Soil and Soul Dialogues: Herma van der Weide

The original Dutch version of this conversation can be found here.

Herma van der Weide is a Jungian and philosophical therapist, and writer. In 2014 she published Fiane, in which she described the life and work of 17th century painter Judith Leyster as a living, Jungian symbol in her own life. In late 2025, her new book Moedertaal, about inner growth in stories, will be released through Lebowski Publishers.

During a time when women and men were searching along different avenues for a new balance between autonomy and connection, she chose to make the necessary adjustments to her family, and to sail on her own compass. As a leader of reading circles, and as a teacher, she has guided many groups of readers through hundreds of literary works.

Seven years ago, Yvet walked into Herma’s practice during a period of big turmoil and transformation. Herma played an important role in her life at the time. They spent numerous sessions at Herma’s kitchen table talking about healing trauma, personal and spiritual development, meaning making, and the evolution of consciousness. In late September of 2024, they sat at that same table once again to capture some of Herma’s insights in this Soil and Soul Dialogue for Metaphysical Mulch.

Y: Herma, I came knocking on your door 7 years ago, looking for therapy that could cut deep. You opened that door, and I was welcomed by your profound capacity for presence. I benefited greatly from our sessions; they guided, inspired, and empowered me tremendously. Could you talk a little bit about how you have cultivated that capacity for presence in your life? And what it means to you to do that type of therapeutic work with people?

H: Yes, first off, it means a lot. I feel like I am in the right place here, able to simply do my work in the cacophony of things. And I am talking about Work with a capital letter here. It brings me a lot of joy to search for connection on a deep level. That started as the oldest daughter of a large family in the deep contact my mother sought with me. I initially experienced that as parentification, like I became the parent of my parent, because she needed me very much. Until someone once said to me, “You did learn to listen very well.” That could have something to do with a kind of destiny. We lived in a big family that was close-knit, we made music together and told stories. At the same time there was a dark side to it in the form of jealousy, trying to push each other in certain directions, which could be manipulative. So, in a sense it was also oppressive. My father struggled with that a lot. At one point he took our family to Switzerland to go camping. That was very special in the 50s, and something nobody else in our extended family ever did.

There was a particular moment during that trip when we arrived somewhere in the dark around 11 in the evening. My parents set up the tent and put us inside to sleep. The next morning when we opened the tent, we were at Lake Geneva. I was about 9 years old. That struck me like lightning. Like: Ooooh! This is also part of the world! Suddenly, as if the curtains of my life were pushed open and I was shown: You can live here. There is a lot more space here. That actually encouraged me to get to know that world. The entire landscape could also be seen in the mirror of that lake. The image of reality and the mirrored reflection of reality, which became an important concept to me later in life, was already present in that experience.

Y: That sounds like the revelation of this planet showing its immensity and its wondrous landscapes, and at the same time it also sounds like a spiritual opening: This expanse is possible.

H: This expanse is possible. That was incredibly liberating. And the visual aspect of that reflection of reality in the water, which I began to experience as something having to do with light; that something in which you are allowed to exist. A sense of being welcome in life itself. That it’s truly fantastic that you are here. That’s a feeling I never forgot.

Y: That snuck in at a very young age. Were there other moments in your life that helped you develop that opening in your consciousness?

H: Yes, what I observe with a lot of people, and was certainly also the case for me, is that such a leap in the development of consciousness is always preceded by a constriction. Grief. You get stuck in life, or something terrible happens. It seems like that’s necessary to trigger the next stage of consciousness. For me, the experience that had such a deep impact was the loss of our first child. A little boy who was 1 week old, died. That jolted my happy, optimistic outlook on life in a big way. My image of God as well. As in; God doesn’t save people, we have to do that ourselves. That was a long time ago. Our child would have been over 50 by now. It was, however, one of those moments. There was also a time when I was studying and developing socially, getting my doctorate, when I didn’t have the opportunity to look for a job.

Y: What were the circumstances that made that impossible?

H: I was married, still am, to a man who was making a career that totally absorbed him. Our family life required that I stayed home with the children, and for a time that was very hard on me. I thought; we can’t both be living his life, can we? Something didn’t feel right about that at all. In hindsight, I am very glad it happened that way, because by not having a job at the time, I was able to continue studying, and did the Jungian therapist training. As it stands, that turned out to be very good for my development.

Y: Yes, you were just talking about Work with a capital W.

H: Yes, exactly.

Y: It’s very grounding work, to be truly present in the task of raising children. You also did the Jungian therapy training during that period. That’s not standard psychology training. I specifically went looking for a Jungian therapist because I felt that regular psychologists would not be far-reaching enough for what I needed at the time. I was looking for something much deeper. That’s how I came across your website. How did you arrive at the decision to study Jungian therapy?

H: Initially I was interested in Jung because it was philosophically more compelling to me. I first studied philosophy. And then I began looking for the difference between what is scientific and what actually works….

Y: Ha, do tell…

H: I wanted to go to a deeper dimension, where creativity is located. General mental health interventions want to solve problems. Whereas Jungian philosophy is much slower and deeper: What is your developmental path? What are you living this life for? And not: What are your problems? Making contact with someone’s developmental path requires much more time and attention. Both are valuable, for sure. There are some people who need to go to a standard psychologist to address a particular pathology to get back on track, and some come to continue working with me afterward.

Y: In a way, Jungian psychology is a lot more spiritual, in my experience it has a lot to do with meaning making: Why is this happening to me? Why am I here? That also makes it harder to measure.

H: Yes, in Jung’s picture of the psyche, he talks about a collective unconscious, that as a baby you are born into a ‘participation mystique.’ A kind of mystical union. You don’t know the difference between yourself and your environment. Everything is, and very much in the moment. I am hungry now. I am cold now. The final stage in Jung’s ideal development is that you end up in that same ‘participation mystique,’ but consciously. That you can connect with everything that’s alive, and beyond. I find it very beautiful to notice that this ‘participation mystique’ with everything is becoming very relevant at the moment.

Y: Definitely.

H: Yes, you immediately understand what I mean. We are running into that final wall. Collectively.

Y: What do you think about us running into that wall at the moment?

H: Well, I am not a conventional thinker, and I may reason very differently from most people. There may be people who do not understand me at all. But I actually find it rather joyful.

Y: In spite of everything.

H: In spite of everything. It’s like I said before, that constriction; we are running into that wall collectively now. And, yes, it is terrible that brings about so many victims, and that the pain is so unfairly distributed. We are talking about the wars that are going on, the children who are fleeing or losing their parents. The same goes for the environmental crisis. Our human response is: This can’t be real, it is not fair. But here is what I learned in losing our first child: Life is not fair. We have a human idea of how things ought to be. In that sense we try to bring reality into our human domain. But that is not where it’s located at all. That is a very painful realization, because we always keep looking with our human eyes as well. It moves me very deeply, the state of our world, and how horrific the things that are happening are. But at the same time, we are about to understand that our human sense of reality is not the final reality. That wider perspective, that is, as Jung describes it, the final stage in the individuation process. The moment you step out of the center. When you are no longer projecting the world as your environment, but as a field in which you find your way, and see what is yours to do.

Y: That you really become part of the whole.

H: Yes, and that you become porous. As in, being able to make real connections. We cut off our connection to life itself by turning everything that is not human into a thing. That’s no longer an option. It’s a disastrous idea that destroys everything.

Y: That describes a Western mentality, which wants to categorize, and have control over everything. And the realization that’s not possible. That’s when you end up with that constriction. It’s impossible and we are completely stuck.

H: Yes. It is accompanied by a lot of suffering and misery when it is collective. Individuals become victims of that in awful ways. And that forces us to start making decisions. That’s still quite a thing, for sure… How far should one go? Should you, like the Bible says, or Saint Francis exemplifies, distance yourself from everything? And make do with only the bare essentials? That’s a big step that I myself can’t make yet.

Y: And the question is whether that is the answer. That describes an almost monastic existence. Turning yourself away from a world that is falling apart.

H: And we already know that story, we’ve seen that in history.

Y: Yes. Perhaps we can draw the conclusion that it might be meaningful for an individual journey, but for the collective it doesn’t change that much.

H: It hasn’t worked so far.

Y: So now then, where are we now, in the middle of that turbulence? How would you describe that. Because you used the word joyful…. How do you see that future?

H: Yeah, so I’m not a visionary….

Y: You don’t know that yet, we won’t know for a long time!

H: Yes, that’s true. Anyway, I believe it’s very important to start feeling connected to everything. First of all, the connection with yourself. The connection with matter. Your own body imploring: Incarnate, now!

Y: It is time.

H: It is time to come home here on Earth. A lot of people are in the process of finding their undividedness again.

Y: Their undividedness, can you describe that?

H: Yes, being undivided, that is: wholeheartedly wanting and being able to be a human being. A complete human being, with everything that comes with it. I very much believe in the idea of starting with yourself, with your own inner world. Being able to look at yourself earnestly. From that place it’s possible to develop very different types of relationships with people. There are many people at the moment suddenly realizing what they are capable of if they give themselves permission to make changes, and who are beginning to feel that they actually should make those changes. That it makes them much happier than all those things by which we have become spoiled and lonely.

Y: By which we have become spoiled and lonely… We have everything and we won’t let anyone know us.

H: Yes, it’s often very difficult to see that wall is inside yourself. That you have put that around your vulnerability. For many people who are successful, the key to that success, in their experience, is precisely the wall they have placed around their vulnerability. And that makes you very miserable, in the long run.

Y: No one can get in.

H: The movement from the individual towards connection with each other; I think that’s a very essential step in the ways we are going to live together in the future. Our son lives in New Zealand. My husband and I visit him every year for a few months. That’s always a very regenerative journey for us. We’ve been there for 20 years, every year. The nature there, the Māori culture. We always go to Māori to get massages and to hear what they have to say about what is happening in the deep sea. The clairvoyance of those people, the cooperation of people there to protect nature is very advanced. There is also a river there that has been recognized as a legal entity, that has a global impact as well.

Y: That cooperation will continue in the future, the way it’s always been in many cultures, we are not merely talking about the cooperation between different groups of people, but also between humans and the spirit of the river, and the spirit of the mountain…

H: That’s right. That’s very clear. There’s this movie, Die Salzmänner von Tibet¹, The Saltmen of Tibet, it shows how they take yaks to a lake where salt is extracted. It’s a very spiritual journey. And then the West comes with their big trucks to extract salt there, but that’s not the point! That way the entire life of such a lake, with all the salt and the yaks and the sacred places, is eliminated. And it’s important that we bring that back, because with the efficiency of big machines alone, we destroy everything. Everything that has built up in nature over millions of years, but also everything that was built up in the culture, by people who always lived in sustainable ways. On the other hand, we can’t return to a completely indigenous way of life. But it is important to create a type of synthesis between that old knowledge and our culture.

Y: If you look at our Western world, we live here in Europe… I know there’s a desire for many young people to reintegrate those ancient spiritual wisdoms and practices. How could we bring that back into our society today, when on the surface there is still a lot of division? Do you have any ideas about that?

H: The first thing that comes to mind is that I see it happening. There are groups of people who are doing a lot of body work. Breathing. Meditation. By breathing intentionally, you can start to feel what’s actually going on in your body. And that might seem, how shall I put it…. vague or floaty. But it isn’t. You learn about your inner workings through those exercises. Like the astonishment a few hundred years ago when surgeons first opened the human body after death. We just don’t realize what energies are moving through our bodies. Paying attention to that inner world is very empowering. From that feeling, it is much easier to connect with each other. And to acknowledge each other in all diversity. That is the first step. And then people start to realize: Oh, but if I ask myself very honestly what my place is in the grand scheme of things, I have to change and begin relating to the world in very different ways. That can be a difficult process. It doesn’t necessarily become easier, but it is your own project. And that makes a very big difference.

Y: The steps as you describe them now: Coming home to your own body and finding your undividedness again. Making contact with others and collaborating in groupwork to establish true connections. And then the challenge, and invitation, to start doing your Work with a capital W in this world, not that it’s easier or more comfortable per se, but that there’s simply is no other choice anymore…

H: It is your discomfort.

Y: Yes, you get to choose your discomfort.

H: Make your own mistakes, and feel your own discomfort. And something that’s also very important for myself, is appreciating the beauty in this world. I went to a weeklong fasting retreat in July with my youngest sister. During that week we didn’t eat anything. We were with 30 people or so. There were 5 men and 25 women, of course…

Y: Hahaha, we’re working that balance….

H: There was a man named Ed there. He was great. One afternoon everyone was gone and I was sitting in the big living room. Ed came to the room and said, “Do you mind if I play the piano for a while?” So I said, “Sure, that’s fine.” The man started playing, and it was… so beautiful! From Satie to Rachmaninov. He played for more than an hour. It felt like a miracle. That moved me so much. It felt like something otherworldly. When he finished, he said, “Thanks.” And I said, “Ed, you’re not an amateur, are you?” He laughed and said, “No.”

Y: You could hear that!

H: Oh. yes. From that music I got the feeling: It’s going to be alright. It is OK. What we are going through right now is not the final stage – that idea specifically. The reassurance: It doesn’t end here. It goes on. When I figured out who he was I googled him some more; his parents were both in Auschwitz… That’s miraculous, isn’t it? He is my age, from after the war. The notion that something so beautiful can come out of such deep misery. It still brings tears to my eyes when I think about it. So beautiful. Those things are both always present.

Y: Yes, and we are learning to hold those opposites. That’s a Rilke poem too: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.”² It’s always about accepting and embracing both.

H: Yes. Knowing that there is a blessing hand. That’s a symbol I use, but it’s there. And, that “terror” – you can’t consider that to be a finality. That’s clear to me. That’s not something I believe anymore, that’s something I know now.

Y: I think Jung also said something like that once…

H: Yes exactly, “Do you believe in God?” – “I don’t believe, I know.”

Y: “I know.” Beautiful. I had it written down to ask you about a symbol for the future, but that hand…

H: That blessing hand, yes, that is something like a primordial trust. That whatever crisis we face, it’s never the final chapter. But you have to be able to step over your own small identity. That transpersonal element is very important. And surrendering to whatever will happen, which you simply don’t know yet.

Y: The unknown.

H: Yes, exactly. The unknown. That’s all very frightening for the tiny person you are. But it is ultimately rewarding. That’s why it was so important that you let yourself fall all those years ago. It takes courage to surrender yourself in the way you did. And to trust that you will be taken care of. No matter what. Maybe in a way you couldn’t have predicted, but you will be taken care of.

Y: Yes. And that path, sitting with that deep grief, that terror, that has brought incredible liberation.

H: It’s kind of like a thick coat that you take off at a time like that. That is such a constriction from which you are reborn. I find it an incredible privilege to experience something like that with someone. Very affirming, too. I see that as one of the most beautiful aspects of the Jungian approach, that it is so equal and reciprocal. He is very deeply connected to the development of the person he is engaged with. He remains very open to the other.

Y: There is a curiosity there about what is going on inside of someone, and everything that is still possible.

H: And the wonderous world that opens up when you meet someone.

Y: Yes, indeed, and like you say, what is mirrored in the connection.

H: Definitely. It’s always been wonderful to talk with you.

Y: Oh, likewise! How do you feel?

H: I feel rich. And privileged. Isn’t that what you want in life? Encounters like these?

References:

1. More information about Die Salzmänner von Tibet: Here.

2. That Rilke Poem: Here.