Hello Lovely Reader,
To introduce myself to you all I would like to start from the start. There will be 2 blogs about the Introduction of myself. This blog will be about my life In the Netherlands and the next blog about my life here in Ireland. Both stories have shaped me into the person I am today. A person that keeps challenging herself and tries to work on her personal development. Of Course this was a long journey and I am still learning. But after the 2 blogs about introducing myself, I would like to take you all on a path of personal development and what I do to reach my personal goals and hopefully this way we can learn from each other and inspire people.
I was born and bred in the Netherlands in a small little village called “Rockanje” which is located at the South/West coast of the Netherlands.
Only a 5 minute walk from this breathtaking beach there is a 1 hectare pig farm. On this farm lived a family of eight. A hard working father who has a big passion for his pigs and does literally anything to make it a successful business out of it. And a mother who didn't just take care of her own household but also helped out others. There were also a lot of children's voices and laughter on this farm.
Six children grew up here under the safe wings of this strong couple. Four Boys and two Girls, I am the eldest girl and the 4th child of the family.
In my first 7 years I lived at the back of the farm in a big trailer that my parents bought when they got married.They extended this along the way as the growing family needed more space.
Growing up in this house I always slept with one of my brothers who is 2 years older than me. I loved to make a mess of the room and be a real child by drawing on the walls. Drawings of boats, cars and anything else you can imagine, really. I definitely blamed my brother for this even though it was me the whole time. I already had a creative side of me that I loved to explore in my childhood. My mother is very easy going and didn't mind us being children, that was definitely one of the perks of growing up on a farm.
My oldest brother who is 6 years older than me had his own bedroom.
I always found this an intriguing room and maybe was even a bit jealous of the things he owned. I would describe him as the smart, caring older brother. I would sneak into the room and ask for the candy he had laying on his shelf or for the cool statues he had on his desk. He is a very calm person and would always be very careful with what he owns. So often I would have to walk out empty handed.
At the end of the Hallway there would be the room of my youngest brother who is 2 years younger than me and my Brother who is 4 years older than me. They were inseparable and always had the greatest fun together. The older brother owned a Stuffed animal that was a duck dressed as a Co Pilot which was quickly taken by my younger brother. He would never let go of his stuffed animal and I would say until this day he must still have a piece left off this Co Pilot.
Next door to my room was my parents room and my baby sister slept there. She is 4 years younger than me and was only small when she lived in this house. I remember the days mainly when my younger brother would lift her out of her crib in the morning while my parents were sleeping so we could all sit in front of the telly watching tv. To be honest I would often stay in bed because even in those early days I liked to sleep in.
We were a close family and all got along very well but don't misunderstand this. I'm sure we wrecked our parents' heads with our shouting and screaming. But I assume that is just kids being kids.
Here at the back of the farm is where the 650 pigs are. They are inside as in the Netherlands they are not allowed to be outside like they would be in certain other countries. The rules are very strict in the Netherlands and it makes it almost impossible to be a farmer.
We were always playing outside, my brothers playing soccer and myself, I preferred to be sitting on the swings watching them. We all had a lot of freedom and were able to dig holes in the garden or make a little tree house. We all loved to be outside and were not really often watching tv. We didn't have a lot of channels back then as it was hard to be connected living so remote in that time.
I was about 7 years of age my grandmother, who is my fathers mother passed away. She lived at the front of the farm in the main house. This was a way bigger place to live and my parents decided to move in here with us. I can still see myself driving a little “skelter” where I would put my toys in and bike it to the front of the farm to our new house. It was an exciting thing to move to this big house and have a new bedroom. I can still remember so clearly that this was a big celebration as we were gonna have my favourite food; Chips and our Dutch deep fried snacks called Frikandellen for dinner.
In this house I was gonna share a room with my younger brother and younger sister. My sister and I at the bottom of the bunkbeds and my brother at the top.
In this house I lived until I was 25. Until I was about 16 I slept with my brother and sister in the room and then around that age my sister and I converted our attached garage into a bedroom for the two of us. I have great memories growing up here, telling each other stories at bedtime until the other two would fall asleep to converting the room into one big playground.
I definitely have precious memories from my childhood which I think I was very lucky to have. It gave me a great foundation for my adulthood.
But then when I was 25 years old, maybe for the outside looking “typical Dutch girl” decided to leave the Netherlands and follow her dreams and move to Ireland. I always had a strong feeling of living somewhere else and that the Netherlands isn't necessarily my place to be. My preference was definitely the UK but somehow I landed in Ireland, now 5 years ago.
Would you like to know why I made this decision and how it ended up to be Ireland!?
You can read that in my next blog!
