"The woman I spent a lifetime searching for had been there all along.
She simply needed enough safety within herself to emerge."
THE WOMAN I HAD TO FIND
A whole-self trauma healing journey
Healing What Was Never Mine to Carry
It’s time to release what doesn’t belong to me.
The weight of the lies, half-truths, and untruths is just too heavy to haul around any longer.
The secrets end here. No matter how uncomfortable this makes some people feel.
I’m no longer willing to carry inherited silence or distorted realities.
The projections that did not belong to me to begin with… I give them all back to where they came from.
With consciousness attached…
With love… maybe—I still hesitate there.
With boundaries… not a shred of hesitation here.
Not knowing the truth has its own kind of pain, and only ever made me feel more lost.
I’m strong enough—that, I’ve always been.
Let the truth come, in its full and perhaps uncomfortable form.
I need it—to find my way forward.
The full truth brings peace. However painful, always better than a pretty lie.
It’s not easy to revisit the emotions I buried long ago. It takes effort, care, and gentleness with myself.
And I remind myself to be kind to me—to hold space for whatever shows up.
Acceptance for what is.
To release what was never mine to carry.
And to hold on—only—to what is real.
ABOUT MY MEMOIR
THE WOMAN I HAD TO FIND tells the story of how I broke the cycle of generational trauma to protect my daughter—and, in doing so, found myself.
​
Growing up with emotionally unavailable parents left an emptiness I spent years trying to fill—a longing to feel loved and to belong. It would shape the course of my life.
​​
But above all, THE WOMAN I HAD TO FIND is a story of becoming through whole self trauma healing. It reminds us that even after complex trauma, healing is possible, that cycles can be broken, and that the greatest freedom comes from no longer needing the people who hurt us to be the people who heal us. It is a story of letting go, and of realizing that the strength to heal has been within us all along.
​
The manuscript opens with a family Christmas in the small town of Dalen, the Netherlands, a few months after my mother’s passing. A long-suppressed confrontation between me and my father cracks open decades of emotional pain. What follows is a charged week of reckoning that ends with his unexpected death from a heart attack.
​​
From this breaking point, the story returns to a childhood shaped by emotional neglect. It reveals how longing for love and belonging led me through traumatic teenage years and, ultimately, into an abusive marriage with a man who led a double life—with another wife in another country.
Years later, after finding love again, a final parental betrayal forced me to choose my daughter's safety over my own desire to be loved for who I am. Breaking all contact with my parents, we sought a fresh start for our young family. Immigration to Canada allowed us to rebuild a life on our own terms, and healing could finally begin.
​
The epilogue belongs to my daughter—now a mother to a daughter herself. In her own voice, she tells her side of the story, offering the promise that healing, once reclaimed, can ripple forward through generations.
​
The woman I had spent a lifetime searching for had been there all along.
I simply needed to find enough safety within myself to let her emerge.
​
I hope to publish THE WOMAN I HAD TO FIND in 2027.
​
​
As a certified trauma-informed life coach and RCT practitioner, I work with female survivors of abuse and generational trauma across Canada, the United States, and the Netherlands. Through my work as a coach and writer, my hope is that survivors who carry the weight of their past discover that emotional freedom is possible. In alignment with my mission, I founded The Inner Circle, a women-only support group.
A SNEAK PEEK
I sat on the cold, concrete floor of our downstairs storage unit for what must have been more than twenty-four hours. My legs had gone numb, but I was unable to move.
The grey garbage bags lay open in front of me, spilling out pieces of a life I never knew existed–in another city, another country. A strange woman, with my husband. A dog. A "welcome home" banner on a house that wasn't ours.
I couldn't believe what I was looking at. And yet, I could.
COMMUNITY SUPPORT
Reading a book like this can stir up emotions. It can put a face to things you’ve long felt but never said out loud. It can bring hope—but also remind you of the pain you’ve experienced. And without further support or clear next steps, a book like this can leave you hanging.
Beyond the Book
That’s why I created my Inner Circle Community—and you don't have to wait for my book to be published to join!
You can learn more on my Community page. Have a visit ↓