I can sum up my various interests in life under one mission statement. To help people connect to each other from a deeply authentic part of themselves. So whether as a narrative coach or as a chief storyteller, I do my best to create creative and soulful spaces for people to connect first to themselves and then to others.

I am a storyteller and in my stories  I have often described myself as ‘the girl who has been travelling for a while’. I was born on a small Mediterranean island and emigrated to the Netherlands in 2006. I have always been a questioning soul, searching to find a balance between the urge to become and the need to belong. This search brought me a great many adventures, mostly explorations into identity and the essential – what I often refer to as the search for the home within ourselves.

A number of life events magnified this search, namely the early and sudden death of my husband. This was my journey into the liminal world, the journey through the dark forest and this journey has (ultimately) brought me much wealth, mostly the awareness that we are searching for something that we already contain within us, something we already are but that we need to uncover.

One of the most magnificent tools for this, I discovered, is story. Stories seem to bypass the purely cognitive part of ourselves and also bypass the sticky emotive. When we listen to stories we seem to enter a parallel world where everything is possible. We enter the world of archetypes, of symbols and metaphors, where everything is in a suspended state of (dis-)belief. In this state we are open to the new, to the impossible, where we are heros and where we have mentors available and where quests are undertaken. In this grand arena we are able to look at our lives as plot lines. We can distance ourselves just enough to allow the improbable in. And change is then possible.

Stories is are often shared with others. In sharing our stories we connect to others and are able to experience a deep present connection. As a Chief storyteller I do my best to create the ground for these connections between people. As a narrative coach I do my best to connect people to their own stories. These two activities align me to my mission in life: Connecting people deeply to each other from  an authentic place within themselves.

I developed my methodology for the Cabinet of Curiosities during a period when I was re-membering myself. Piecing together all the parts of myself that went wandering and got forgotten. I experienced first hand the power of remembering the smaller stories of our lives and what a powerful effect that process had on balancing my perception of the effect of various events in my life. I realised that by exploring our cabinets and having the courage to explore that which we usually avoid or are happy forgetting, the cabinet would work on us.  Its gift to help us emerge changed by the experience of becoming more whole.

In my daily life I work with as an educator in a University of Applied Sciences. I also work as a narrative coach, I organise storytelling events for students, provide workshops for people exploring storytelling and tell stories, both my own and adapted.