning news, including the warnings. Together they recognize their colleague who, in a serious voice, announces “code orange” — and they laugh again, because this colleague has to sling this “ridiculous news” into the world.

This way of journalism, packaged as a quasi in-depth interview that might be taken seriously, disturbs me. I turn off the radio. Ton, my husband, reacts immediately. He finds it short-sighted and inappropriate as well.
Luckily, I think.

I hear these kinds of sounds constantly, on all sorts of subjects. Very resolute, viewed from an extremely narrow perspective. Then I think of my painting Vistas / Vergezichten. In this diptych you see the universe, the Big Bang, the human being, duality, the woman, the followers, the individuals, and the connectors.

In my view, humanity currently consists mainly of followers of individuals — and there are too few connectors. That is not an opinion, but an observation. The time of the connectors will return by itself. But clearly not now.

The presentation is often funny, almost cozy. I always call that plausible. It seems so — but is it really? Unconsciously, these kinds of “cozy” chats and interviews reach us via radio, TV, and social media. For many people it is difficult to remain detached from them. Technological progress has advantages, but certainly disadvantages as well.

Personally, I choose not to watch or listen to this. After all, there is an off switch.

And yet…
what is it in me that makes this linger all day?

… hahaha, he laughs his balls off…

Maybe it lingers because I hear where laughter is aimed at what wants to be carried.
Because seriousness here is not heavy, but it is real.
And because, even with an off switch, I cannot pretend not to hear what is missing.
Not everything that sounds plausible is true.
And not everything that disturbs wants to go away.

 

7 January 2026

 🌙 Dream from last night — now on the page ‘Dreams’.

 

 

 

 

 

6 January 2026

 🌙 Dream from last night — now on the page ‘Dreams’.

 

 

SPACE WITHIN AND AROUND ME

5 January 2026

It has been a while since we’ve had real blankets of snow here in the Netherlands. This morning the car had to be dug out. While we were at the gym, it kept snowing, and an hour later we had to literally uncover the car again from a thick white layer.

It brings up nostalgic feelings. At the same time, I feel joy — a light sense of happiness when I look outside. Out there, I don’t even feel the cold. Maybe it isn’t cold at all. I couldn’t say, because I’m too absorbed in experiencing this serene, white stillness.

Taking that first step into the untouched snow, leaving deep footprints behind. It makes me wonder: in what other ways do I leave my marks? Do I want to? And if so — how?

White stands for purity. For peace. For the white canvas of my paintings. White stands for a new beginning. And now, quite literally, at the start of this new year. It feels fitting on many levels: my birthday coming up this weekend, a renewed awareness. A new physical beginning. Fresh courage. New ideas. Yes — everything seems to align right now.

I see far fewer cars. Hardly any bicycles. The world slows down because of the snow. Everything is allowed to become quieter for a moment. We are given space to recharge, to turn inward, before new challenges appear on our path again.

I receive beautiful photos and videos. On Instagram and Facebook, I see many people enjoying themselves, feeling uplifted. Of course, there are troubling things happening in the world — and unrest in our own country as well. We see that on television and on social media.

Some may call it egocentric. Some may think I’m burying my head in the sand. But today, I consciously choose to enjoy this white beauty and the joy I sense around me. I try not to seek out the news deliberately. Enough reaches me already. I don’t need to go looking for more.

A smile. A kind word. Beautiful thoughts. Enjoying nature. Expressing myself creatively. That is what I can do. That is what makes life feel lighter to me.

I see how this white landscape creates space in many people. That touches me. I want to keep noticing moments like this — because ultimately, beautiful autumn, spring, summer or winter days like these are small gifts within a challenging existence.

At the same time, I’m aware that beautiful external circumstances make it easier to feel this way. But I don’t want this feeling only here — I want to carry it under all circumstances. Because I believe that life is not about waiting for the storm to pass,
but about learning to dance in the rain.

Perhaps space is not created by silence,
but by attention.
And sometimes, snow reminds us of that.

5 January 2026

 🌙 Dream from last night — now on the page ‘Dreams’.

 

 

 

 

January 4, 2026

 🌙 Dream from last night — now on the page ‘Dreams’.

 

BLUE BIRD

January 3, 2026

While Ton and I are having breakfast, we wonder whether it might still be a good idea to go and train. Normally we don’t go during the weekend. It’s already three minutes to eleven, and the last reservation can be made for half past eleven. Five spots still available — so, off we go.

Outside it’s snowing. The streets and pavements are white and haven’t been salted yet. My walking stick is useless in these conditions, so I hold on to Ton. We hear the crunching and bubbling sound under the car tyres — a new sound, a new sensation. My system is still more sensitive than before, so it needs a moment to adjust. Once I’m on the machines at the gym, I calm down. The physical effort gives me a deep sense of satisfaction.

On our way home, the radio reports on… the situation in America. What new situation is this now?
Trump claims to have captured Maduro, the president of Venezuela, and confirms attacks. I don’t want to engage in politics or opinions here, but I do feel an analogy with the individual.

I believe that if we, as individuals, dare to resolve the chaos within ourselves — if we examine our own actions — then something essential shifts. If, within our small circles, we give and receive support unconditionally (truly without expecting anything in return), that is the first step toward peace.

I understand the protests, the opinions that reach us through the media, but I don’t think the solution lies there. It begins — quite literally — with ourselves.
Maybe I’m wrong. I’m not all-knowing. This is simply how it feels to me.

During my courses, I sometimes told a story from the Mahabharata. It tells of a small bird — the Blue Bird — who lays her eggs on the beach. A tidal wave comes and carries the eggs away into the ocean. The little bird begins to drink the ocean, drop by drop, determined to find her eggs again.

Arjuna, the god of rebirth, sees the bird and asks what she is doing.
“Isn’t this an impossible task?” he asks.
“No,” says the bird. “If I keep drinking long enough, I will find my eggs.”

In the story, the bird and Arjuna have many conversations. The bird has an immense trust that through perseverance and love, she will succeed. After many tests — through simplicity, selflessness, endurance, faith in herself, and above all patience infused with love — Arjuna finally decides to drink the ocean dry in one single act. The bird experiences a miracle and finds her eggs.

If we behaved a little more like this bird, perhaps we humans could perform miracles as well — without taking up weapons, without forcing one another into different viewpoints.

There are people in this world who believe they hold power, who visibly sow confusion and provoke wars. From our rocking chairs, it seems there is nothing we can do about that. It appears as though a handful of people determine the direction of everything.

My belief is this: if we, as individuals, gain mastery over our own emotions, over our own fears, then something shifts energetically on a cosmic level. And ultimately, no single ruler can compete with that.

What I am really saying is that the chaos and confusion we see in the world are a mirror of what lives within the majority of individuals. This is not a judgment. I see us as particles of one single movement. If enough of us begin to move in another direction… then what happened to the little bird may happen to us as well.

There is one important thing I want to add. There are exceptions — people living in war zones or under extreme conditions. Of course they cannot engage in this kind of awareness; their systems are focused purely on survival. Not everyone can travel to such places to offer support. From our relatively comfortable lives, the one thing we can do is work on ourselves — so that, eventually, a global shift may become possible.

Drop by drop.
Without haste.
That, sometimes, is miracle enough.

 

 🌙 Dream from last night — now on the page ‘Dreams’.

 

 

WONDERED INTERWEAVING

January 2, 2026

Today I went training and spent time at home with my dream. I quickly found the painting that was mentioned in it.

Throughout the day I alternated between different things. I watered the plants. Not just splashing water into the soil, but carrying them one by one to the kitchen and caring for them attentively. Gently giving them lukewarm water. As I placed them back, I noticed it was snowing outside. I took the time to enjoy the white view and took a few photos.

I got in touch with a friend in Togo, where of course it’s pleasantly warm. I sent her a photo so she could briefly enjoy the winter white with me. Almost immediately she sent one back: sitting outside at a table with friends. One moment in time, more than 5,000 kilometers apart… so beautiful.

I checked in on a friend who had been ill over New Year’s, asking if she needed anything — groceries, for example. She wasn’t fully fit yet, but had already gone back to work. I’m in contact with my best friend every day. We send each other a heart daily. We take photos whenever we come across a heart somewhere. Sometimes that’s all it is, sometimes it turns into an exchange of thoughts. I contacted two friends I’ve known all my life and set a date to meet. I also spoke with my sister; we talked about change and being “different.”

I follow a Chinese series and a Korean series, alternating between the two. I use these moments as pauses for rest.

Today was my tenth time at the E-Gym. Five times a week for two weeks. The first week I immediately felt fresh and energized, but my performance seemed stable. At first I thought, well, maybe that isn’t being measured. But the trainer said, “Oh yes — the equipment automatically becomes more challenging when it measures that you’ve grown stronger. It adjusts by itself.”

“Well then,” I thought, “if I feel this good even without visible gains in strength, that’s perfectly fine. I’m getting energy from it either way.”

When I started two weeks ago, my BioAge was 73. And now, after two weeks of daily training… 56 years. Next week I’m going to stop rehabilitation therapy and focus on recovery in this way. It feels right.

I reflected on how often I know that something needs to be done, but that what is truly right only becomes clear after some friction. Is that a problem? Does it always have to be right immediately? No, I don’t believe that. I believe in time — with its layers. During rehabilitation I learned once again how to be among unfamiliar people, with falling and getting back up. Now I can handle the world a bit better again.

To most people, this day probably looks like an ordinary, gently flowing day. You might even think: “Annette, not very exciting.” I completely understand that. But for me, after many years, it is a new phenomenon to take pleasure in household tasks. To make frequent contact and even plan appointments. To step into a gym with a clear, settled feeling.

So many “ordinary” actions that now feel new and refreshing. The feeling of being connected to the world around me, to the people around me. Connected to matter. Not out of habit, but from an open connection.

I feel wonder that it is this way.
I am amazed that I can’t even remember the last time I felt so whole on such an ordinary day.

Perhaps this is what recovery sometimes truly is:
not spectacular, not loud,
but quietly interwoven with the everyday.
A hand that waters,
a body that grows stronger without struggle,
a world that comes back in
without me having to grasp it.
Today life flowed gently —
and I flowed along with it.

 

 🌙 Dream from last night — now on the page ‘Dreams’.

 

January 2, 2026

On January 2, 2026, I had a dream that brought me back to a painting I started three years ago.
A voice said: “Dare to be the dragon.”
What followed wasn’t just a dream — it was an inner turning point.
You can read the full account on my Dreams page: …