I am born (1980) and raised in the Netherlands. Where I received my master degree in 2007 from the University of Humanistic Studies with a thesis about enhancing empathy with help of the arts. This university, situated in Utrecht, is uniquely in its kind. It takes more than six years to get a masters degree and it focusses strongly on the academical disciplines philosophy, psychology and organizational studies concerning theoretical knowledge about the meaning of life, worldviews and the building of a humane society.
After my studies I have worked several years as an existential philosopher and counsellor. Partly as an employee for a large organization and partly as founder and owner of the company ‘Zinlab’ (meaning: laboratory of meaning). I counseled individuals, trained professional careworkers, mostly GP’s and psychiatrists, was chairman of moral deliberations, a policymaker and projectleader, writer of mission and vision statements for new starting businesses, teamcoach and a trustee person for employees.
I loved my life and career in the Netherlands, but already from my youth I felt the attraction of the Nordic countries. It was not that I wanted to move, it was more that something was pulling me there. I would like to call it the northern wind that was wisphering in my ears about the dark and large forests, the cold and refreshing lakes, the ancient stones and rocks. For almost four years back the call of the northern wind got to strong and we got curious to find the way back to where it originates. We said goodbye to our jobs, sold our house and company and packed the most of our belongings and drove, one day behind the moving truck, in an old volvo V70 filled with three children and two cats, to our new country.
We landed in Sweden in the summer of 2018. A very hot and dry year. Within a half year we bought an old and abandoned farm. It lies hidden in the woods , in the middle of the hills, with the suiting name: valley of the leaves. And carefully we started to restore it in a sustainable way. These were years in which I dived deeper into the knowledge about old wooden Scandinavian houses and their needs, sustainable building and living, ecological farming, agroforestry, wood- and nature preservation. We also bought two goats and two pigs of an old Swedish and endangered species. From a life in the academics, to a more practical life in which I tried to put my more theoretical knowledge and values of sustainable and meaningful living into practice. But again: not only living them out in practice but also collecting more knowledge by at the same time proceeding my studies but then at the Swedish universities: I fulfilled different master courses with a focus on gender, health and technology, sustainability and politics. I also studied the arts: creative writing as well as fiber art and sustainable and slow fashion.
I think this is one of the major red threads in my life: to connect practices and theoretical knowledge and analysis with one another in order to be both, intern and extern, one and the same person. Not only thinking, researching and writing about important values but also living them in real life.
Due to my experiences of having lived in different countries, I master three languages fluently: Dutch, Swedish and English.