Grazend in de sappige weide

vliegen zwermen rond de vers genaaide wonde

Uiers vol, geen dartelend kalf

From a priviliged white mother

In Belgium it’s Mother’s Day.

This morning I felt a sliver of irritation, walking to the bakery,
I wasn’t getting my breakfast on bed.

Then I remembered, I’m lucky to be able to walk to a bakery getting food for my loved ones.

I felt a whiff of anger, sitting in my living room,
my kids stumbling down the stairs to come and have their breakfast.

Then I remembered, I’m lucky to see their sleepy faces sitting at the breakfast table.

No words can express the feeling that pierces my heart remembering you, Mothers missing your girls or boys due to war, power games, made up narratives, bombs made by human hands.

The rage and indignation I feel,
this I want to remember.

to remember You
so You can remember there are humans that do care.

I feel vulnerable.

The engagement taken with myself to eat potato chips only on Friday evenings was thrown through the window 10 days ago.  Maybe I eat a half piece of chocolate more every day. Not more as the children recognize the sound of the cabinet door opening now (damn!! negative side of the 100% home time together).  

When I get nervous, I stop and breath, connect with myself, check in to see where the anxiety is coming from, recognize it, allow it, investigate it and nurture it. (learned from my beautiful teacher Tara Brach). By taking this time I can get (mostly) to the point I tell myself “at this moment all is well”.

As a recovering Negaholic, I so understand people who are grasping back to old habits and beliefs in these hard and challenging times.  We are a large part of the population that struggle, struggled to stay at the bright side.  We get there, in the light, at the same time we walk a slippery slope.  The danger to slide back into our shadows, pushed by the darker zones of our thinking is always present.

Today I was sharing with Maya and Mathias the science of the power of the mind. There is a lot of science on the power of positive mind set and the incredible things we can accomplice, overcome with this power.  At the same time there is a great power as well in negative thinking, it is our choice to give the power to the negative or the positive.  The word “choice” in this phrase always made me shiver as for many people it isn’t a choice, the positive seems unattainable.  People with trauma for example can have great difficulties to stay where the sun shines. For many people their neuropathways are imbedded this way. The path to the positive has been overgrown, they can’t find their way.  For all these people, and belief me we’re many, it’s paramount to have the feeling to be able to reach out to somebody.  If you’re walking on this slope and you feel it’s getting overwhelming it can help to ask the question “is this the reality?”  If you belief it is, (as we often do ;)) tell yourself it’s your perception.  Washing your hands can help, concentrate on only washing the hands, the warm water caressing your skin. Taking a shower can help as well, concentrate on the water and your body, the gentleness of water floating over your skin.  Be grateful for this.

Whole my life I’ve noticed a jealous feeling immerging when I encounter persons with that easiness to positivity, a state of mind they can keep in most of the circumstances.   If you are this kind of person, and you know it if you are  😉 please reach out to the people in your surroundings, support those who are on the boarder of, or those who are, sliding  into the slippery slope. 

What impact has this situation on you? Stop for a moment and check in, let’s uncover our vulnerability from the blanket of consumerism (shopping, drinking, excessive sport, clubbing, drugging, extreme gardening, …), share your feelings, let’s get back to our core and show our vulnerability.

At this stage I’m looking for an apartment in the magnificent city of Ghent. Checking websites, investigating EPC values and locations.
Living with my sister and launching my research in which way I choose to fulfill our coming needs as furniture, kitchenware, linnen, groceries … is definitely interesting.
First it seems pretty complicated, as I presumed, in all the daily choices we make. For example to to be 100% plastic free. Even that plastic has another impact here as it has in Asia, it still contributes for a large part to the volume of our waste. In Belgium we enjoy a well organized garbage collection service and in Ghent there is a regulated waste plant that transforms waste in energy. Here as well there are pollutants that go in to the air, the use of industrial filters makes the impact less hefty though. At this stage I can’t find the official level of PM2.5 emission of this plant but you can trust me I’m investigating on it.
With such good infrastructures it is however still important to limit our purchases wrapped in single use plastics as not only they are waste they are as well contributing to the depletion of our world natural resources.
Unfortunately plastic is also here very present in all shops, around the broccoli, as a container to support those yummy walnuts, around the handkerchieves I soooo need here, with the cold wind tickling my nose each time I walk or bike outside.
To find replacements to these everyday uses and purchases I’m checking out the market and will in the future certainly update you.

If I don’t know you it’s easy to hate you

If I look you in your eyes it becomes impossible

Unknown

Another surprise, a pleasant one this time, I didn’t take in consideration further to my intention of limiting purchases and in my search to other solutions is the immense response of people offering furniture, cloths for the kids and even bikes. A person I much appreciate told me his experience of living a life of sharing “stuff” and he mentioned the aspect of community building it has.
Even by being only 10 days in Belgium I can affirm this positive side effect.
Living in an era where due to several causes the feeling of community gets lost, where people feel more and more disconnected this is definitely a beautiful way to reconnect.
For many people the feeling of disconnection in our ever faster moving society results in a feeling of alienation with themselves and the others.
Often this feeling of disconnection is reflected in our own psyche and loneliness installs. To the outside fear is harbored as we don’t know the other any longer.
Lowering our consumerism and reaching out to others reengages the feeling of connectedness, it gives a dynamic of joy, curiosity and reopens the possibility to have this incredible warm feeling of being part of a caring community.
We have the power to enhance the evolution towards another way of economics.
Check this out: https://uplift.tv/2019/sacred-economics-2019/

The dice are rolled and the outcome … stays open, dice can always be rolled again.
Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, we can break even.
After leaving Belgium for 16 years I’m back to live in my native country.
On the level of sustainability and ecologic awareness and mindset my aspirations are high in comparison with Asia.
The first bar we sit and have a drink, we get, by my unpleasant surprise, 2 plastic straws in the bottles of our kids drinks. Hmmm. Disappointing I must say.
In the restaurant again I see plastic straws given away for single use very generously in every drink.
Ok, this plastic straw is in someway a symbole. At the same time these are one of the little things every person can claim, show our implication and our will to make a bigger change.

Today it is world environment day and this year’s theme is air pollution. https://www.worldenvironmentday.global
Air pollution is a reality in plenty of regions of the world, for me it was the root of a radical life change.
By coming back to Belgium I not only expected better air quality, luckily this expectation is fulfilled (until now, 5 days), I also expected more awareness, communication on the topic. In the general press unfortunately the world environment day hasn’t been mentioned at all. What an enormous missed chance to bring the information to the big public.
My family and I were chased by high levels of PM2.5 and AQI from a city we lived in as a family, we assumed it would be our home for a while. I measured with my monitor every morning and evening in Phnom Penh and posted on instagram for neighbors and to raise awareness. Doing the same in Ghent I notice that here we have the luxury of good air to breath, today.

These are facts stated by the World Health Organisation (WHO), we now understand that air pollution has overtaken poor sanitation and a lack of drinking water to become the main environmental cause of premature death (OECD 2014). The latest estimate from the WHO reported that in 2012, approximately 3.7 million people died from outdoor urban and rural sources (WHO 2014). The cause of deaths was broken down as follows: ischemic heart disease (40 %), stroke (40 %); chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (11 %), lung cancer (6 %) and acute lower respiratory infections in children (3 %). By region, the largest outdoor air pollution burden is found in the low- and middle-income countries of the Western Pacific and South-East Asia, with 2.6 million linked deaths in 2012″. 
These are the countries that produce our fast consumption goods. By reading the “made in” label as from now we can raise our awareness of our impact when buying a low cost garment.

The sadness having to leave a continent we loved, the country that was the scenery of more family dreams never to be lived gives me the willingness to chose for a low impAct life.
We were not only touched by toxicity engendered by the hunger for consumption in order to fill a void inside ourselves. Further to this feeling of short term fullness the eager to fill again, and again, and …. is unlimitedly recreated. We were bathing in the toxicity, taking it in every second, every breath. To be robbed of clean air to breath is dehumanizing and the majority of the people living in South East Asia who are subjected to this faith aren’t even aware of it due to government policy and big corporations corruptness with a commun goal; a non-respectful pursuit of profit.
It’s ironic to understand that we’re depleting and killing the earth through the extraction of nonrenewable energy to fuel the factories releasing mass killers for the human itself.

Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Maya Angelou

Our choice is made.
The kids and I are traveling to Belgium, like each year, only this time we will stay after the summer holidays while Lionel (my husband, father of our children) stays in Phnom Penh to finish his contract.
Bold choice? Maybe. Ideal situation? Who knows.
What is ideal and who makes the “rules” that we are willing to live at?
Of course lots of questions rise making this choice.
For the children? Mathias spend 2/3 of his live in Asia; both are English schooled.
For our relationship? As a couple; the children versus their dad.
We’re saying goodbye, for the moment, to our dreams as a family living in Asia and traveling around the world.
We’re jumping into the unknown, we’re stretching ourselves not knowing where it will bring us. Even that it’s scary in a way at the same time it creates new possibilities and it feels as this is the right choice.
Giving our children a healthy environment to grow, learn and develop is our number one care.

In the passed I always have been concerned by environment, our impact on nature and the earth we’re living on. It’s been a while since I banned plastic bags as much as I can, for sure living in Bangkok or Cambodia it’s not an easy mission, even when you buy a coconut it’s generously accompanied of a plastic bag and a smile.
Further to my experience of the last 4 years in Asia something shifted, how we impact the environment still is a great concern at the same time another layer has been added.
What about how the environment influences us? What are the different levels that the toxicity made by us, the human race, created by depleting our planet seeps in our environment and bodies putting in jeopardy our health and mind sanity?

When leaving Phnom Penh I did some major decluttering. Arriving in Belgium my conviction and challenge is to live an impact-low life. By taking in consideration both directions; from us on the environment aswel as the environment on us.
It will be about choices, about getting informed and checking in with my biases, perceptions en beliefs before making these choices
As a single parenting Mum with 2 children it will certainly bring up challenges, lot’s of explanations, patience, compassion and perseverance.

Our action making this move is rooted in the hope of being able to make a difference, showing our children that we are fully responsible for our choices on all levels and to live up to our values.

This spins through my head often, I feel we have to take radical responsibility on all we do, touch, think, feel and speak. It’s a tough one as lot of our behavior is biased, biased by our culture, upbringing, race, stuff we encounter throughout life, you even can throw epigenetic in the mix . So I want to take responsible for my biases as well as they are part of me. The last 4 years I radically learned that all is perception and perspective. Some beautiful ladies, I admire and are true inspirations for me, showed me again and again how we can open up, stop, reflect and listen to our behavior, our beliefs and don’t get sucked in to them, reflect on them taken in consideration our biases. We can step out of that framework, build around us throughout the walk of our life and by precedent generations supporting the persons we are now.
To be curious, ask questions, to know our values and act up to them is taking radical responsibility. It is challenging by times as life brings all kind of surprises to make it a bit more spicy. At the same time it would be dull sporadic addition of chilly pepper.

Big surprise for us as a family is the poor air quality here in Phnom Penh. It appears, further to the readings done by myself on the laser egg air quality monitor that the air quality is worse than in Bangkok.
What about responsibility?
For sure I’m a contributor to this poor air quality. With my actions and life style. A small contributor? Maybe. Some examples;
Already by living here as an expat I contribute to the booming construction of apartments in the city, it is one big construction site led by Chinese entrepreneurs.
My use of tucktucks to get from one place to another, short distances I tend to walk even when the outside temperature projects me in a huge open air oven.
Our apartment block has a diesel generator to bridge the daily electricity cut due to the drought that is hitting Cambodia at this moment. Every day our neighborhood encounters a power cut, you can hear the growling of the Diesel engines through out the whole neighborhood. When this distressing concert starts I sprint to the windows, a race against the approaching black cloud of our generator. The air quality is definitely not helped by this phenomena. Our comfort level is raised by it for sure. At the same time not everybody has this luxury and the small businesses encounter big financial losses cut off from electricity.
When I think about responsibility it’s not only by me causing, it also by me reacting on this situation. What is the impact of this poor air quality, on my family and my self? Where lies my choice. What is important for me? Do we have a choice? My belief is that we have one, we have the luxury of choice. The problem of choice seems to be a luxury problem and this one seems to be a complicated luxury problem.

Those who know me the last years know I’m the “young” Miss Marple of air monitoring. Walking around with my monitor and making excel sheets with the readings. Advocating in the schools for air purifiers, those who are purchased and installed now.
I’ve met several people who clearly stated not wanting to know, preferring to be ignorant. It gives the “liberty” to stay in the comfort created living as an expat in a developing country. Showing respect for their radical denialism my own philosophy isn’t compatible with this perception.
What to do with my luxury problem? The freedom of choice.

We all get dirty. – Ann Wiame –

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

This is how our rides from and to school look like, every day.
For me this is shit hitting the fan and we’re standing extremely close to the impact.

When we moved from Bangkok to Phnom Penh we honestly thought the air quality would be better or the same.  We came several times to Phnom Penh and measured the air quality ourselves as their is no reliable official existing data.  Apparently during our visiting days we were lucky, or rather unlucky as we got a wrong image.  The every day reality is that it is worse.  In Bangkok you have approximate of 3 months, December, January and February that have a very poor air quality.  Here in Phnom Penh it is pretty bad the whole year long.