She approaches me because she is concerned about their seven-year-old son. Things are not going too well. The young human under their wings does not seem to be able to show his happy spontaneity well lately. He complains a lot. Seemingly very ordinary requests evoke resistance almost in advance and he often looks sad and dissatisfied. Together, the parents are aware that there is a real chance that this has to do with issues they themselves struggle with, but they cannot get a grip on them. They would like to have a conversation, so that together we can look at where this might come from. What does their child mirror to them? Could it be that their parenthood is subconsciously coloured by their own pain and that their son is returning it? What could they do to heal that pain and bring more lightness back into the relationship with themselves, each other and him? These are big questions, so we try to create a situation where we have plenty of time to explore together.

Due to the distance from where I live, it takes a while for us to find a suitable moment, a moment when they can both be present and talk freely, without having to hold back for the sake of their son in what could become an intense conversation. In the end we decide that I will arrive and stay with them the evening before the consultation. I am late due to my other appointment and, wet from the rain, I enter the spacious living room, which exudes a pleasant atmosphere with plants, earth tones and warm lighting. How special, to get to know each other already! Their willingness to give me hospitality and my willingness to literally bridge the distance feeds our mutual trust. We discuss that it should be much more often the case that when you are struggling with something, you invite someone to help into your house, in your place, in your world, where you are at home and the other is a guest. With a consultation at your home it is easier to maintain your autonomy. Then it is clearer to the person who comes to support you that their role is based on humility, not on authority, despite the knowledge and expertise they bring with them. After all, what matters is the awakening of your inner knowing by the person who is your guest.

“Is that professional?” someone had asked me the day before, “staying with your clients…?” It was a question that confused me. It did not seem important to me – or maybe it did, but vice versa. I had already had extensive contact and did not consider it a problem. Moreover, the proposal had come from the clients themselves and all I had to do was accept the invitation. The question alone made me realise that we have built clear pictures of what a ‘professional contact’ looks like and that certain forms do not seem to fit in there, even though they might lead to a better result.

I also realised that we have institutionalised care for our loved ones enormously: with a request for support, you go to an office or a clinic or a treatment room, where the relevant care provider or expert holds sway. Maybe the smells and colours in that place do not appeal to you or the physical environment evokes sad memories or bad associations. In that case, you are right away not quite your relaxed self – you start out with a backlog, as it were. And so I also realised that the changes required for many settings involve a lot more than we often think. As a grass roots organisation and in consultation with the client, I can make decisions about such matters as I see fit and that made me happy and grateful.
When my wet coat hangs on the coat rack, the three of us drink tea. We talk about anything and everything and experience this special start of the consultation as a very beautiful start. When we get up the next morning and go to work together, there is already more familiarity than there would have been if I had just arrived.

We start with a moment of silence, to feel how we are all present, what emotions and physical sensations we bring to the things we are going to explore together.
We evaluate the exercise and we make an inventory of what Anja and Peter experience as the biggest bottleneck. They can articulate that easily: their son has recently been more dissatisfied than seems appropriate for a seven-year-old child. The communication currently contains a number of recurring elements: “I don’t feel like it”, “No, I don’t want that!”, “I think you’re stupid”, “I am never allowed anything”, “You are boring”, “No, I don’t go to bed, because I still want to play outside”, “I don’t like that”, “I want more candy”, “Why do I have to put on my shoes?” During the hours that we are in conversation, all these statements come up and it is understandable that the parents get tired of them and are sometimes confused about what can or should change. I understand that very well. And yet… I also see it as a gift that David still expresses himself: he shows that something is wrong with the family system. Apparently they also offer him a lot of security, because he is not afraid of Anja and Peter, but confronts them. The question is: what does he want to say? What deep, painful beliefs in his parents does he appeal to? And also: is there a way in which it becomes easier to let go of the negative judgment about his behaviour and to look for the emotion behind the behaviour and for the need behind the emotion?

It is hard, of course, and Y says he thinks it is mean to say things like that: “If you say something like that to an adult, you hurt someone really bad.” I ask if that is really the case. If I said something like that to Y, would it hurt him or would he feel hurt… and can he tell the difference between the two…? When people say things to us or about us that we clearly know are not true, can we let that slip away from us…? Or does the difficulty lie in the fact that they say something about which we are already unsure? What is it that lies dormant in ourselves that is touched with a ‘shitty remark’? Anja and Peter think for a bit. We look back at the conversation the night before, in which they took turns indicating they are currently on a personal quest, with a feeling of standing still in their personal development. They are not really thriving yet, have not yet found their purposeful destination. There are very valid reasons for the restlessness and sadness. A very important one is that they were longing to have a second child and that, after a number of miscarriages, a difficult IVF process ended in disappointment thirteen times. That hurt a lot; that has tested their patience with each other and their son: “We really had a short fuse then…” They are mourning about this, also about the fact that he was still so small and could not really count on their happy attention to build his foundation. They have not told him the story about this yet, but the question is whether he might not already know it on a deeper level. Perhaps on his own he is doing his incredible best to mirror to both his parents what is still an open wound with them. What is called ‘acting out’, is usually about sadness, about bringing to the surface what is inside and cannot be put into words.

Because images sometimes speak louder than words, we start with a visual step. There is something special about the pictures they choose: the three of Anja align wonderfully with the three of Peter in a way, and it is touching to see that with all the imbalances currently felt there is a match between their choices. That does not solve everything, but it is hopeful to see the connection.
After this they, they both lay the systemic method, Het Mattenspel (The Mats Game), on the table, after we have discussed that they can both be present at each other’s laying, provided they can give the other room in silent presence. Both are okay with that and I pull out the game.
They both lay with care and dedication; the process visualises things that were already alive at an unconscious level, but it releases tears now that the confronting visualisation is on the table.

Working holistically

It was a Thursday afternoon and I was in a store when she called. She wondered if she could ask me a few things, because the feeding was not going so well and now she had a hard spot in her breast. She had already been to the doctor and he had prescribed antibiotics for her. When, as always, I immediately asked if she had already started the course, she replied, to my relief, that she had not. My reaction seemed to take her by surprise and we talked about what was going on and what she could do. We made some provisional agreements on that basis, including that she could come to me that evening to get a bottle of Phytolacca to support the lymphatic drainage of the breast. It seemed that there was a sterile mastitis (inflammation) and not a bacterial problem (infection, for which antibiotics might be desirable). In Dutch, we often talk a bit casually about ‘ontsteking’ without making a good distinction between the two forms and it is important that prescribing physicians identify with their patient which of the two is most likely. After all, you do not want to use antibiotics if you don’t have to. The reasons for being extremely cautious about this are in the area of prevention: antibiotic resistance, disruption of the intestinal flora in mother and baby, thrush in the baby, candida in the mother, and… at least as important… loss of self-confidence. When the belief takes hold that the body is a flawed vehicle, requiring all kinds of outside tools to make it function properly… then the power a woman experiences as a mother in the relationship with her baby can be damaged. For that parent-child relationship, the foundation in now being laid and it is important for that relationship to become strong and resilient. It will then last a lifetime and become a home base for the child, a refuge and a source of compassion, support and wisdom on the life path the child will take. As health care providers, we should not take this lightly, because inflicting no harm is the core of the Hippocratic Oath. It is therefore important that we do everything we can to recognise, acknowledge and reinforce the self-healing capacity of a young mother.

And even if there is a fever, there is no need to panic right away. Inflammation also has the four classic symptoms: calor, dolor, rubor, tumor – heat (fever, glowing hot spot), pain, redness, hard spot. Good policies and possibly support from herbs and homeopathic remedies you usually go a long way. However, the most important thing is: why does this person have these complaints at this moment? Those are the questions that deserve a real inquiry and the answers in many cases lead to something much deeper and older than the events of today and yesterday.
That was my goal for the next day, when I would almost certainly be able to come for a consultation with her, although there was still some uncertainty on my side due to other obligations.

In the evening around 10.30 pm it turned out that I could indeed be with them around 9.30 am the next day: she was happy! It was nice to meet both parents at home the next morning with their beautiful ten-week-old child. We went through the intake form together, which stated, among other things, that there were migraines and blood pressure problems. During the pregnancy she had had virtually no migraine complaints. I asked if she knew there was a link with stress and she eagerly jumped in – she knew that all too well. I probed; I asked if she remembered when it had started. She dug into her memory and related some things to her hometowns. I lost track and we made a list of her movals —too many in too short a time, really, given her age. She sighed, looked at me, smiled hesitantly and with shining eyes: “I went living on my own at my 15th because I could no longer bear the situation at home with two parents who were alcoholics…” I nodded and held her eyes : “Ah… I see…” The three of us were silent for a moment.

When we took up the thread, we went through the rest of the intake form. They told how the birth had first become a series of complications, during which she had completely lost her sense of control. Once at home, they had a maternity nurse who, together with the intern, spent more time on their own breaks than on caring for mother and baby. “I would like some fruit,” she had asked one day, and the answer had been that she could prepare it herself, so that she could practice doing everything by herself again. After about five days, even the meconium had not been washed out of the baby’s ears… My heart broke – a mother in childbed deserves all kinds of nurturing and protection, so that she, together with her partner, can create a safe haven for her baby and master the feeding and care of this new little human.

The little one reported for a feed. I washed my hands and mother settled on the couch with her baby. She exposed her aching right breast and together we watched the wound that was healing there. She had taken up the instruction to treat the hard spot with an electric toothbrush a bit too fanatically and had not noticed that she was damaging her skin. “I have a pretty high pain tolerance,” she said, slightly apologetically, and I noted with a soft wink that perhaps the time was right now to treat herself with a little more gentleness. Her high pain tolerance had carried her through difficult years, but now her life was different and she was allowed to gently try to let go of the life-saving survival strategies she once had to adopt.

I explained some things about putting her baby to the breast and tried to support her, but the latch was not satisfying yet. She did it the way she was used to do it and after two tries, her baby started to drink eagerly. She looked into the little face and I thought I saw drops of sweat on her nose and forehead. I looked at her, paused, then said, “You look clammy with sweat…” She turned her face to me: “Yeah, true! It is quite warm here!” It was actually not that bad, and she somehow knew that, too, because she continued: “And that we just started talking about everything, that also makes me break out in a sweat. It was all so intense…” There had been parentification: “I was five or six when I already did the laundry in the house…”

Her cheeks flushed, her lips quivered, the sweating increased, and her eyes were now so full of tears that they overflowed. I stroked her hair and put a hand on her neck. I asked her if she had already told her baby what had happened, not only during the delivery but also in the time before and how many sad memories came up now that she saw her own sweet baby and was even less able to understand why her parents had not been there for her and how painful a loss it had been. “Can I do that…?! Is it good that he knows all that…?” In her voice, surprise and hesitation competed for precedence. “Your baby will know anyway, because your child feels your grief, but if you don’t tell it, your child will have to guess and make up its own story, with the risk that your child will blame itself for your grief. If you tell what happened and if you add how much you love your baby and how you and your husband are going to help your child write a different life story, then there is nothing to guess. Then your baby can be there for you, as you are there for your baby and you give each other space for the expression of your emotions. And don’t be surprised if your baby reacts intensely: looking at you, chatting back, falling completely silent, crying… it’s all possible, but it doesn’t matter. All is well. You are together. All of it can be there. It has to come out, so you can both continue unburdened.” She looked at her baby. He broke out into a laugh from ear to ear and looked deep into her eyes. She smiled back and we cried together.

In the course of the afternoon I sent the consultation report with the necessary tips and suggestions. Later in the day she emailed: “We immediately switched to the holistic general practice and I ordered two of the three books mentioned. We will get started with everything you have given us and let you know how it goes next week. Thank you!”
The power of compassion and holding space… heartbreakingly beautiful.

Last week, we read quite a number of Mirjam’s sad experiences. This week we take a more analytical look at her life.

Mirjam tells how new life experiences gradually offered her more insight into how serious the situation at home was. She considered cutting the family ties at times, but became anxious about what that would mean for relationships with sisters and other relatives. Would she herself then confirm that she was indeed a difficult child…? “To this very day I notice that I try very hard to earn love, while at the same time I have a lot of trouble receiving love. Am I worth it? After all, what I did for my mother was never, never enough. I feel that because of that, I am still yearning for people who will accept me for who I am, not for what I do. That sometimes makes relationships with others difficult, because you long so intensely for… well… actually to curl up in someone’s lap in loving arms, to experience security… That longing characterises my life.” Together we sit in silence, moved by this candid analysis of what childhood engendered well into adult life.

I talk about the balance we seek as a child between attachment and authenticity and what the consequences can be if a child has to suppress that authenticity for the sake of attachment, that the child loses the connection with their true self – the foundation of trauma.
Mirjam is silent and thinks and then says: “Yes… I recognise that… I have completely lost myself in trying to earn what I never got and at the same time I find it difficult to receive love. The children are an exception; with them it works.”
I ask her if she is proud of how she has been able to break a pattern in her own family. With some modesty, but also determinedly, she answers: “Yes, I am proud of that. I was sometimes unsure about it, but I now see, also with the grandchildren, how different things have gone with us.”
That did not come naturally; sometimes she worked like a lioness to protect the children against the negative influence of her mother, who considered the grandchildren’s music performances embarrassing, immediately after departure threw away crafts made for her, or disapproved of the grandchildren’s study choices. “The faces of the children when their grandmother treated them like that… then my heart broke. She destroyed so much beauty on a structural basis.”

I ask if Mirjam has an idea why she kept ending up in environments that were difficult for her, both privately and in terms of work. “I don’t know… I don’t know… [silence] I don’t know.” She talks about the desire to really be seen and how her mother sometimes even on a birthday in Mirjam’s presence complained about how she looked, that the dress was not modern enough, that the jewelry did not shine enough. “Really everything was seen and commented on, but I, as a human being, was not seen. I was under the impression that she was ashamed of me.”
The constant judging by her mother served as a worrying example. When I ask if she has anything she classifies as a bad habit, she says, “The judging.” She is silent for a moment after this conclusion, before continuing: “More and more, I have learned to look at others with an open mind, but that is a choice I consciously make; it is not yet my default. Not judging is a skill I am still training for.”

Looking back, what does Mirjam see as her saddest and fondest memories?
“One of my saddest memories is the period surrounding my HAVO/high school exam. My grandfather died then; I partly cared for him and was very sad. As a result, I had not been able to prepare properly and I had to re-examine one subject. My father said it did not matter that I failed because I was a girl. My mother said she was sorry I failed; it would not have been necessary, she said, if I had concentrated better. I stiffened and looked at her wide-eyed, whereupon she said: ‘You can cry, if you like’, but she offered me no comfort or acknowledgment of my grief. That made me decide on the spot never to cry at home again. It was not until some twenty years later that I could really cry again, when someone did something very sweet for me to spoil and nurture me; then the tears came.
My fondest memory is the winter when my little brother was born. It was around Christmas; my mother was in childbed.” She smiles and begins to whisper: “We took care of that little baby as children and it was the first time that we did not have to work over the Christmas holidays! There was an air of endearment in the house and we cuddled up with that little fellow.”

When I ask about the essential aspects of her childhood for her development as a human being, she thinks before she searchingly and tentatively formulates her sentences: “What I was very determined to achieve was that I want to do my best to see and recognise the other person as they are because I missed that so much myself. I was constantly told and threatened that there would be severe consequences if I did not behave the way my mother wanted me to. A car, my wedding… the others got paid for it by my parents, but not me, because I had made choices they considered inappropriate. I have often felt very powerless and can really imagine things like self-mutilation and suicide. Those are attempts to be seen and heard. If you have the feeling that at the very core you do not matter, you lose all meaning. Fortunately, what always drew me out of there was my love for our children.”

Although she was greatly affected by the situation at home, deep down she always felt that it was not right. There is more passion in her voice as she says: “That on the day of my seven-year-old sister’s funeral, we had to get up extra early so that the cleaning could still go on… I was twelve, but I definitely felt that was idiotic! I wanted to say goodbye to my deceased sister; my other sister and I stopped cleaning and walked to the door, where we saw and heard the hearse drive away over the gravel. I already said there and then that this was not normal. Anyway… even when I once contacted the GP and said that my mother was completely hysterical and seemed to be going mad, it only led to a shot of valium, not a thorough investigation into how things were going at our home. As children, we were not protected from what was happening and at a  moment like that, my mother was actually kept calm with medication.”

I suggest you could see this as an addiction, both the endless cleaning and the medication. It is said that not everyone with trauma becomes addicted, but addicts almost always have a history of trauma. I share with Mirjam Gabor Maté’s definition of an addiction: everything you do and need to generate temporary relief from pain, behaviour that you cannot part with and which is harmful in the long term and disrupts your life. Mirjam listens attentively, is silent for a while and then asks me to repeat the description. She lets it sink in again and says she can relate to it. “I think my addiction was that I always kept going, not being able to rest, because continuing helped me to not feel the pain.” In recent years she has set aside more time for this, sometimes forced by illness, and she feels progress. For example, she has now decided that she will call in sick for her work, now that another difficult process awaits her for cancer treatment. The interests of the family weigh heavily here, because when it comes to what gives her life meaning and purpose, the children and grandchildren are her number 1 priority. What is also very satisfying is working with patients: “What I myself lacked is what has also made me strong in my job: really seeing people and spending time with them and then seeing the healing effects of genuine attention to people. Then I am very authentic. I listen carefully and see the person in front of me for who he is. I feel comfortable in that. I have nothing to lose and I don’t have to defend myself against anything. The moments when it is not possible to be authentic are the moments when I again fear that my individuality will lead to me losing people – just like it used to be.”

She concludes that it is an art to learn to receive what you did not receive at the beginning of your life: “It is often easier to have compassion for others than for yourself. In this sense, I am also concerned that there seem to be so many children who struggle with life at a young age and lack a basic sense of security. I have the feeling that adults often don’t pay enough attention to this. Children are required to adapt a lot and their basic needs are not always paramount. That basic need is love, in the form of security, safety and attention, and I am grateful that we have been able to give our children a much better start in that regard.”

With that we wrap up. We talked for a long time. In the course of the afternoon the sky has closed. The sun is gone, it is colder than I expected and it drizzles softly as I drive home.

Last week we started the series about Mirjam, who candidly speaks about her childhood experiences. This week we continue her story.

We talk about her father, who she describes as ‘invisible’, often away for all kinds of meetings. She has the idea that he fled the situation at home. Her mother had experienced the war and was very fearful, especially because her father (Mirjam’s grandfather) developed some resistance activities. Her mother’s fear was such that grandpa stopped those activities, fearing that his daughter would unwittingly betray the matter by the expression on her face.
Her fears made her try to keep a firm grip on everything in life: “When we started dating, my mother told my husband-to-be that he needed to know one thing, which was that she had control over all her children. “I’ve got a hold of them all”, she said, and he did not know what to make of such a statement. Like me, however, he has discovered that it was true and that my mother really had a lot of control over us, causing division between us as family members. Recently, uncles and aunts have also indicated that my mother was not an easy one to live with in her family in the past. Her fear that things or clothes would get dirty caused my mother’s presence to regularly be experienced as oppressive. I get it; I, too, would like to be free from her judgment and finally not let it affect me like that anymore.”

Mirjam thinks back to the unhealthy dynamics in her grandparent’s family and illustrates once again something that is so often the case, namely that problems and trauma have an intergenerational history. She recalls painful memories. For example, she once went to the zoo with her sister on a Sunday, which was very exceptional. The loving, childless neighbours wanted to take the girls out for a day, because they always worked so hard at home. Sunday was problematic (the ‘Day of the Lord’), but Saturday, the day of the cleaning, would be even worse, so they went on Sunday. “My mother had warned in advance: ‘Well, then, you can go, but you cannot buy anything, because then you will go to hell.’ My sister and I had decided beforehand not to buy anything, but when we arrived we realised that entrance tickets had to be bought, of course, and later the neighbours wanted to eat and drink something in the restaurant. We tried to prevent that, but it didn’t work. That night we begged God on our knees to make sure we would not be lost. So, all in all, my mother’s cleaning was even more sacred than Sunday, because she would not let us go on Saturday and put us in danger of hell on Sunday for possible misbehaviour. The dear neighbour knew nothing about it. My sister told me that not too long ago she froze at the zoo and the sight of the restaurant. So thoroughly mean, to indoctrinate your children like that…”

She talks about her younger years, how she was cared for by a neighbour, because her mother was busy on the farm or cleaning. She was also often with the living-in grandfather and grandmother from father’s side, who lived in the front house with their handicapped son (her uncle). They were sweet people, whom she loved very much and who sometimes explicitly stood up for her, for example when her mother said several times after she was born that she thought her daughter was so ugly. Her grandmother once said: “You should stop doing that; two eyes are looking at you and they are asking you to be a mother to this child!” Her mother also said this in later and even quite recent years and when Mirjam asked why she thought it was so important to repeat this over and over, she said: “Well, the truth deserves to be told – you were just ugly.”

After high school she moved out and found a room because of her studies and for that reason her parents did not pay for her wedding. They thought she should stay at home, where she had been caring for her grandmother for years and later on also for her grandfather. Mirjam’s limit had been reached, however: she refused to take care of the disabled uncle after the family moved, and considered that as a task of the uncles and aunts. Social workers said that if there was even one person against the uncle staying at home when things were getting worse, he would move to an institution. When Mirjam indicated that she was against him staying at home, however, her wishes were not taken into account. Social work was of the opinion that she was not able to understand the consequences of her choice: “You will regret doing this to your parents”, was their statement. Then she said: “If he comes in, I’ll move out.” So it happened, but her mother was angry about it and said: “Just wait, if you later have a disabled child yourself, you may sometimes think back to this selfish choice.” With every pregnancy she went through, Mirjam thought about that and she felt fear, fear that she would have a handicapped child as ‘punishment for her sin’.

The children developed their own coping strategies; one child regularly held her breath and then fainted – a very adequate method of ensuring she was spared. Another child also had regular physical complaints, such as severe eczema. Only Mirjam was in good health and therefore often had to suffer.
Living on her own was therefore a liberation, but one that was accompanied by lies about her study/work schedule, because if her mother knew she was free, she wanted Mirjam to come home. Mirjam then had a good conversation with the supervisor of her training, in which she indicated that she did not give permission for the passing on of her schedule. Mirjam thinks her mother was ashamed that her daughter chose to move into rooms. Like her sisters, Mirjam was offered a car if she would continue to live at home, but Mirjam declined the offer. As a result, she had to pay for her own education and, unlike the others, did not get a car for traveling back and forth. Nevertheless, her study time was a wonderful time, a period that she would have liked to extend a little longer: a life of her own, with friends and freedom.

“My mother felt that the education I chose was well-suited: I would probably find work in it quickly and that was necessary, because I was so difficult and critical that I probably would not get married. With a permanent job in care that also required me to work on holidays and weekends, nobody would be stuck with me.”
But she did get married, at 24, and when the eldest child was born, she realised that the freedom of those studying years would not come back that way and that her childhood was really over. She was overjoyed with the children and was determined to give them a different childhood than the one she had had. Nevertheless, she felt: “You can always make all kinds of beautiful choices later, but the open-mindedness that you should be able to experience in childhood or study years will then be over.”

We are talking about an aspect that is often overlooked, namely that trauma experts are increasingly emphasising that not receiving what they expect to receive (namely loving attention and safety) is often more harmful to children than being given something they have to find a way of dealing with. The lack of loving attention makes it more difficult to love yourself and that has a huge impact on how you approach life and whether you feel that you matter. Mirjam recognizes this: “I still find it very difficult to go a beauty salon or to buy something for myself, or to let myself be pampered. I am very generous towards the children, but towards myself… really very difficult.”
She tells how she, with respect to the children, has always looked at what they needed. That was her intrinsic attitude: asking and probin, also regarding feelings and experiences, and looking for the best for that specific child. “That is not comparable to how my mother dealt with things. When I got cancer twelve years ago, the first thing she said was: “Then you come to me even less often? That something like this must now happen to me again. And what a shame, for your employer, that you cannot work now.’ All those kinds of situations are still very sharp in my mind and they continue to hurt…”

We talk about possible causes of such family dynamics. “Our home was very much about what other people would say about us. The bar for judging ourselves was even higher than for judging others. As a result, everyone was constantly on their toes. The biblical ‘honour thy father and thy mother’ was leading, but my mother forgot that it also says ‘do not embitter your children’. My mother was in the victim role; throwing and visiting birthday parties, being waved goodbye on a school trip, being brought and encouraged at diploma swimming… no time was made for it: work always came first. On Sunday, the day of rest, we were allowed to read, do puzzles or do homework for our religion class, but not play outside or do anything that could make you dirty. Only later, with friends, did I discover the cosiness that can be present in families and I really eagerly drank it in.”

Next week you will read the last part in the series about Mirjam.

It’s sunny when I arrive for our conversation on a late summer Monday afternoon. Just as I want to ring the bell, her husband comes walking towards me from the garden. I ask him how things are going and say that I am very shocked by the news. When Mirjam and I tried to set a date shortly before, I asked if it would fit, despite the imminent moval to elsewhere. She said the moval was not so much a bottleneck. What had coloured everything differently in recent days was the message that the biopsy result was not good: the lump she had discovered under her arm turned out to contain cancer cells, despite the lighthearted reaction of the radiologist. Considering she thought she had overcome the cancer twelve years ago, this was a huge blow to her and her husband, as well as to the children and their families. We discussed whether an interview was a good idea. I kept the option open that perhaps it was even more important now that her story was recorded and heard. Mirjam wanted to think about it for a bit and I said that whatever decision was okay and that it was entirely up to her to decide if, and if so when and where we would meet. It was not long before she replied: “Yes, perhaps my story does need to be heard. It may also give recognition to talk about it. My mother passed away this spring and after everything that happened between her and me, I had so hoped to be able to live a more relaxed life for a while. We are all very sad.”

Her husband looks at me and says, “Yes, it’s intense. It goes up and down. Sometimes you have a bit of courage and at other times you really cannot believe it and you get that helpless feeling of not knowing what to expect.” While we chat for a bit, she opens the front door and falls into our conversation. We look at each other and eyes fill with tears. The fear and uncertainty cast a great shadow over what, after her mother’s death and the moval, would have been a fresh start, a phase in which she was freed from her mother’s judgmental gaze.

I step inside, into the hall; I untie my shoes, take them off and then we hug. I hold her in my embrace for a long time and feel the restlessness in her body that is so understandable.
We walk into the living room and while Mirjam makes tea, I look around. I see that the bookcase has already been partly dismantled: empty shelves, packed books. There is a table and chair by the window that I have not seen before. When I inquire, it turns out that they do indeed come from her deceased mother’s inheritance. On the table is a bunch of sunflowers with yellow gerberas and there are flowers elsewhere, too. On the plateau next to the fireplace are a dozen handwritten cards from people who want to support her. Mirjam serves the tea and starts off with one of the things that have happened in the past few days in contact with healthcare providers.

Various events painfully remind her of what happened twelve years ago: a general practitioner who thinks it is not too bad and initially hesitates with a referral, nurses who provide information that is not relevant because of previous surgeries, radiology employees who look ignorant when she comes for an examination, a radiologist who says she cannot find anything at all: “Is that not reassuring?” “No,” she had replied, “that is not reassuring at all, because you said that twelve years ago, and it was completely wrong then.” He had been a bit annoyed and had responded: “Well, if it reassures you, I can take a biopsy, but these are not very nice interventions, so you can also decide to skip it.” The air of trivialisation in the tone of voice had struck her, but she had insisted. When she came for the results a few days later and saw two people sitting behind the desk, she knew enough, with all her nursing knowledge: they only sit together when they have to have a bad news conversation. It was, indeed, and now she is awaiting follow-up examinations. Later in the conversation we address the question whether it is the experiences in the now that make her so angry, disappointed and sad, or whether those experiences touch on all the pain of the past, causing them to tear open the old wounds time and again.

We sip our tea, surrounded by the smell of freshly baked butter cake. Mirjam tells how heartbreaking it was to have to tell the bad news to the children. Unlike in her parental family, their own family culture is not one in which there is no time and attention for such sad things, but one of openness and sharing. She therefore looks back with painful feelings at the passing away of her mother and how as siblings they sat at a distance from each other around the bed, a physical representation of the lack of contact that she had experienced all her life. Almost apologetically towards her mother Mirjam says that of course there were also happy experiences, but it is the adverse ones that have left distressing, limiting scars. An example is the last Mother’s Day, on which she had not visited her mother due to circumstances. The reaction of her very old mother: “I am very disappointed; it is typically you again who won’t come… Will your own children come to you this Sunday? No? Oh, so they do not consider you important enough to come? Well, then you know what awaits you and this is only the beginning; it will all get much worse. I always said: you do not sin cheaply by not visiting me, because what you do to me, you will get back tenfold.”

We are silent together; I notice the goosebumps on my skin and I look at Mirjam as she continues: “I have never had such a bad Mother’s Day; it really felt like my mom just put a curse on me. I was absolutely devastated. You don’t want to let it in and hit you, but it does. And this was the last real contact I had with her. She passed away shortly after that and because I felt so broken, I had not called her for a while. This conversation was such a blow to me that I did not tell the children until after her death…” I ask what her reasoning was to not share it with the children right away. She falls silent and searches for words. “Perhaps fear… or shame? Suppose she is right after all…?”

Mirjam’s voice trembles; she tells what she had tried in the past and in fact is still looking for an answer to the question of what she could have done now to prevent this kind of reaction from her mother. When I ask if she has any idea how this behaviour might be explained, she says: “I think that my mother herself had a big inferiority complex, that she was actually a psychiatric patient, although she wouldn’t admit it herself. Her whole life has been devoted to cleaning the house. Everything had to give way to that and it was her way of being the best at something. Our own birthdays, classmates’ parties, weekend outings… there could be no question of it. Even the wallet had to be cleaned into the corners with a screwdriver, spice jars dipped, lamp sockets swept with a brush… I still have scars from the hydrochloric acid used to polish the stable floors. And if it went too slow or not good enough, she could get hysterical.”

Mirjam continues: “She called her own mother every day, but we did not do that with her and she found that very disappointing. When she wanted something from us that we did not comply with, she mentioned people who actually willingly did this for their parents. If we visited a friend, she would say: ‘Oh, so that is something you do have time for?’ She continuously tried to feed into our feelings of guilt. For years, such statements were mainly aimed at me, but in recent years others in our family have also had to deal with them. This opened their eyes to what was going on for decades and where I was not taken seriously. It has now hit them hard, too.” She tells how she actually has always known the relationship with her mother as one with many reproaches: “My mother thought it was very annoying that I was born in the spring. My birthday was only celebrated when it fell on a Sunday, because on other days the big spring clean-up had to be done, then the cows had to go back to the pasture and the stable had to be cleaned. Having your birthday in the spring was thus very unwelcome… I was very unwelcome… As we cleared her house, a written note with words to that extent was found… in her bible.” Again we are silent together.

Next week we will continue Mirjam’s story.