Hendrika DeVries new memoir – An inspiring read for the new year
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Hendrika devries
Our community knows Hendrika DeVries as a beloved therapist and professor of Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is also a beautiful writer, gifting us with her second memoir Open Turns: From Dutch Girl to New Australian. This coming of age book takes us from war-ravaged Europe to the outback of Australia and on to Adelaide following young Henny as she finds a way to heal and belong again.
Anchored in her mother’s wisdom and her father’s love of fairytales and myths, Henny is encouraged to see beyond current hardships to the deeper meaning and possibilities of the future. This becomes her north star when she finds herself living under the Southern Cross. Everything is turned up-side-down– the seasons, the culture, the language. On her journey to finding herself and a sense of belonging, she’s challenged to conquer her insecurity and let her body lead her to back to familiar territory–swimming through the water with her award-winning breast stroke.
Her mother, a former athletic champion, told her, “Listen to your body and it will show you the way.” Hendrika remembers how that advice helped her “come home” to her own body when she took her first dive into the pool after a year of immigrant dislocation in the Australian mallee scrub bushland. This was the first of many magical moments when listening to her body led to insight and understanding. Whenever she felt unsure or vulnerable, remembering the strength she felt in her body, in the pool, gave her the courage to embrace the inevitable unknowns of growing up.
Reading this moving memoir not only reminds us to listen to our body, it reafirms our compassion for people fleeing hardship and oppression, leaving everything behind to find a place to belong. In the midst of our own tumultuous times, Hendrika’s personal story of the refugee, the wanderer, and the warrior who, eventually, becomes the scholar, sage, and the healer is an inspiration to accept the challenges of finding our way back home.
Writing it all down, Hendrika realized that finding her place, a place where she belonged, was a key theme in her healing journey. So often, as a teenager and throughout her life, moving through water gave her a reference point, helping her feel a sense of belonging in her body, in her community, and in life. Today, listening to her body continues to give her insight and understanding. When she has a problem, she can swim it out. When she wants to compose a talk, it comes together in the pool. When she needs to chill out and center, the even rhythmic strokes of swimming through water become her Zen meditation. I love this beautiful quote about her experience swimming a long-distance race in the ocean:
“I felt myself merge with all things above and below me––not knowing where my body ended and the water began, my breathing in tune with the air and in concert with all things living around me. A strange clarity permeated my mind. I was a part of all that transcended and held us together.”
As a professor of Mythological Studies at Pacifica, Hendrika encouraged her students to explore their personal myths, the narratives that help us perceive meaning and purpose in our life stories. In the writing of her memoir, she acknowledges the challenging aspects of writing about real events that happened decades earlier. Invoking Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, mother of the muses, she reminds the reader that her story is guided by “the way the goddess of memory lives in the flesh and bones of a woman who has had a full, long life.”
About Hendrika DeVries. Hendrika’s has written two memoirs –When a Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew and Open Turns: From Dutch Girl to New Amsterdam. Her experiences with oppression and resistance in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam; migration, competitive swimming, misogyny in 1950’s Australia, and feminism in the US infuse her writing with historical depth and personal wisdom. Over the years, she has been a guiding light to many in the Santa Barbara community as a family therapist and professor of Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her books can be found at Chaucers, Tecolote, and on Amazon.
Originally published in the Montecito Journal