Embracing the feminine: a deep dive into self-discovery

Insights from my second MDMA-assisted experience

Polarities have always fascinated me—the opposites that shape our lives. In my search for balance, I discovered that I was often in my masculine energy: focused on doing, control, and results. But deep down, I longed for a softer side, to embrace my feminine energy, which is all about surrender, presence, and connection. This desire guided me on a path of self-discovery that led to tantra workshops and eventually to my first MDMA journey under the guidance of a psychologist. I expected this psychedelic experience to bring me closer to my feminine energy, but the journey took an unexpected turn. The harsh and dangerous reality of life as a ‘witch’ in the Middle Ages gave me new insights into my distance from feminine energy. Being a woman is not always easy, and has often been dangerous. This time, I felt ready to move on and really delve into what it means being a woman. My most recent MDMA journey brought surprising lessons about myself, my family, and the hidden stories that shape my feminine power. I’m excited to share my experiences and lessons with you, in the hopes that they will resonate with you too…

My Intention

This time, I was hoping to find that softness I’d been longing for—a deep, gentle connection to my feminine energy. But every time I thought about the session, my two grandmothers would appear in my mind’s eye, as if they were calling out to be seen and heard. It felt like the women in my family wanted to be acknowledged before I could continue my inner journey. To welcome this energy, I created a photo collage of the women in my family. Happy photos were hard to come by; their lives had often been tough. Still, I deliberately chose images that radiated joy, to let the energy of the collage in the room resonate with my intention for this journey.

The day before the session, I ‘coincidentally’ sent a friend the link to my free Dutch audiobook ‘What is your Excuse?’. In it, I share my experiences with the charity world and my participation on the European Survivor TV show. The day before the trip I listened to my book for hours, completely absorbed in my story. This time I heard my battle with the charity world through the lens of power relations between the masculine and the feminine. This insight still resonated in my mind as I entered the session.

The journey

From the start, I could tell this second MDMA experience would be different. Although I felt a slight tension, I found myself surrendering more quickly to the ‘medicine’ as it began to explore my brain. This time, I knew the key was to feel rather than think. As I rubbed my fingertips together and began to move gently, I felt the energy slowly wash over me. The transition felt effortless. Unlike the first time, when I had gone into a kind of ‘freeze’, I had now found a way to consciously experience it. This gave me a sense of joy and pride—I knew I could do it.

I soon felt the familiar jolts of energy through my body, I recognized them from energy work and tantra. I moved my body with the energy, even growled, as the protective ‘tiger’ within me emerged. It was intense but felt familiar. I explained to the therapist, “This is okay. I know this from energy work.” I didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable, but it felt completely natural and safe to me. This recognition and familiarity allowed me to fully surrender to the experience and allow everything that wanted to come up.

Masks of power and vulnerability

In this journey, I found myself once again in an archetypal role, but this time I was not a sweet woman who wanted to help people; I was a priestess in a temple, shrouded in power and mystery. I felt the power I possessed, but also the coldness of it. I kept everyone at a distance by creating a wall of power, scaring others so that I could hide my vulnerability. “The Golden Connection has long been lost,” I heard myself explain to the psychologist, who wrote down everything I said during the session. It was as if my soul was teaching my consciousness. The only way I thought I could protect myself as a priestess was by dominating and controlling others. I felt the hatred that others bore me; they sent dark energy towards me. I was constantly on guard, not even daring to sleep for fear that they would betray me or get back at me.

These feelings of fear and vulnerability continued to haunt me after the session and took on a new form in my dreams. The night after the session I dreamed that I was a pretty girl trying to escape from a transport to a concentration camp. Chased by guards, I ran through the narrow streets of a small town, my heart pounding in my chest, looking for a safe hiding place. When I saw a man on the street, I desperately grabbed him and begged: “Hide me, I will do anything for you.” He turned out to be a good man, the owner of a well-known restaurant. I told him honestly that I was Jewish and said: “I want to hide in plain sight.” He let me work in his restaurant as a waitress.
In that dream I tried to hide myself in all sorts of ways: by dressing up, wearing glasses, changing my posture, dyeing my hair. I did everything I could to blend in. But I knew deep down that no matter how much I tried to change my appearance or behavior, my energy and essence were indiscernible. My light, my bone structure, my smile—I couldn’t hide them. I was constantly trying to hold myself back, to dim my light, to be invisible. Even after waking up from that dream, I felt that sense of shrinking, hiding, and limiting my energy. It was as if my body was still stuck in that dream. And I realized how terrible it is to try to survive without really living.

Another dream reinforced this theme. I was on a boat, where I thought I was safe behind a fence from large walruses that wanted to eat me. When I began to challenge the walruses, I quickly discovered that my sense of safety was an illusion. The animals were extremely frustrated that they couldn’t catch me. A smaller walrus found an opening and slipped through the bars. I was no longer safe. I realized that “safety” is an illusion: it is always temporary and vulnerable. It is not wise to challenge your enemy.

These three experiences—the priestess in the temple, the refugee trying to escape, and the challenger on the boat—brought home the same lesson: You can’t keep trying to make yourself bigger or smaller, to hide or exclude others in order to maintain control. The only way forward is to be authentic—not too much, not too little, not challenging others, just be exactly as you are, with all your light and your shadow.

Female connection and sharing loss

During the MDMA journey, I was confronted not only with my masks and patterns but also with the stories of the women in my family. I felt their presence and heard their voices—some of them stuck in their pain and sorrow. They told me they didn’t want to be that way—not stuck in victimhood or drama—but that they simply saw no other way. I realized that I had never really seen some of them and had often been too quick to judge. A wise part of me offered them advice; for example, to one of my grandmothers, who tended to make up illnesses to get attention. I suggested that she ask interested questions instead, to connect more genuinely. I asked all the women to open their hearts a little, to let in light, and be gentler with themselves and with each other.

Another part of my journey as a priestess brought up the theme of connection. At one point, we tried to escape the temple with all the priestesses; We longed to be ordinary women, part of the community of village women. We had no idea of ​​the exclusive position we occupied and thought we could easily connect with the others. But when we tried, we realized how little we knew about ordinary life—even something as simple as doing laundry was foreign to us. The village women rejected us, and so we had no choice but to seek protection from the men. This created an even greater gap between us and the ordinary women. This experience shows that even when we try to connect, sometimes the distance is too great, and that can lead to more isolation and alienation.

A major theme that emerged was the loss that all the women in my family and circle of friends had experienced, each in their own way. My three little stars, the miscarriages that made me a mother and at the same time not, also came along during this journey. I felt their presence and got to know their names and characters. I asked them: Why? How? What did they want to tell me? One of them even shouted: “Mom, look, I can swim.” Those simple words touched me deeply; someone called me “mom”. They came back several times. I did not feel sadness, but was curious and listened to their message. They even gave me advice.

I slowly realized how the theme of loss has been passed down through the generations. Not just my loss, but that of all the women around me—my family, my friends. Loss of children, of dreams, of a part of themselves. My great-grandmother outlived two of her three children; another grandmother, due to busy work, never had the space to connect with her many children, while another pushed her children away because of her clinginess and manipulation. A friend lost her son in a lawsuit, another became estranged from her children in a divorce, and yet another had to passively watch her daughter rebel against her in puberty. Some friends never had the children they wanted, while another, after a brain hemorrhage, was mainly preoccupied with the fear of losing her children. Each of these women carries the theme of ‘loss of children’ in their own way. And while that loss cuts deeply, it is also countered by an immense, unconditional love. It is that love that makes the pain of loss so intense.

I began to see that womanhood is not about perfection or trying to create a painless reality, as the priestesses in the temple might have thought. The art is to find beauty and light in the everyday misery – in the midst of the pain and powerlessness. The priestess advised: “It is up to us to sprinkle ‘stardust’ over our lives and share it with others.”

This journey brought together different puzzle pieces from all the women who have gone before me and who walk beside me. I felt that the purpose of this MDMA journey was to bundle all those fragmented feminine energies. All those women who do not feel seen as women, as mothers. We all try to be strong, and as a result, we often only see the strong facade of the other. If we all remain on our own and keep our grief behind the scenes, we remain fragmented and alone. But if we share our experiences, our pain, and our grief with each other, a real connection is created. We can support each other and see each other. When we share our vulnerabilities, we find support and strength in each other’s presence. Then we are not alone, but together—and together we are strong.

‘I’m Just a Little Girl’

During the journey, there came a moment of deep vulnerability. The powerful priestess, who kept others at bay with power and control, revealed that she was just a little girl who wanted to be seen. Her wall of strength was just a defense mechanism to protect her true, vulnerable self. This touched me because I felt that same need to show myself without masks.
In that safe moment, I became that little girl myself and softly asked, “Do you want to play with me?” This simple request brought a wave of playfulness and joy. Later, during the journey, I spontaneously exclaimed, “I am a strawberry!” and burst out laughing. “I want a strawberry on my nose!” The images of a dancing strawberry and banana in a Moroccan setting, accompanied by kasbah music, reminded me of the importance of playfulness. This experience made me realize that behind all our adult roles and facades, the need to play and be free is always there. The inner child in all of us longs to just play, laugh, and feel free sometimes—without judgment, without fear.

‘I got off easy’

The MDMA trip always continues to have an effect for a while, so I stayed in a hotel in nature for a few days to let the experience sink in further. The days after the trip I felt particularly open and creative. I was flooded with inspiration and ideas about how I could incorporate my new insights into my theatre show. After the search for my identity and femininity, and the challenges to find it, this felt like a kind of integration. I knew exactly which music I wanted to use during the show and how I could make my experiences tangible for the audience.

During one of my walks through the forest, I felt very connected to nature. I came across a dead mouse and decided to honor it by placing flowers and acorns around it. Then I collected a handful of acorns and scattered them elsewhere so that new trees could grow there. Along the way, I found some wild blackberries that I picked and ate. A little later I saw that someone else had made a small piece of art from a leaf, tied with sticks, with a few stones in it. I added some flowers myself. They were the little wonders of nature that reveal themselves to you when you are open to them. You see such beautiful things and enjoy them even more. It felt like a gift to walk through the forest.

Yet I also noticed how easy it is to fall back into old patterns. Soon I was spending a large part of the day on my phone again—a way to no longer be in the experience, but to crawl back into my head or distract myself. Still, I felt that there was still something deep that I had not fully explored.

At night, as I tried to close off the experience and get back into my head, I noticed how my thoughts kept repeating themselves. Is taking such an MDMA trip decadent? Or is it a birthright? Or maybe shamanism? Why do I treat it so nonchalantly? Does it have to be sacred? Or just normal? Is it a luxury? Or a birthright? Again, I knew, deep inside me, that something BIG was waiting for me…

The Legacy of Grief

Just before the MDMA trip, I had gotten my hands on my Jewish grandfather’s war diaries, which he had kept during his time in hiding. There were also letters from his parents and other family members, smuggled out of the concentration camps. My father had once tried to turn them into a book, and I now felt the urge to finish that project for him and the rest of the family. A few days after my MDMA trip, I felt a strong need to pick up my grandfather’s hiding stories again. As if I was trying to connect more with the emotions within. I realized that I had perhaps ended the MDMA trip too early by quickly going to my phone, thinking that I had ‘come out all right’ this time.

Emotions did indeed come up while reading. I was moved by the story of my great-grandfather Samuel, who refused to go into hiding and wrote: “If my people perish, then I will perish with my people.” His determination touched me, but I also realized the difference between him and me. I am a survivor; I would try to escape and survive at all costs.
Another moment that deeply affected me was when I read about my grandparents’ time in hiding. In the fall of 1944, just before the Hunger Winter, they thought liberation was near. The joy they felt, followed by the disappointment when this turned out not to be the case, showed how long they had had to hold on to their tension, even when they thought it was almost over.

I felt that something big and unnameable wanted to come up under the surface, something that challenged me further. Because I knew that I was still very ‘open’ because of the journey, I decided to give that feeling space by watching an intense war film, ‘Black Book’. During the film, I burst into tears several times. At first, I thought it was because I identified with the main actress who joined the resistance and tried to survive.

But when the film ended, I kept crying. For the first time, I felt the depth of the stories I grew up with. This grief that presented itself to me was much bigger than just my family’s grief. It was about all the Jewish people who were driven from their homes, disappeared, and murdered—ordinary people for whom everything suddenly changed. The numbers werer overwhelming. I kept thinking, “All those people, all those people.” For the first time, I felt deeply connected to them. This is also a part of me, a part that I am now allowed to bring out. It felt like a kind of ‘coming out’.

The grief became enormous, almost unbearably big, and I felt its power in my body. It was frightening to feel that intensity. I used the tools I had learned in tantra and other energy work: moving, making sounds, breathing, and opening my heart. The grief came and went in waves, which gave me space to ‘catch my breath’ in between. During one such pause, I texted a friend: “I feel like this is for all the people who were never mourned because there is no one left.” He replied with concern: “This is too big, don’t take on all this sadness. Many people are thinking of them. Protect yourself.” But I felt like I DID want to take this on.

Initiation into healing

With this thought in mind, I decided to let the grief flow through me. I created a ritual setting with a candle and beautiful music around me, which helped me maintain a sembrance of control of these overwhelming emotions.

It felt like some kind of initiation was starting. It was a combination of ‘witchcraft’, ritual, and energy work. I knelt on the bed, my arms up, and felt a fire flowing through me, from the bottom to the top. Waves of grief followed that fire, and I felt it burning me clean. It was intense and raw; I cried, growled, and moved, guided by something deeper that I didn’t know exactly what it was, but strangely enough, I knew exactly what to do.

The waves of emotion kept coming and going. In between, I texted that friend to do some kind of report, partly to keep myself grounded in reality, but also to reassure him. This was so big and special; I felt that I was connecting with something collective.

I saw a dome of a mosque or synagogue, blue, with one star in it—a golden star or a beam of light coming in. This symbol represented the immense problem in the Middle East and the deep pain that is happening there now. Now that I had tapped into the collective grief that lives among Jewish people, I also began to understand the injustice and the struggle that is happening in the Middle East right now. All the people involved feel that injustice, the threat, the not being seen. They transform the pain that they have experienced into hatred and aggression towards others. The grief is covered up with anger, hatred, and violence. This is “an eye for an eye”—love for one’s family and people, a primal protective instinct. It leads to “us against them,” while we are all one.

What I realized is that this collective grief also carries enormous power and love within it, but that it can turn into hatred and destruction if it is not processed. We must try to resolve this with love and light. The lesson I took away from this is that if pain and sadness can be expressed, it doesn’t have to come out as anger.

Eventually, it wasn’t about the sadness itself anymore, but about allowing strong emotion—something I had always been afraid of. By letting it flow through me, without trying to understand or control it, at some point, it no longer was an emotion, but became pure energy. This process felt like an initiation into something new. It was the first time in my life that I had truly allowed such strong emotions, even welcomed them, without being afraid of them. I felt overwhelmed, but it eventually transformed into something else. When I woke up the next day, I knew this had been an initiation.

It’s perhaps the most amazing thing I’ve ever experienced. I’m proud of myself for having the courage to do this, and for having the tools not to run away from it. (I did try running away, of course, by hiding in my phone after the MDMA trip.) This is huge. And I feel this is just the beginning…

A deeper journey of self-discovery

This journey was much more than just a search for my feminine energy; it felt like a profound initiation into the complexity of being human—an experience that spanned the spectrum from survival to true life, from pain to joy. What I discovered is that embracing my emotions and allowing deep sorrow, even when it is overwhelming, is a powerful path to healing and transformation. I realized that survival is not enough; the real work lies in living your full truth and letting your light shine.

This experience has brought me closer not only to myself, but also to the (wo)men, stories, and history that have shaped me. As I continue on this path, I feel strongly that this is just the beginning. The journey to fully embracing who I truly am, in all my facets, is an adventure that I look forward to with curiosity and open arms.

What this journey has made clear to me is that each step is deeper than the last. And as I move forward, I invite you too to find your path to healing and fullness—to discover what happens when you allow yourself to be fully who you are.

And you?

Where in your life do you feel the need for more balance? What emotions or experiences are you pushing aside that could lead you to growth and healing? What does it mean to you to be a woman, or to embrace your authentic self?
I invite you to reflect with me: what would it mean to be completely yourself—not too much, not too little, but exactly as you are? Perhaps this is the time for you to take a new direction, to dive deeper into your journey of discovery. I am curious to know what your path looks like and what you will discover along the way.

Warning

MDMA is not for everyone. Taking a pill at a festival is not the same experience as an MDMA-guided retreat with an experienced therapist or counselor. Context matters, preparation matters (I underwent a thorough physical and psychological checkup), and aftercare matters (my retreat included integration support). The set & setting are crucial to the (learning) process. Always seek professional advice if you are interested in this experience.
There are also other ways to enter an altered state of being – such as breathwork, meditation, fasting, hypnosis, etc. – that can also give you insights that you would not normally have.