It has been a while since the residents of The Shelter had had an interview with a duo from Soul-Journalism. Christian had then advised them to keep a kind of public diary about their lives. Broadly about the past, and somewhat more clearly, precisely about the last few months. What had changed for the better for them? What changes did they notice in themselves?

They had agreed to it so that other people could see that even from the depths of their miserable background, change was possible from within. Of course, they didn't have to pretend it was all super simple. That wouldn't be realistic. It was terribly difficult at times, as if they were going through the depths of the past again, through re-experiences, nightmares, and daytime feelings of hopelessness and fear.

Three of them had immediately started working on it in a Word document of their own. When they were satisfied with it, Christian, who had set up the website for them, gave instructions on how to put their text on the site, and embellish it with photos or images they could take right from the internet.

Christian got permission to feature their site on 'Soul-Journalism', and at his insistence, they even signed up to the digital gallery. They had given their site, 'The Shelter', a subtitle: 'Learning to live from your soul, an art in itself!'

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Willeke, however, could not get around to it. She found it incredibly stressful to start it, because it meant typing out what her life was like in the past. She realised that the lives of her housemates, who had already finished their report and put it on the site, had been just as lousy, but she ran into an obstacle, a fear of falling back into the deep darkness of the past. As a result, she couldn't bring herself to do it.

Every day she walked around with it, reproaching herself for being weak, for being stupid, for being a scaredy-cat. She became shy, started withdrawing, making up excuses every day to avoid spending unnecessary time in the common living room with the others.

In the many hours in her own house, she started trying things out with photo editing software. She had noticed on the gallery's site that the artists each had their own page. As a result, each page had its own kind of art. All of Katja's figurines made of glass shards together, all of Bianca's doll dresses together, all of Elly's paintings together and so on. It gave a wonderful overview, but a desire began to grow in Willeke to make a mixture of all these different types of art and turn them into a kind of gallery in a photo series.

In the programme, she made a simple wall, and placed different photos of the artists against it, mixed up, a sculpture by Katja on a shelf against the wall, a small painting by Elly diagonally above it, a doll with a beautiful dress by Bianca on another shelf, the first wooden artwork by Huib on a cube standing on the floor. And so she mixed up pictures until she was satisfied with that one wall. She created a folder 'Gallery' and saved the file in it under the name: 'Room 1, wall 1'.

Then she started on the second wall, going on and on. She hung Elly's huge paintings on one wall and placed other artworks only to the left and right of it.

So she went from room to room, making the most beautiful combinations and sometimes looked back fondly at her entire series of pictures.

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Because Willeke and Sandra both did not yet have a job, were not even ready to start looking for one, they had become somewhat closer. As a result, Sandra was the first to sense that things were not going well with Willeke, who noticed that she did withdraw quite often. She decided to visit Willeke to gauge whether she might be able to help her.

Willeke let her in, and trotted her over to her laptop. "Look, Sandra, I'm working on that gallery site. I'm turning it into a real gallery in pictures. They really would be able to fill a huge building with it!"

Sandra grabbed a chair from the dining area and sat down next to Willeke, letting Willeke guide her through the various rooms. She noticed that it touched her, that it awakened something in her.

"How do you do that? How does that work? Do you know that this really does something to me, that I would like to do this in real life?" asked Sandra.

"You too do? I have that same thing going on, I think those pages on the website are fine though, but it's all so sort by sort. I would love it if one day they could buy or have built a huge building where they could set it up like this."

"And then we'll apply together as interior designers!" responded Sandra enthusiastically.

Willeke laughed: "I think that would be the job of my life!"

"We'll go for it Willeke, this is simply what our destiny is, this is what we both have a click with. We should just talk to Huib about it, or Ilse."

"Will do, Huib is most familiar to us, shall we invite him tonight?" suggested Willeke.

"I'll call him right away," Sandra said, grabbing her mobile.

"Hey Huib, can you stop by our big living room tonight? Willeke made something wonderful, you just have to see it!"

She was silent for a moment, listening.

"No, I'm not giving anything away yet, it's a surprise!.... OK, we'll see you show up!"

"Why in the living room?" asked Willeke. "Surely he can just come here?"

"Yes, he can, but don't you think it would be great to show this to Cynthia and Janneke as well? On the big screen?"

Willeke nodded, feeling herself retreating back into her shell. And Sandra watched it happen.

"Willeke, what is happening? Why are you retreating? Why are you hiding yourself?"

Willeke looked at her sadly. "I just can't, Sandra, the way you guys are, being open about your past, even writing about it for everyone to read. I'm scared, I'm so incredibly scared that I'm thundering back into that darkness from back then."

"And you're ashamed of that?"

"Yes, that too. And somewhere I'm also afraid that at some point you're going to insist, that I'm going to write down my story too."

"And you've been forced to do something in your life far too many times, forced to do things you didn't want to do..."

"Yes, exactly."

"I expect the others understand that too. We have a similar past, but our injuries interact differently. Maybe different things have healed with us than with you, which is why we managed to do it and you can't at the moment. Don't worry, when you're ready, you can still start! But something completely different, Cynthia and Janneke felt like baking pancakes, and I expect they are about ready. Will you come along?"

"Did they count on me, then?"

"Definitely! Come on girl, I'll stand behind you if necessary. I just don't expect it will be necessary."

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"Ha Sandra, Willeke, I almost wanted to come and call you. Nice timing!"

Cynthia put her hand on Willeke's shoulder. "Glad you're coming for dinner too, much cozier when we're all here!" she said with a wink.

And just that little bit of cordiality made Willeke's tears start to flow. When she got through that, she decided to be open. She explained why she had withdrawn.

"Thanks for telling us," said Janneke, "I completely understand your feelings, but personally I don't feel the need to rush you. I did notice that you hadn't created a page yet. I decided to assume for the time being that you weren't ready or that you weren't doing a good job of describing everything. I was really like 'just wait a few days'. You know what, Willeke, leave that page as long as it doesn't work yet. It will come one day, I guess."

Cynthia nodded: "Totally agree. It's not easy to write that story either. What do you want to say, what don't you want to say. And your feeling that you are going to thunder into a hole is very real. Whether it will happen is another issue, but the feeling is there either way, and I can well imagine that holding you back. Again, I'm glad you're back in!"

"Thank you girls, it makes me feel good. Then I'll let it rest for now, at least if my head wants to let it rest too. My mind is spinning quite a bit."

"Tell them what you made, Willeke," Sandra urged her.

Willeke smiled. "Well, I got bored, and started messing around on the laptop in a photo editing programme. I used the photos from the gallery website to make all kinds of walls from a 'real' gallery. All kinds of art from their website mixed together. Huib will come in a while, he doesn't know what for yet, but I want to show him the result. I would love it so much if they could start building a real gallery..."

"Yes, and then we will be the interior designers," Sandra said with an assurance as if they had already been hired for the job.

Willeke chuckled: "It's quite special, it's like we're two hands in one. Sort of soulmates in the job or something."

"It definitely feels like that!" laughed Sandra. "I would find it really cool. I'm curious to see how Huib feels about it!"

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Huib, Cynthia and Janneke were incredibly excited about the photos Willeke had made. Huib kept staring at the screen, where the last photo was still visible.

It took a while for him to say something about it: "Simon got a clear impression in the beginning, when we had been working on the website for not so long, that that gallery was going to be built, but that it would take some years. We felt then that that had to do with the progression of the process of inner healing, as if we all needed to move forward a lot first, or maybe that the process needed to move forward around the world. And these photos, Willeke, underline that impression. That gallery is going to happen, for sure!"

He looked at her thoughtfully. "You fit into that, as someone who will help organise things like this."

"So can I apply as an interior designer right now? Along with Sandra?"

Huib shot into laughter, looking from one to the other. "I think applying will not even be necessary, I think you guys are simply the right people! Yes, you too Sandra, I really have a deep feeling that's right. What I would recommend to both of you is that in the coming time, you start working mainly on what you like to do, this kind of thing. Make more collages if you want, separately, or together. And in the meantime, go through all your emotional shit, let it come, let it go, feel what's going on inside you and go right through it. All the stronger you will be when the gallery literally gets off the ground!"

Willeke smiled in a painfull manner. "There you tell me something Huib, then I want to ask your advice right away about something I'm up against. That website of the four of us, that's what prompted it. My dear housemates have all already written a public diary about their past, their process and how things are going now. But with me, it is not getting off the ground. Indeed, I stupidly dare not start it. I struggle with the fear that precisely by starting to write I will plunge into an incredibly deep darkness. In the past, from a young age, I was forced into things I didn't want, things that didn't suit me, and from my teens, sexual abuse came with it. From the first time with that, I was threatened with 'don't you dare ever talk to anyone about this, because then...' and then he would make such a gesture along his neck, indicating that he would kill me. The compulsion to make him do what he wanted to do and in the process that death threat got me to the point where I completely surrendered to what he and later all kinds of other men wanted to do to me. And this surrender, while not something I really wanted, was more a way of surviving. I told myself that this was totally my thing, that this was what I was on earth for, and even that I enjoyed it the most. I deceived myself so much in that, but it's still so embedded in my system. And if I start writing now, well, I think that whole hell is going to come over me. And I don't dare do that, especially that death fear."

Huib listened, nodded, kept looking at her, seemed to be able to see right through her tears into her soul. Tears began to flow with himself too, as he cringed at feeling her pain and fear in his own body. He took her hand and said, "That fear of death is a clamp around your throat, as if his hand is still holding you there. That hand will let go, that clamp will disappear and with it, everything related to that fear of death will heal."

He continued to hold her hand, until he saw that the ghastly grey pallor on her face disappeared and her large fearful eyes relaxed. Each of her housemates heaved a deep sigh, had felt part of what was happening in and from Huib.

Sandra gave words to that: "When you spoke, Huib, it was like lava flowing from my heart to Willeke. Heavy, but if it helps Willeke, it was worth it! How are you, Willeke?"

"Like I went through it very deeply for a moment, a few seconds, through that death fear," she stammered.

"You did, in your emotions you went through it, you looked deathly pale, literally the colour of a dead person, grey, bleak, your eyes were really on state of death fear and your hand went cold. I have to be honest, I found that oppressive for a while, it was scary and nasty to see and feel, so I was very relieved that it was only for a few seconds," Huib shared what had been going on inside him. "Thank you ladies, this was a fierce sample of soul work for a while! And just so we're clear, Willeke, don't feel obliged to start writing for the website right away. It will come as soon as your soul tells you to, then it will be early enough!"

Willeke nodded, momentarily too tired to respond.

Sandra looked at her: "And if you feel like it too, I'd love to get on with that photo editing together."

Willeke's face brightened: "Yes, I think that would be incredibly fun!"

"Ladies, that's something for the gallery website too! If you send a bunch of photos to Ilse, I'm pretty sure she'll make a page for your gallery photos too, just because it's soul work, because it's art, beautiful art, and because it keeps our dream for a gallery building alive," Huib explained. "Do it, don't be too modest, just send it in if you have a few pictures that are really quite to your liking."

Willeke and Sandra looked at each other, bursting into laughter.

"Who would have expected that?" said Willeke.

"I didn't! But I like it immensely!" responded Sandra beaming.

They talked for a while more, about walls of the gallery-rooms, whether they would need another colour.

"I think you should stick to light tones," said Huib, "as far as I'm concerned light wood, without too many grains."

"Yes, that's it! Light wood. If that building ever gets there..."

"... I'm not going to panelling it with wood! There are wonderful types of wallpaper or paint these days that are perfect for it. I've been making wooden sculptures for a while now, and I experience that that has my heart the most. Making furniture, finishing the houses here with wood, it's all fun stuff, with beautiful results, but it's not what I love most. So as far as I can see right now, I'm probably not going to finish up that gallery. On the other hand, that could change with ease by then, we'll see! But for the time being, you guys can use the idea in the photo editing programme. I'm heading home again! Thanks for the coffee, and you, Willeke, take it easy tonight, you've earned it, and maybe desperately need it!"

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After a jolly movie night with her housemates and a good, quiet night, Willeke got up cheerfully, with a sense of expectation. With a few greased sandwiches and a mug of coffee, she sat down at her laptop, opened a Word file and started typing.

She started with key words, in chronological order. From there, she started writing small chapters about how she was trapped in her childhood, about the years when the abuse began with the death threats, and finally her time in prostitution. Below that, she put a dotted line and started a little chapter about how she had felt, how she had found a way to survive and how in retrospect that had felt like guilt over the way she cooperated with her clients. Under a second dotted line, she wrote about her liberation, which at first, for months, was not much more than just a physical liberation. She described how she had felt during the months at The Shelter, how re-experiences and nightmares had terrorised her life and how she had fought tooth and nail to cope with them. She also had the courage to write about her struggles because of the writing for the website. She wrote openly about what she had told her housemates yesterday, about her struggles, her agony, and what happened next.

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She wrote:

'Those were a few seconds when I really felt myself dying because of a hand squeezing my throat. I later heard from those present that I had turned a corpse colour and that my hand was cold, while my eyes were wide open as if in death fear. After those few seconds, it was over, and I felt that squeezing hand breaking off around my throat. Last night I had a pleasant evening with my housemates. We watched a beautiful film about a woman who was also terribly stuck, different from me, but still... and who broke free at the end of the film and looked extremely fiery, like a firebird! Then I had a good night, and this morning I felt almost like that woman, strong, no, not with balls of muscle, but powerful on the inside. I don't feel like a firebird yet, but I do feel like I'm about to really break free completely. And as I write this, I feel something welling up inside, something wanting to break out. It feels like...

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"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

Willeke roared, screamed, but not out of pain. It was her soul erupting in that cry. This too lasted only a few seconds, but it was long and loud enough to make Sandra, who was busy cleaning up in her house, look up startled and run to Willeke's house.

"Willeke, what is it? What's happening? Are you all right?"

To her bewilderment, she looked into a luminous face, a face that literally seemed to give off light. Willeke's eyes were bright, radiantly bright, fiery, with a power she had never suspected behind her.

"Just a moment, just finishing my writing," she said to Sandra.

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She typed on:

'Where I just stopped... at that moment, a huge roar, a scream came up, as if my soul was seeking an outlet through my mouth like a volcano. What exactly happened, I don't know, but I feel free, really free! It's like all the shit has broken off from me. Could that really be possible?'

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"So, my text for the website is ready, read it, if you want, I'll prepare another mug of coffee. You coffee too?"

She looked into Sandra's staring gaze and asked, "What is it?"

"Well, first of all, your scream startled me immensely. You screamed like a lion in distress, or like a lion attacking. And now, your eyes, and your skin..."

Very gently, Sandra felt at Willeke's cheek.

"No, I can't feel anything on it, but you look like you're giving light! Can I take a picture of you?"

Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed her mobile, clicked on the camera icon, looked and clicked off a few times.

"I'll send them to your e-mail, then we can see them bigger that way. And yes, I'm quite in the mood for coffee, maybe it'll bring me back down to earth..."

Sandra watched Willeke as she walked to her kitchen counter to make coffee. Even her attitude was different, combative or something, Sandra thought. She shrugged and started emailing the pictures she had just taken to Willeke. She also wanted to e-mail them to the other housemates and to Huib, but decided to wait a little longer to do that until Willeke had seen it herself.

She sat down at the laptop and started reading Willeke's story. It moved her, the misery of her childhood, the abuse, her work, and how she had felt in it. She read about the previous evening, that she had really felt like dying. How intense that must have been... And then the last part, about this morning....

Sandra stood up and made room for Willeke. She grabbed another chair herself.

"Your story, Willeke, is the most extraordinary of us all, the most powerful or so. It’s heavy, it touches me!"

Willeke looked at her smiling and then opened her mail. She found the photos Sandra had just taken of her and opened them. Then it was her turn to look bewildered.

"Well all you people! Is that me? Oh yes, I can see it's me, but still it doesn't seem to be me. It looks like you edited those pictures! Wait, I have another picture here from a few days ago on my mobile."

She looked it up and forwarded it to the laptop. There she put both photos side by side.

"Look at the difference!" she exclaimed!

"Put those pictures under your story, then readers can see how you have changed, compared to a few days ago," Sandra suggested.

"Ha, you should have suggested that to me a few days ago! Then you probably would have had a lot of comments thrown at your head, because I was ashamed of my own pictures, of myself. But now it's worth it!"

With Sandra's help, she created her own page on the website, copied her text into it and placed her own photo and one of the photos Sandra had just taken, at the bottom of the story. She added: 'This is the outward result of the breakthrough yesterday and this morning. The first picture is from a few days ago, the second from this morning, a few minutes after that scream.'

Happy, she looked at Sandra: "Done! My story is done!"

"Great, Willeke! And I had another little idea... shall we forward this to Huib, Cynthia and Janneke?"

"Pretty good idea, then they can see what they have caused!"

She wrote a short e-mail, also adding the link of her page on their own website.

Responses soon came in, full of wonder and joy. And from Huib a tip: "If you want to, put the option to respond below your story on the website. Just puzzle out how it works, if it doesn't succeed, give me a call.'

Sandra remembered how it worked, knew where to turn things off and on and helped her get started with that. Then Willeke also put a link to the site on her Twitter and Facebook, and forwarded her link to Ilse so she could copy her text and photos onto the gallery's website.

"So, everything is ready... now what? Do you fancy photo editing?"

"Oh yes, a lot more fun than cleaning up!"

"Were you doing that before you came here?"

"Yes, but I can best get on with that another time. The mess was not that serious, it was more a matter of boring myself a bit. So yes, let's get started on those pictures!"

Sandra still had no clue how the programme worked, but Willeke calmly told her what they were doing and why. After filling a whole wall, they switched places and Sandra started filling the next wall with Willeke's instructions. She immediately decided to make a wood wall of it, of a very light kind of wood, and on it and against it they placed all kinds of pictures of artworks from the gallery.

It was already nearing the end of the morning when she had finished with it and Willeke took her place behind the laptop again.

"I'm going back to yesterday's photos, just to see if I can manage to turn those walls over there into wood walls as well," she said.

Sandra watched in amazement as, by simply clicking out the photos of the various art objects, only the wall remained, Willeke turned that into a light wood wall and turned all the photos of the art objects back on.

"Goodness grace, how simple is that! Would you like me to make some sandwiches while you do some wood coating on the other walls?"

"Sandwiches? You know what I'm in the mood for? Pizzaaaaaaaaa!"

Sandra laughed: "Oh well, why not? I'll get some from the freezer."

Moments later, she returned cheerfully with two frozen pizzas. "Handy isn't it, such a little shop there in the living room! That was a great idea of Lisa's! And now... hoppa, you in the oven, and you just have to wait," she chattered to both pizzas.

The oven that was present in every house was a small round oven, which fitted exactly one pizza. Sandra already put two plates on the counter with a sharp knife next to them, and put cutlery on the table. After ten minutes, the oven made a pinging sound, indicating that the pizza was ready. She fished it out with matching gripping pliers and cut it in half on the plate, then slid one half onto the other plate. She lowered the second pizza into the oven and set the clock back to ten minutes.

"Willeke, we can eat!"

"Perfect timing, I'm just saving the last one!"

"What do you think, shall we send the photos of those gallery walls to Ilse?" asked Sandra.

"We'd better do that later on, yes," said Willeke, cutting off a piece of her pizza. As she chewed on it, she switched on her mobile to take a quick look at The Shelter website. She wasn't expecting any reactions yet, but she was sorely mistaken. Seven responses full of joy and emotion... She slid her mobile to Sandra, who looked at her beaming a moment later.

"Girl, you had to go through a miserable dregs, especially that moment last night, but what did you cause! You set our site on fire there!"

Willeke laughed. "It feels incredibly crazy, it feels like that can't be mine, and yet it also feels incredibly good."

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Ilse was moved by Willeke and Sandra's photos. She wrote back what Huib had also said, namely that Simon had gotten an impression about building a gallery at the very beginning, and she found their photos a great confirmation of that, and an encouragement that it was really coming! She thanked them for the photos and promised to put them on the site right away. And she did, one of Willeke and Sandra together, of which Willeke and Sandra both put the link back on their social media accounts.

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What had happened accelerated and deepened the healing process of the four residents of The Shelter. They wrote about it on their joint site, forwarded their new posts to Ilse and talked together about how they would like to move forward. They all felt they were ready for the next step, looking for a house or an apartment. The four women decided, because they had been through so much together, that they would look at the estate agent for a four-bedroom house so they could move on together.

Karel had a fantastic house for sale for them, spacious in a quiet street. There followed days of cleaning and wallpapering in the new house, treating the wooden floor and packing their belongings. They realised they still wanted to furnish the house, especially the living room, but decided they had plenty of time to do so. For now, they sufficed with a bed in each bedroom and a dining area downstairs; the rest would come.

On a free Saturday, Karel, Simon, Huib and Sjaak helped the women move, which they enjoyed immensely together. The men urged them to give them a call when they could help pick up furniture somewhere. They happily promised them to do so!

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And so The Shelter became free for four new women.

And in addition, something new was born. Thanks to the stories of the departing women, people all over the country were touched. Here and there, people received abused women in their homes out of a soul's desire, to give them safety and guidance in their process. Thus, more and more abused women became free and healed in a safe environment.

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And Simon... At the same time, Simon got impressions about The Shelter, about the time when the building would no longer be needed to shelter abused women.

He got vague plans to turn it into a house, or actually something with two houses, sort of around the central living room. His impressions were so vague that he only shared it with Annerieke.

How it would go on... that would become apparent!

To chapter 109. Everything is going to be new in journalism and media

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