Moving Hearts Therapy Blogs

Distance brings closeness One of the greatest side effects of crossing the Ocean for an indefinite amount of time, was that suddenly people talked to me. ‘Really talked to me’. In all openness and vulnerability. They told me things that they had never before. Questions. Deep sharing. Apologizes. Acknowledging me and our relationship. Perhaps they didn’t realize themselves that it was all still there, until I announced that I would leave. I suspect that the fact that I almost would be ‘gone’ for a longer time, triggered something. They didn’t want to stay with it. They took it as an opportunity to clear the air.  The result? It brought us closer. Furthermore, it created more honest relationships. It takes courage to do this. Many of us have never learned how to do this. It can be scary, since exactly that person we care so much about, we feel the most vulnerable with. We feel the fear of being rejected, when we want to open our hearts. Honest and open communication is something we c...

  “The person that would judge me, had changed into a warm empathic person who stands by my side and cheers for my milestones along the way. I knew I had found her.” Sometimes it can take a while to find the psychotherapist or coach that suits you.  I was 21, halfway university, when I first went to a therapist. A break-up had triggered former grief -the loss of my mother at age 11 -I hadn’t dealt with yet. The only therapist I knew was the one from my recent ex-boyfriend, an older man. I was motivated, yet I went only a few times. This whole thing just stayed awkward. At the end of my Masters, I applied to study psychotherapy. I was too young, I needed to wait 1 year. In the meantime, I decided to volunteer abroad. When I arrived in Greece, I felt that I needed to continue this therapy process I never finished. This time a colleague referred me to a body-psychotherapist. The person that would judge me, had changed into a warm empathic person who stands by my side and cheers f...

 Working  in Colombia as a Belgian “So you mean that you liked my pajamas?” We had been working together for 6 months. It had been an intense period there in Riohacha, Colombia. I went through the roughest culture shock ever in my entire life: frustrations, not understanding, questioning myself, not knowing what and who to believe anymore, self-doubt, anger. It was eating my trust in people in general, men in particular. It had been great as well: people inviting me to their houses, or showing me around in their beautiful country. Making a friend, means becoming a family-friend. My colleagues and I got close. Not as close as my regular friends in Belgium, my home country. There were lots of barriers, language the easiest one to overcome. I am speaking about religion, life-style, values and beliefs. This is also what made it enriching. After my 6 month period, I asked my colleagues for an evaluation about what they had learned with me, where to tweak a bit, as feedback for futu...

Oxidation & gravity, the many faces and shapes of self-love Dealing with oxidation & gravity -aging women behind the scenes A while ago I was visiting one of my dear friends in Mexico. Sharing life experiences, laughing about our silly human tendencies, comparing and questioning ourselves… We covered the whole range from superficial to deeply nourishing conversations. You know how these spontaneous women-gatherings look like, no? Anyway, we were talking about aging, cultural differences, and what it means to be a woman in our society. My usual perspective, according to all the effects of oxidation and gravity through time that I have developed through my own examples in my environment and my personal experiences, is that we should love ourselves just the way we naturally are, living a healthy life-style. My Latina-friend shared that on this side of the globe, it’s not always so easy to look around like me, without make-up, casual wear and slippers instead of high heels. There i...

  Culture Shock “Why don’t you go back to your own country?”   She yelled at me through the hostel hall within the first 5 minutes we met again. I had just arrived after a 4 hour-bus trip to visit my best local friend in Colombia. We had met more than a year earlier, during the Danzas de la Luna in Colombia, a mystical women-gathering for a 5-day ancient dance ritual. On our way back home we found out that we both, as new-comers in Medellin, lived in the same area. Excited with this new possible friendship in this enormous city, we exchanged phone numbers.  Soon after we decided to move in together. We got very close and we learned a lot from one another. How happy we were with this deep connection, how difficult it could get as well. I experienced my first samples of latina drama, and she got a taste of European distance as a reaction. Yet we always got through it, as we learned to love each other as sisters.  Triggers The day of our conflict, we hadn’t seen each ot...

Different Shades of Gray By Mieke Vander Heyden "Stay out of my life!", I would want to shout in such moments. Sometimes people think they have the right to comment on things we didn’t even ask their opinion about. This happened to me when I was around my thirties and got my first gray hairs. Family, friends, colleagues, people I barely knew, men and women, would directly or more gently, suggest to start dying my hair. I was astonished with those recommendations. As I didn’t know that hairdressers exist. Of course, I was also shocked and not pleased with aging that fast, I needed to process this as well. But soon I realized that those who felt the urge to point out my lack of color pigment were the ones with the problem. It reflected their own need to stay young and pretty at the cost of investing time and money, pouring chemicals on their heads. Influenced by them, I also dyed my hair with color shampoos. Once it gave me totally the wrong color and I ended up...