About Me - Finding My Way Home

For most of my life, I believed there was something wrong with me.

I believed I wasn't good enough. That I had to try harder. That I had to earn love. At times, I even believed I was a bad person.

It wasn't until much later that I realised these beliefs hadn't started with me. I had been living according to a story that was never truly mine. They were inherited scripts.

I grew up in North Brabant as the youngest of three children. I genuinely believe my parents did their best with the resources available to them at the time. At the same time, I grew up in a family where emotional and physical safety could not be taken for granted. There was a lot of arguing at the dinner table, and little room for our inner lives. For a long time, I felt that more attention was paid to appearances than to what was truly going on inside me. Parts of myself that were angry, sad, insecure, or confrontational did not feel truly welcome. As a result, I learned to show primarily the version of myself that was 'good': the compliant, cheerful, and strong Jacqueline. It was only much later that I realized my parents, too, were acting out of their own pain, traumas, and survival strategies. That does not make my experiences any less painful, but it does make them feel less personal.

From a young age, my parents were often emotionally and physically absent, especially for me as the youngest child. I regularly stayed with other families. There, just as I did at home, I learned to be easy-going, adaptable and mature beyond my years. During my teenage years, my parents spent long periods in the South of France, leaving me home alone for weeks at a time. It may sound appealing—a large house all to yourself—but in reality, I mostly felt lonely. There was little guidance, little emotional support, and I never truly had the space to be a teenager: to rebel, make mistakes, and be lovingly guided through them. During that same period, I also found myself in an unhealthy relationship. Looking back, I don't believe that was a coincidence.

I learned to read the atmosphere, study people's faces, adapt myself, use humour to ease tension, listen between the lines and make myself invisible. I often felt afraid, alone, unseen and fundamentally unworthy.

Throughout my childhood and young adulthood, I experienced several life-changing events. Yet perhaps my deepest wound wasn't what happened to me, but that I had to carry it all on my own because nowhere truly felt safe. Along the way, I lost touch with my healthy sense of self-protection—my natural ability to say no, to feel anger when my boundaries were crossed, and to protect myself. Slowly, another belief took root: that I simply wasn't worth very much. Together, these beliefs became a toxic cocktail.

From the outside, my life appeared increasingly successful. I worked for well-known international companies and later on Amsterdam's financial district, the Zuidas. Yet on the inside, I often felt lonely, unsafe and disconnected from myself. For years, I searched for safety outside of myself—in relationships, in work, in control, achievement and perfectionism. And whenever the tension became too much, I swung to the opposite extreme. I partied, numbed myself, and constantly searched for ways to escape my feelings. Looking back, I now see that this, too, was simply a survival strategy. To the outside world I looked happy, but inside I was slowly losing myself.

Until one day, my body began to speak more and more clearly:

"This matters to me."

Looking back, my true healing journey only began when something entered my life that I had barely known before: safety. Not only emotional safety, but practical and financial safety as well.

For the first time, I had a home of my own. A place where I could rest, be alone, and no longer spend every waking moment focused on survival. Only then did I have the space to truly begin exploring who I was.

I don't believe that was a coincidence. As long as your nervous system is focused on survival, very little energy remains for healing. For the first time, I was able to invest in therapy, training, rest and time. Not because I had suddenly become stronger, but because I finally had a solid foundation on which healing could begin.

My recovery didn't begin on one single day. It began every time I chose myself.

I stopped drinking alcohol. I let go of every way I had been numbing myself. I stopped obsessing over exercise and my appearance. I began reading about childhood trauma and honestly facing—and feeling—my own history. I returned shame and guilt to where they truly belonged. I slowly learned to feel my boundaries again and to take my own needs seriously. I turned my home into a warm and safe place. I only made room for people with whom I could genuinely be myself. Step by step, I became the loving parent I had missed as a child.

As a young adult, I first turned to conventional healthcare. But eventually I reached a point where I thought: Yes, I understand everything intellectually... but I don't actually feel it. And if you don't truly feel what happened, you often keep repeating the same patterns. That was when bodywork and energy work entered my life. Through EMDR, breathwork, yin yoga, tantra, family constellations, spirituality, and years of honest self-inquiry, I slowly found my way back to myself.

My journey doesn't end here. I will always keep learning, exploring and growing. Out of curiosity. Out of passion. And from a deep desire to understand. Through courses and trainings, but perhaps even more through life itself. Not because I believe there is something wrong with me, but because personal growth, to me, is a lifelong journey. Not to become a better version of myself, but simply... to become more and more myself.