In May 2021, my father found a good book from the 1980s: Roeck and Marquet (1980). “Belgian sagas and legends”. Illustrations by Henri Lievens. In the chapter “the virgins,” Dymphna came back, who has inspired […]
Category: Belgian Wood Stories
A Flemish ghost in the throat: Imagining who Cathelyne van den Bulcke was
One week earlier, I walked with S., a friend, in the Flemish town Lier, once a rich city with Game of Thrones intrigues. The city has installed a walking tour, with different stops and QR […]
Dimpna, a story about an uprooted irish princess rerooting in Flanders, and a 6 centuries old method of care for the mental ill
On a July day, in 2021, I was in Geel, with a fellow offspring of a witch that did not get burned in the 17th century, to “dig up some bones”. That’s what we call […]
A Linden Tree in Tongerlo (and educational philosophy for the future)
One of my new short stories got published as part of a book of speculative social fiction that present different possible futures of education. About the book: Educational Fabulations *Teaching and Learning for a World […]
That special tree/plant in our lives is often rooted in a landscape of the past
One of the invitations that I give to my participants at the beginning of my nature based practices is to share a memory about a special tree in their life. I pair them up and […]
Ecofeminism anno 2022: writing wild
This winter, one of the mentors of the writers academy in Antwerp, recommended me this book. I bought it. I do not get only inspiration for my current fiction book, but I also start dreaming […]

a musing: evergreens in Christmas songs, midwinter poems and cultural heritage
Traditionally, the spruce is the Christmas tree in the North-West of Europe, but this is not always the evergreen with is the subject of christmas carols. In Flanders, we have a famous christmas song about […]

My path with nature
As I write these words, it’s dark outside in Brussels, my new and temporary home. I close my eyes to calm my mind, accelerated from daily ‘obligations’. There’s a place within me that I can […]
Phytographia – or writing with plants
I am involved in several projects where we want to cultivate more nature connection and a deeper conscious how connected we are with more than human beings, like plants. One of the big problems – […]
DATING WITH PLANTS
Or “three years wood wide web stories” I am 32 years old and I have always been single … in the eyes of my parents. I never introduced someone as my significant other to them. […]