During my high school exchange year in the United States, I lived with an African American family.
Later, in my school research paper, I focused on African American history.
These experiences awakened my interest in looking more closely:
How do belonging, identity, hurt, strength and different forms of family emerge?
Later I studied Sinology, lived in China for two years and in Japan for half a year.
In China I taught, worked with students, spent time with orphaned children at an SOS Children’s Village,
and also gained insights into the lifeworlds of ethnic minorities. In Japan I studied,
lived with a host family and worked with school and kindergarten children at an English school.
Through these experiences I learned how much relationship also has to do with language, restraint, context,
unspoken expectations and culturally shaped ideas of closeness and responsibility.
My travels also broadened my view. I spent several months backpacking through Ecuador,
Peru, Mexico and Tanzania, met people in the jungle and in the Andean highlands,
and spent a month travelling through Tibet by mountain bike. These experiences were not simply “travels”,
but encounters with very different forms of everyday life, community, hospitality,
family, spirituality, uncertainty and what feels self-evident.
To this day, I am interested in how people in different social, cultural and family contexts
live, love, take responsibility and deal with conflict. This curiosity is an important part of my stance.
For my counselling work, it means that I do not assume there is only one right way
to live relationship, family, closeness or commitment.
All these experiences flow into my work today.
I listen carefully, ask about meanings and try not to categorize too quickly
what people live, feel or decide. For me, it is about taking each person’s lifeworld seriously —
without romanticizing it, judging it or forcing it into familiar boxes.
