Compassion for Gaziantep

We need to stop terrorism. Not by more violence, but by compassion. And yes, that’s difficult.

LETTING GO BİG TIME

‘It’s good to shake up the system and make a new start,’ I wrote to a friend, explaining our BIG decision to leave Istanbul, my beloved home for 26 years, and move to Brussels. Today’s mantra says that change is good, and I believed it, but I can tell you that moving -this time- was…

Looking for trouble

I love my life as a writer (my second novel, De Nederlandse Bruid, will be out this November), but there is another work I have begun: I am a mind and body troubleshooter. Inner (and sometimes outer) conflict is my business. What I do is often called energy psychology, but I strongly believe what a…

My secret: I can’t get away from conflict

If I’d stayed with my first job in Turkey as the cultural attaché of the Consulate-General of the Netherlands in Istanbul, things might have turned out very differently, but I made the ‘faux pas’ of simultaneously publishing the odd article in a newspaper. Soon I was told I had to choose: diplomacy or journalism. I…

Fear of Blogging

As Udemy has immediately posted on my behalf on Facebook, I have now signed up for a program called SUM-it-UP, created by my dear friends Anastasia Ashman and Tara Agacayak. The purpose of it is to streamline your presence on the web so that you make the most of it. ‘Mine yourself for purpose and…