Born and raised in the Netherlands, my career started in psychiatry, working as a therapist with autistic children and troubled teenagers. I thought I would do this work for the rest of my life. It was rewarding but also very challenging at the same time. Still the rewards were enough to keep me going. Although, the voice inside my head was asking me: “Are you going to do this for the rest of your life?” I knew there was more and I often dreamt of traveling and exploring the world. Also, there were parts of my life I wasn’t happy with at all! I felt ‘stuck’ and unfulfilled in my relationship but was too afraid to make any changes.
But things started shifting when I finally dared to break out of my comfort zones and faced my fears with brutal honesty. In short – I traveled for the first time overseas to Nepal, met my future husband in the Himalaya, got married, travelled for a year around the world, migrated to Australia and embraced a whole new life. This all happened within a 18 months!
The experience of these 18 months was empowering, life changing and terrifying! Written like that may sound easy, but God it was scary and way beyond my new comfort zones! I’d just left my family and friends behind, moved to the other side of the planet and had to create a new life. On top of this, the work I had been active in for 6 years, and the degree I had, was not recognised in Australia, and I would have to start from scratch. Being nearly 29 at that time, I took this opportunity to not only launch into a whole new life but also embrace a whole new career.
Where do you start though?
Fast forward a little, about one and a half years later I was driving 6 tonne, 28 guest Isuzu trucks through the outback of northern Australia. What happened to this girl who was only used to the daily commute to Amsterdam? I will never forget the moment I was driving through this magnificent country around sunset, nothing around me except for wilderness, kangaroos, one dirt road and Boab trees. I was doing something I hadn’t even known was possible, and I guided the guests and interpreted the environment like Australia was my own country. And it was.
I continued to work as a tour leader, expanding my skills, leading tours through Tasmania, which became my home.
Fast forward a little more. New dreams were born, one of them was to go to Antarctica. You can’t drive to Antarctica, so how would I be able to get work as a guide there, and why would employers want to have me, not having any experience there? Several months later I joined my first voyage ever onboard a small luxury expedition ship to the Sub Antarctic Islands of New Zealand. Not bad! I hadn’t managed Antarctica but this was pretty damn close! And unbelievably beautiful. I couldn’t believe I managed to create this opportunity for myself, even though massively beyond my comfort zone. I lectured about wildlife in front of 120 people, who I suspected knew way more than me. English was not my first language, so that was another challenge. Talking about biology and ecology in English required a whole new unfamiliar vocabulary.
Fast forward again. I have been able to make a full time living out of luxury expedition travel for 9 months of the year for the last decade, all around the world. Some years I visit all 7 continents in 12 months, from the polar regions of the Arctic and Antarctica to the tropics, exploring remote islands and communities of the Pacific, the rich cultural and wildlife havens of the Indian Ocean, and untouched wilderness areas such as the Russian Far East and Alaska. I have recently stepped up as Expedition Leader on some of these voyages, leading 120 to 240 guests and an expedition team of 12 to 24 through these remote environments. It is the most challenging thing I’ve ever done, and I love it!
I feel a great amount of gratitude that I am able to live a life so removed from what I knew, a life so rich in experiences every day, a life that brings me immense joy and a life that always pushes me to move beyond my comfort zones. I learned to face my fear and do new things anyway, even sometimes things I didn’t feel quite ready for. I learned many things, one of them being that beyond your fear is where your biggest growth lies.
This journey hasn’t always been easy, with limiting beliefs and mindsets, lack of confidence, this constant voice in the back of my mind saying ‘you can’t do it’ holding me back. I had many weeds in the garden of my mind, but over the years have been able to take these out and replace them with seeds. Still, lots of water and sunlight has been (and will always be) required to make these seeds grow into something I can be proud of.
My mission is to help empower motivated professionals who feel ‘stuck’ and unfulfilled, to break out of limitations, reconnect with their dreams, so they can turn their possibilities into reality with clarity and confidence.
