Alice
Alice moves through life with her head in the sun and her feet preferably bare. A new mama, scientist and instinctive dreamer, she’s learning that the most beautiful paths are often the ones you never planned for.
Becoming Softer, Becoming Stronger
Alice describes herself as enthusiastic, impulsive and slightly naïve — someone who feels life deeply. Since becoming mama to baby Roo, everything shifted.
Motherhood surprised her with a softness she didn’t know she carried. As someone naturally impatient and easily overstimulated, she never expected the calm and patience her son would bring out in her.
Suddenly, everything became relative — except him.
“He is everything.”
Love As A Team
Before becoming parents, Alice thought love was mainly about emotion. Now she sees partnership differently: the strongest relationships are built on teamwork.
Some days she gives 40%, and her partner carries the remaining 60%. Other days, they switch effortlessly. To her, that quiet unconditional support is the purest form of love there is.
Not perfect — just deeply together.
Following the Unpaved Road
Professionally, I definitely didn’t follow the standard path of a speech and language therapist. After my final internship at UZ Gent, I realised I really wanted to work in a hospital setting. In Belgium, those positions are quite limited and highly sought after, but I managed to secure a place in Antwerp — in a team that also focuses heavily on scientific research and clinical studies.
It didn’t take long for me to realise that research was my real passion, and I eventually started a PhD on new insights into radiation-associated dysphagia in head and neck cancer patients. It was a leap into the unknown, but I tend to embrace those leaps when something just feels right.
That same instinct also led me to take part in the TV program Huis Gemaakt. My boyfriend and I very spontaneously decided to record an application video, thinking: “we might as well try — you never know.” And after many selection rounds, we turned out to be the “ideal renovation candidates.” It just shows that sometimes you simply have to go for it, even when it feels far outside your comfort zone. You can only learn from it.
Doing Your Dada
Doing your dada, for Alice, means choosing yourself without constantly shrinking for others.
She believes people are at their best when they stop hiding in someone else’s shadow and dare to become their own sun.
Right now, her biggest dream is simple: to keep growing, keep discovering the world with her family, and raise children who never doubt who they are.
“Just be who you are.”
her legacy
This is how she wants to be remembered by my son Roo.
I especially hope he knows that we were “just trying too” — always doing our best to do the right thing, to guide him as well as we could through the whirlwind that life is. Always with the deepest love, and with his best interest at heart.
And quietly, I hope he laughs as much as we do, that he always tries to see the positive in things, and that he never doubts his own personality.
