{"id":175,"date":"2026-09-30T16:24:05","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T14:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ijefconsultancy-ncxrh.wordpress.com\/?page_id=175"},"modified":"2026-10-12T07:17:31","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T07:17:31","slug":"about-ilse","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/blossomspace.nl\/nl\/about-ilse\/","title":{"rendered":"About me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-3a88641f wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left wp-block-paragraph\">Hi &#8211; I\u2019m Ilse. I was an expat kid, and later an expat myself. I\u2019ve seen from both sides how much children carry when they live between different cultures.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Starting from a young age, I experienced what it means to move to a new country every few years. I was born in Rwanda to Dutch parents and then lived all over the world &#8211; Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and The Netherlands. Each move brought adapting to a new culture, language, leaving close friendships behind, while also needing to build new ones. As an adult, I moved abroad again\u2014first as a PhD student in Colombia, and later with my husband and two children for international aid work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My own childhood experiences, shaped a deep curiosity about how children develop and cope with change: why some navigate it with ease, while others become stuck or overwhelmed, and how intervening early can help break patterns that might otherwise continue across generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After dedicating the first part of my career to academic research on child development, I increasingly felt drawn to working directly with children and their families. I wanted not only to understand what helps children thrive, but to be part of that process. I completed a postgraduate Master&#8217;s in Play Therapy and opened The Blossom Space, a practice built around everything I&#8217;d learned, lived, and come to believe about how children find their inner strengths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I hold a PhD in Child Psychiatry and Epidemiology from Erasmus University Rotterdam, two Master&#8217;s degrees in Health Sciences (Maastricht University and the Free University Amsterdam), and a postgraduate Master&#8217;s in Child-Centered Play Therapy from the University of Applied Sciences in Ede. I work in Dutch and English, and have a strong command of French and Spanish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-3a88641f wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I live in Utrecht with my two kids, husband and dog.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"460\" src=\"https:\/\/blossomspace.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Ilse.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-315\" style=\"aspect-ratio:2.2261496751752006;width:347px;height:auto\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blossomspace.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Ilse.webp 1024w, http:\/\/blossomspace.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Ilse-300x135.webp 300w, http:\/\/blossomspace.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Ilse-768x345.webp 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi &#8211; I\u2019m Ilse. I was an expat kid, and later an expat myself. I\u2019ve seen from both sides how much children carry when they live between different cultures. Starting from a young age, I experienced what it means to move to a new country every few years. I was born in Rwanda to Dutch [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-175","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.6","language":"nl","enabled_languages":["en","es","de","fr","undefined","nl"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"es":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"de":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"fr":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"undefined":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"nl":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blossomspace.nl\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blossomspace.nl\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blossomspace.nl\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blossomspace.nl\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blossomspace.nl\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blossomspace.nl\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":366,"href":"http:\/\/blossomspace.nl\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/175\/revisions\/366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blossomspace.nl\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}