Hendrika de Vries is the author of the new memoir When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew. It focuses on her own and her mother's experiences during World War II. A therapist for more than 30 years, she was born in Amsterdam and now lives in Santa Barbara, California.
Q: You note that the events of recent years pushed you to
write this memoir, although you'd been thinking about doing so for a long time.
What were the specific factors that made you start writing it?
A: As a licensed family therapist in California, with a
background in depth psychology and theological studies, I also taught in the
Counseling Psychology and Mythological Studies programs at Pacifica Graduate
Institute.
From time to time, in classroom lectures and public
presentations, I would use anecdotes from my childhood to illustrate the
multi-layered and archetypal depth that connects and unites us in our human
experiences. When stressing the individual and collective healing power of
sharing our life stories, I was often urged to write a memoir about my childhood.
I eventually did include segments of my story in articles I wrote for Spring
Journal.
I began writing my manuscript, but to publish it still
seemed somewhat self-indulgent. I had survived to live a long successful life
and so many others suffered torturous deaths.
It was really not until I saw the images on my television
screen of neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I read of the
escalating attacks on houses of worship in the last few years, the increase of
hate crimes, the resurgence of racism and blatant attacks on women’s
reproductive rights and freedoms under the current administration, that I began
to think differently. Publishing my story no longer felt like a matter of
choice, but an obligation, a duty to our human dignity and soul.
I have witnessed freedoms being erased at lighting speed. I
know what it means when survival comes at the cost of your voice. I have seen
human beings demeaned, dragged out of homes, and slaughtered at random, because
those in power deemed them “inferior.”
But I also saw the power of resistance and human resilience.
I survived, in part, because there were still enough adults who could imagine a
more just world and had the goodness and courage to fight for it. I want
today’s children to have the same chance. I cannot be silent.
Q: Did you need to
do much research to write the book, or was most of it taken from your own
memories?
A: I wanted my memoir to express the undiluted experiences
of the little girl as much as possible. So, the events in the book are all
grounded in my personal memories and remembered conversations with my mother.
Many years of Jungian analysis, when I was an adult, gave me the opportunity to
articulate the emotions and explore dream images that were connected to the
memories.
I also made a pilgrimage to Amsterdam in 1993, where I
worked with a Jungian analyst, Dr. Sonny Herman, who was a rabbi. Under his
tutelage, I revisited the particular sites in Amsterdam where the traumatic
events I remembered took place. Each morning I ventured out alone to explore a
different site. Later in the day, Dr. Herman and I would meet in his office to
process the emotions and thoughts that had been triggered.
My work with him, which took place in Dutch, the language I
spoke as a little girl, helped me root the memories in place.
Since my goal for my memoir was to convey a child’s raw
experiences of war, violence, oppression, loss, betrayal, bigotry, and also a
mother’s resistance and strength, I kept my research to a minimum. I used it
mainly to validate the factual occurrence of my remembered experiences and to
place them in a chronological time frame.
Q: What impact did it have on you to write about your own
and your mother's experiences during World War II?
A: My first attempts at writing about my childhood drained
me and shocked me into a deeper understanding of how the body holds trauma. In
order for my experiences to feel authentic to the reader, I tried to immerse
myself in the events. There were times when I would unexpectedly break into
sobs, my body shaking, as I sat at the computer and literally relived the
emotions of a particular experience.
But the writing also helped me to more fully appreciate my
mother’s astonishing strength. As a teenager and young adult I had battled her
for many years. Because of our merged wartime bond, I had needed to establish
an identity that was separate from hers, which at times hurt her.
But in the writing of the events my heart opened wide to
that solo mother who decided to resist oppression, and who dared to risk her
own life and that of her child, because she hoped that “someone would do the
same for her daughter if circumstances were reversed.”
Writing the
mother-daughter story gave me deeper insight and appreciation for the
complexity of motherhood and the power of mother-daughter relationships. It was
the strength my mother had modeled and inspired in me that gave me the courage
to face my own memories and write my story.
Q: Can you say more about the book's title and what it
signifies for you?
A: The images in my book’s title, the toy dog that becomes a
wolf and the moon that breaks curfew, are derived from actual events described
in the memoir, but on a deeper level they also carry a symbolic meaning that I
consider relevant for women today.
In the actual events of my story, the tiny stuffed toy dog
becomes a fierce wolf in a little girl’s imagination when her father is taken
away. Her belief in its magic empowers her to ask a German guard to pass the
tiny dog on to her father, who is now behind barbed wire. It is this wolf-like
strength that she also later sees in her mother who joins the Resistance.
The moon that breaks curfew refers to an unexpected
brilliant full moon that guides a mother and her small daughter safely home
along ice-covered sidewalks and over slippery bridges on a dark cloud-covered
night in Amsterdam. With blackout material covering windows, streetlights
extinguished, and a Nazi-imposed curfew that could get anyone shot, the full
moon breaking through the heavy clouds to light a path would always be in the
mother’s mind a true “miracle.”
On a deeper level, both these images can be seen as symbols
of the gathering of female strength and resistance to oppression. The
culturally imposed standards of gender, into which I was born, expected a woman
to be obedient and decorative as a toy dog. In my memoir the toy dog becomes a
wolf, symbolizing a transformation from the domesticated feminine to the fierce
wolf-like strength and courage that my mother and other women showed in their
resistance to tyranny and oppression in World War II.
In the same way, our patriarchal mythologies often symbolize
the moon as feminine. Its cool reflective light seen as lesser than and
merely reflective of a burning masculine sun. But the moon in her capacity to
create light in the dark may also symbolize a power to shine light on abuses
that have been hiding under cover of darkness.
In the past few years, we have become aware of the power
unleashed when women collectively reflect on their experiences and tell their
stories. Each story, whether of sexual abuse, domestic violence, racial or
gender discrimination, unequal pay, or other, shines a light on assaults
carried out and hidden in the dark. When women share their stories, as we have
seen in the #MeToo movement, their shared reflections bring the light to its
fullness.
Like the “miracle” full moon in my memoir, their combined
reflections shine a light that breaks the oppressor’s curfew and reveal a path
to guide us home. In this deeper understanding I see the moon that breaks
curfew as another metaphor for the gathering of female strength and resistance
to tyranny and oppression.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I have outlined chapters for my memoir about a Dutch
immigrant girl who comes of age in Australia in the 1950s. I have also begun my
notes for a third memoir. It covers landing in Denver, Colorado, for my
husband’s career in the 1960s and the midst of the Women’s Liberation movement.
It explores a woman’s mid-life crisis and subsequent solo journey and spiritual
quest. I may combine the two books into one, but I am not sure about that yet.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I swim a mile in a local pool a couple of times a week.
It’s my meditation. I like taking long walks on the beach with my husband. I
believe in dreams and synchronicities that guide us even when life brings
sorrows and challenges. I believe that we need to cultivate our imagination to
envision the world we want to live in and form the solidarity and courage to
fight for it.
I am a mother of three adult children, and the grandmother
of four millennial grandchildren. I pray for the health of our planet.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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