Hands Off
Roek didn't come with a plan. Neither did this essay. A video essay about dogs, forests, and what it means to actually see another being. Drawing on Byung-Chul Han and Martin Buber.
Read essay →All writing
Essays
9 essays
A Sorry Piece of Meat
The police in the Netherlands often use violence against autistic people. These officers chose to use violence against me.
Read essay →
Statement on my demise
A statement on my demise.
Read essay →
Why I Keep Fighting for my Dogs
This is my story of living with undiagnosed autism and ADHD in a world that overwhelmed and misunderstood me, where my dogs were my source of safety. After profound grief, burnout, and relational trauma pushed me to the edge of collapse and suicidal despair, my dogs were taken from me. Somehow I am seen as the bad guy, but I will not be silenced.
Read essay →
Healthcare Fails Autistic Patients
Autistic people experience serious barriers accessing proper healthcare. This leads to needless suffering, illness and premature death. (image: Mad woman by Gericault )
Read essay →
The cure for autism in the Netherlands is euthanasia
I wrote this article to ask a blunt question: when Dutch autistic people are misdiagnosed, socially excluded, denied real support, and then offered euthanasia, is that care, or is it a systemic failure dressed up as 'voluntary'? Drawing on research, politics, and my own experience, I argue that the Netherlands risks replacing inclusion with an exit and that it is cruel that we celebrate people's neurodiversity when they're dead.
Read essay →
Like a Dog
She told my therapist that my dogs were the only thing keeping me safe, the only thing preventing me from killing myself. Two days later, she left and took them.
Read essay →
The Disaster is the Massage
This is the story of how a philosophical paper came to be without anyone quite noticing how. By the time it was finished, it was already too late.
Read essay →A Kind of Howling - Searching for my dogs
This is the main essay of this page. Diagnosed at forty-one, I learned I wasn’t broken, I was an unfortunate combination of autism and ADHD, a combination not possible before 2013, Audhd still is not an official diagnosis, though. This article is my own search for understanding, but moreover the search for my dogs, I lost in April 2024.
Read essay →