Healing pain

Five years have passed since I was attacked by a hawk. I have learned a lot about trauma since then. That it is not so much time that heals, but love – from myself, my family, kindhearted friends, and when I was finally ready, from the one who kissed my wounds. Also, that healing is painful. We’re talking flashbacks, numbness and hypervigilance. There are days I’ll be hopping through the forest, when I am suddenly scared out of my wits by a shadow, run home to my oak tree and hide trembling in a corner of the trunk, enveloped by the darkness of piercing memories. I can hear the raccoons playing outside, inviting me for a game of acorn spinning – as I lie under a blanket of leaves and try to breathe. It is difficult sometimes to open up about what is going on and let others in, because trust is one of the things that I lost in the incident. But I have also learned that I am stronger for it. The wound is the place where the light enters you. And with every step my light is getting brighter.

Come away with me

Let’s go on an adventure! To a small island in the northern archipelago, where we can breathe in the endless beauty of the nature reserve, where life moves to the rhythm of the tide, and wading birds welcome you on the stretched out mudflats, where you wake up at dawn to the smell of dewy grass, go for an early morning swim to wash away your haunting dreams, lay down on marram-covered sand hills, let the sun warm your skin and the sound of the sea shells playing in the waves tells you it’s time to sleep, until the wind invites you to cycle along the coast to the pier and find an enchanted place on the top of the woods, where you can sit down carelessly under the pine trees to have a sweet picnic of fresh greens and do Nothing, follow the dancing butterflies, get lost on the heath, stumble upon a marsh harrier dozing off in the shimmering sunset, play hide-and-seek in the crescent-shaped dunes, and watch the dazzling stars shoot through the sky until you can no longer remember where you end and the universe begins.

Gifts from the sea

On days I feel lost in this world, I always return to the beach. On my way there I noticed something resembling an umbrella leaning against the bus stop: a wooden stick, just standing there casually as though it’s a perfectly normal place for it to be, waiting for me. “A stick?” you say. Yes, I know it doesn’t sound like much, but I have come to appreciate the value of branches and secondly, it was a particularly nice one, mind you – weathered driftwood curved in the shape of a sword. I brought my treasure with me to the seaside. There I breathed in the fresh night air as the last of the sunset lingered fiercely red above the mystical, dark water. Skipping barefoot through the thundering waves, finding as always that when you can reach out and touch the horizon, everything falls into place, I came upon orange roses that someone had left there for me to find. I stopped picking flowers years ago, once I learned that loving something means letting it live, but to receive such an unexpected gift filled up the empty spaces in my heart.

Take me to a place

The longer I live in this urban settlement behind the sandy beaches of the North Sea, the more beautiful places I discover. One of my favourite squares is Sweelinckplein in the borough of Duinoord. Between the Neo-Renaissance houses lies a quaint urban park that is home to both the composer Jan Pieterszoons Sweelinck and a fairytale girl. It’s a little haven of quiet, where the fragrant lavender invites you to laugh and dance under the stars. But nothing quite prepares you for the overwhelming splendour of the spring blossom that, for only a moment, colours your entire world.

How sweet it is

What I love most about the beach is that not one day is the same. You think you know what your walk will bring, the breaking waves rushing in, the salted wind playing with your hair, the gulls flying high above you, but then you arrive and all your expectations are blown away, and you can no longer hear the questions and doubts that pierce your existence. Everything you thought you knew… about life, about love… disappears. And it is just you and the universe. And you feel that every day is a new beginning.