The core issue

So the story goes crisscrossed.

We started off in a cult, and jumped back to years before that when my core wound came to get me when I got reunited with my birth family. 

Let's say the cult was a symptom. The core wound was exposed long before those assholes came into the picture. 

But what was also clear to me was that I didn't learn my lesson yet. 

After these two big events, the next layer came. 

My body was going to speak. 

After I was expelled from the cult, a long recovery awaited me.

And God knows that I have tried everything to pull myself out of the depression.

But my feelings ran deep. My attachment to misery was still alive and kicking, perhaps even stronger than ever before. I had to find a way to ground myself again. The joke was perhaps that this was the first reason I ended up in the cult. You can say a lot, but God definitely has a good sense of irony. Strong humor, definitely.

I was just drifting through life, going out a lot, having casual relationships, abusing every substance I could find, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Everything to feel different from how I felt. I did go to therapy, but mainly to convince myself that I was doing something.

Fortunately, I still had an anchor, my foundation.

My only anchor, that and Rik.

Rik was a gift from God that I had encountered one evening while drinking.

He was looking for someone for his company, and I was looking for a roof over my head.

I started to delve into the teachers, began reading books, and so on. It was a period of enlightenment. The first night I stayed at Rik's villa, I slept for two days. He was there for me, and I accepted him as a mentor and father figure that I longed for deeply. He took care of me, like a harbor in a storm.

That's how I ended up in Amsterdam Oud Zuid. If there's anywhere I don't belong, it's in Amsterdam Oud Zuid. But I made the most of it. And life got a little better again. Thanks to Rik, I came into contact with various teachers. Byron Katie, Abraham Hicks, Adyashanti, Eckhart Tolle.

We filled our days with working hard and partying hard.  And in between, the nights filled with philosophizing, listening to music, and making plans to conquer the world. I met the most amazing people, who kept opening my mind further and further. I felt like a kid in a candy store. I just consumed all this new information about a world so much bigger than I had my eyes on. My identity construction started to show cracks in them. I wasn't that convinced of anything anymore. I felt my spirit was crawling out, through all those layers of conditioning, karma and ego. 

I was still working on my foundation, but also in the hospitality industry, to find some solid ground.

Even though was working hard to get ground back under my feet, i couldnt seem to find peace in my system. I guess this is why god hit the brakes and gave me the next wake up call. Or you can say that my energy started to attract a similar frequentie, which made it so that I was going to  go through the same abuse as I have done before. 

Or you could say that I was just at the wrong place, at the wrong time. 

Or you could just say i wasnt born lucky.

Whatever the case may be, one night after work I got sexually attacked and molested by my employer. 

Once again I stood still, but not necessarily out of my own choice.

I remember one significant moment of this whole event, that I will spare you the details of, was when I was at the police station after the event.

They took pictures of my body since I was injured after the event. He had been violent with me and I fought him to escape. This resulted in bruises over my body. 

At some moment the officer who was taking the pictures asked me: is this what you were wearing? 

Now I am sure this nice person was just doing their job and didn't mean anything other than the question they asked. 

But for me, it changed something in my system. 

There I was, building and falling, building and falling, an endless cycle of this shit.

And for the first time i didnt grab back to the good old depression, but i just gave up in a different way. 

I blamed myself but without anger, i blamed god but without holding a grudge, i gave up without losing my connection to life completely. This comment, this event, me, it just shifted. 

Time moved on and so did I, changing my environment again to find peace. 

And I did. Because I fell in love. I found a love that made me feel safe. A love that made a place for me where I could catch my breath. We had been friends already for a few years. Friends who sometimes kiss. And then we sparked, and we got close. 

This man singlehandedly managed to heal a shitload of wounds he did not cause. 

He became my best friend, and he still is. 

We moved in together in Alkmaar and then we moved together to our first house we bought in Haarlem. And then we made a baby! 

I always wanted to have kids, I just figured that I would be a bit older. 

But it happened the way it did and we were extremely happy. 

My pregnancy was not the hallelujah glory of the movies and series. I was tired, very tired. I gained a lot of weight and actually felt very uncomfortable in my own body. But I was also happy. I felt proud that we were having a baby, and I felt very connected to my baby. Immediately, from day 1. Ultimately, it was an 18-hour labor where we started at home, in the bath, and ended up in the hospital.

During the delivery, at one point, I looked at some photos in our house. A photo of my foster mother and a photo of my biological mother. In my complete state of trance of bringing life into the world, this was a significant enough trigger to decide at a certain level that I could better keep my child in my womb. This was quickly followed by a visit to the hospital, because whether I wanted it or not, this baby was coming into the world.

Still, the moment was decisive for me and touched me deeply.

When Boris was born and I held him, I felt pieces of my soul come back to my body.

This was the kind of love I had dreamed of. 

And our child brought it out for me. 

During my pregnancy I thought about my mother more than ever. I went back in a way about the way I felt about her. Now that I was carrying my own child, I could relate even less to giving up a child. At the same time I missed her and I wished that she would hold my hand. 

My foster parents were out of the picture, on account of the fact that they stayed in the cult remember. 

Boris was born and our bubble was good.

However, no one had told me about postpartum tears or the fact that my body was shattered after this delivery and how I was supposed to recover, but all in all, I was happy.

And then, when it felt like Jurian, Boris and I were finding our rhythm in our new life, fate struck.

Exactly 3 weeks after Jur and I had become new parents, it was Jurian's turn to delve deeper into his maternal relationship.

He had to say goodbye to his mother, who had lost the battle against cancer.

A week or so before she passed away, Jur and I had gone to his parents' house, and his mother had spent the whole day with Boris in the garden. Where he had been peacefully sleeping on her chest for hours.

It was a hard blow to lose her. She was a wonderful woman.

We fell into a new whirlwind of processes.

With a 3-week-old baby, I drove back and forth between Waarland and Haarlem every day.

The family came together, the farewell was arranged, and on the day of the cremation, we left Boris alone for the first time overnight. At my foster parents'.

It was all pretty shitty.

Jurian was in mourning, so was I. Boris was wonderful, but he must have felt his parents' grief somewhere. We did our best, but we lost each other romantically.

This had already been set in motion during the pregnancy, but now the decision had been made.

We decided, as the good friends that we are, to continue living together. To support each other through the period of mourning and new life.

To still be the very best parents for Boris together. We continued living together and made sure everyone stayed put. Fortunately, our new house had 3 bedrooms.

Time passed, and I started to feel physically worse and worse.

I was so tired, and gained a lot of weight, I couldn't move properly anymore and started feeling more and more depressed.

After an evening of drinking wine with my friends, I got behind the wheel more  tipsy than I like to admit.

A very conscious choice, because the thoughts of heaviness were back 100 percent.

I didn't want to go on anymore, I was too tired, it was too heavy.

I thought about Boris and did everything I could to keep myself afloat, but that night I hit rock bottom again. I had to drive 10 minutes home, which took me an hour and a half. I kept driving in circles, crying and crying all alone.

Somehow, I got home, dove into bed, and decided that I had to come up with a way to keep going. It was no longer about just me, I had attached myself to these boys who I shared a life with. There was no way I could leave anymore.

A few days later, I met a friend in Amsterdam. We went for a coffee, we met at the Dam.

A commotion hit me when I arrived in the city. 

A city where I had lived with so much love for years felt like an enemy. The violence of stimuli made my head spin.

We were sitting in a café, chatting about all sorts of things, when my friend asked me if I was okay.

I quickly said yes, why? She drew my attention to my hands that were shaking uncontrollably, and my foot that was obsessively tapping on the ground.

I was shocked, I was completely unaware of the signals from my body. I was completely tense. I made an excuse and said it was just motherhood, little sleep and all that. But I knew I had to get out of that city as soon as possible and find my way home.

I canceled our coffee date and made my way back to the station.

Now that I was aware, I was aware. I felt my heart pounding, I was dizzy, I couldn't breathe properly. I was mostly hyperventilating rather than breathing.

I made my way through the hundreds of people at the station and found my train. Quickly, I sat down and started to cry. My body was in a high state of panic and I couldn't stop it. I called Jur and said he needed to pick me up from the station because I wasn't feeling well. The conductor came and asked me for my ticket. I looked at her, but couldn't say anything. I hoped she could see my pain and help me.

She looked at me and asked if I was okay; before I could answer, I fainted.

A few moments later, I came to in her arms; my body hadn't reset from the sudden loss of consciousness, it had gotten worse.

I only recognized this feeling from a bad trip I once had with acid.

I floated through worlds and states of consciousness, I had lost all my grip. There was only a state of deep, deep pain. Soul pain.

The conductor made sure I got off the train and that someone came to pick me up. I was ashamed and could only cry.

Jur picked me up and took me home.

At home, the panic didn't stop; it only seemed to get worse.

I lost consciousness and had a hysterical cry that scared me.

We decided to call an ambulance, something went terribly wrong here. There I lay, on the couch in our newly purchased house, with my best friend who was no longer my partner, with our newborn son who had just lost his grandmother, completely beside myself. On top of that, the fear that something might really be wrong now. Deathly fear.

The ambulance arrived quickly enough, I was tested, examined, and waved away.

It was clear that my organs were no longer functioning properly and I was also starting to go a bit crazy, but the paramedics could not detect any life-threatening condition.

So I was told that I was just tense and needed to relax. They gave me something to sleep and told me to go to my general practitioner. 

My anger rose, something was wrong, I was sure of it. But no one could hear me.

Through my own body, the path to a diagnosis began.

The general practitioner told me that I was overstressed, and that a good dose of oxazepam could help me. I demanded a referral to the hospital. She agreed. I was so sick, I had no energy left, I lay in bed for days. When I walked up the stairs, my heart was so out of rhythm because it took so much energy that I needed at least 20 minutes to recover.

And again, my world had very quickly become very small.

In the hospital, I underwent various tests with different specialists until we ended up with the internist who had the results for me after a few weeks.

I had an autoimmune disease called ME/CFS. That prognosis was grim.

There was no medication for it, and the disease would only worsen.

There was a very real possibility that I would spend my life in a wheelchair.

My world came crashing down. I couldn't believe it. Had I gone through everything just to end up here, not even 30 years old, with a baby, sick with no hope of recovery?

Now I know I have mentioned depression before, and I know that I have hit a few rock bottoms before this moment. But I do feel that most of these moments were kind of dramatic, and just mostly very emotional and heavy. 

So let me tell you that the depression I fell into after this diagnosis is beyond description.

I felt deep betrayal, betrayed by God, by my own body, and by everyone who had ever wronged me. I got sick because of all these fucking assholes in my life that had abused me, left me, raped me, beat me, and just threw me away. And finally my body couldn't keep up anymore. 

It was a very dark place for a long period. And all this while I was a new mother..... What a lesson.

Boris was literally the only thing in the world that kept me here. 

He was the only thing that I enjoyed. He was my only light. 

We did research at home about the disease, the stories were not motivating.

People who spent their entire lives in bed could barely move and had a joyless existence. Locked in their own body. Was this going to be my life?

From the hospital, I had received a referral to a specialist in Lelystad. A clinic where they could alleviate the symptoms. That was then our only lifeline.

A few days later, we left for the clinic.

In Lelystad, one of the ugliest cities in our country, stood the ugliest building in the world with very large letters on the front that read PAIN AND FATIGUE CLINIC.

Jurian stopped the car, took my hand, and said.... I don't know if we're in the right place, sweetheart. I agreed, but at that moment it was the only thing we had.

The doctor was an insensitive person, the smell of death lingered in the building, every sentence from his mouth was a condemnation. Everything was wrong. We left and the decision was clear.

We need to find our own way out of this.

With the hospital that had declared me incurable, a general practitioner who only prescribed me sleeping pills and sedatives, and the internet that only had disaster scenarios for me, I had a brutal awakening in our healthcare system.

There was no help, and there was no light at the end of the tunnel either.

Time passed and my body remained sick.

Until one day, I received a call from a soul connection from a while back.

She asked how it was going, I told her about my process.

She said, "Yes, that's not going to happen, I know who you need to see." You need to go to Brenda.

Brenda was a friend of hers who lived in Amsterdam. She was a healer.

I thought it was good, so I accepted all options to help me.

So there we went. 

We left for Amsterdam where I met Brenda, a beautiful, kind, gentle, magical woman who worked with vortex healing. I had never heard of it before, but the idea was that I would lie down on a bed and she would channel all sorts of energy. I was fine with it all. No problem. Lets do it.

It was the first time in weeks that I felt somewhat relaxed again. I even dozed off a bit. I was kind of daydreaming, it was a nice feeling.

After an hour and a half, she woke me up again and said that it was a bit of a mess. Yes, there's some work to be done here. I sat up and felt better. I couldn't believe it. Maybe I wanted it to work so badly, that it worked, I didn't care, the point was, I felt better.

And just like that, I suddenly found myself on a different path. Just like that, after weeks, maybe even years, I was now on this path. Work to be done. Okay, that's fine. I can do that. 

We changed directions, and I listened to Brenda's advice. I went to an acupuncturist, who helped me relax, who got me off oxazepam right away. I went to an orthomolecular doctor, who had blood and stool tests done and quickly discovered that there were too many harmful bacteria roaming around in my system. He gave me supplements and dietary advice. Which gave me more energy in no time. And I went to Brenda as often as I could. Where we worked on my energetic system, my karma knots, my incarnations, my emotional body.

Months went by where the only things I did were taking care of our son, crying, and healing. It was the first time in my life that I paused to consider the root pain that had set everything in motion. While I had indeed spent most of my life in therapy. But this was different. I had awakened. Awake in myself, awake in my behavior, in my trauma, in my body. Everything was on and screaming for healing. And it was clear, if I don't tackle this now, it's the end of the story.

And here we are 10 years later.

I am not sick nor in a wheelchair, I am healthy. 

This healing path has not been easy, I have done so much work for the last 10 years.

I faced many demons and trauma from my life, and I have taken a deep and honest look at my own behaviour. 

To get out of the victimship of life, so many things had to be faced.

And this is never a quick fix, this has always been a journey, and it still is.

And next to the fact that I now know so much better what kind of healing is out there, it is still so layered and complex. The world keeps changing and so do I.

I got a brutal awakening in the systems of this world. 

The system of adoption, therapy and other mental health care systems, the fact that most systems are designed to keep us sick. The fact that the relation between body, mind and spirit is the most important one to restore. And so much more. 

The point of this story could be that if you don't go to the root, you can not recognize the signals and symptoms of your body well enough. 

If you keep running, life will catch up with you. 

If you don't take your position in this life out of accountability you will keep attracting drama. 

And so much more.

But for now, you must wonder what came next. …..