‘My sons like to play at their deceased sister’s grave’
In On the podium we let an influencer speak about motherhood every week. This time we speak to Lieke de Brabander, mother of June*, James and Mason.
Introduce
Name: Lieke de Brabander (31)
Relationship: living with Dwight (37)
Children: June*, James (3) and Mason (1).
Instagram: liekedeb.nl
Number of followers: 13.2K
With no less than 13.2k followers, you can safely call yourself a momfluencer. How did that happen?
“During the pregnancy of my youngest son, corona hit. The catering business where I worked was going through a hard time and I ended up at home in one fell swoop. Because Mason gave birth, I had many flashbacks of the birth of our deceased daughter June, I knew. me: now I have the time to do something with this, now I’m ready I noticed that there is still a lot of ignorance about losing your child and then getting pregnant again, because how do you deal with that as a parent? After my leave, I started sharing my feelings on Instagram. Raw, open, pure and honest. This caused the number of followers to skyrocket in a few months.”
Your eldest daughter June Fé was born and passed away on October 1, 2017 after a pregnancy of 39 weeks and 2 days. Online you share a lot about this grieving process. How is this being responded to?
“That’s right, I like to write down my feelings – it feels like a kind of relief to be able to share it. In addition, I notice that it offers the people who follow me a bit of insight: if you have someone around you who is child, some do not know how to approach him or her. After all, you don’t want to make your colleague, sister or friend sad. I hope my openness can help with this: my followers can ask me anything.”
Do you ever get negative reactions?
“I never get negative reactions from other women, but the funny thing is: from men. ‘It is not normal that you show a dead child on Instagram?’, they write. Or: ‘What should your friend not do here? like?'”
How do you react to that?
“When it comes to me, I don’t give a damn what people think, but it’s about my daughter. So yes, I find such comments difficult. I am also a proud mother of her, so I show her very consciously on the ways I want it. That’s why I often delete negative comments, because I don’t want it to suffer its own life. I didn’t start my account for that.”
Your sons know very well that they have a deceased sister. Are you consciously being so ‘light-hearted’ with it?
“Certainly. James and Mason have been coming to June’s grave since they were born, so it’s nothing sad or crazy to them – they just love to play there. James even took his first steps there. We also eat on the day June born and died is a cake and we hang up balloons. Admittedly, the first time we did, I broke while cutting the cake. ‘Why the hell did I buy a cake?’ I thought. ‘What the f* ck is there to celebrate?’ Fortunately, it is now mainly healing.
Yet I notice that people in our environment sometimes still find it difficult. For example, out of the blue, James can say to someone, “My sister is dead!”, and then resume playing. Adults don’t always know how to react, while I would prefer that they too deal with it lightly. That is sometimes a challenge.”
Have you started to approach motherhood differently since June’s passing?
“One hundred percent. Of course I can occasionally stick my boys behind the wallpaper, but because I have experienced the immense sadness of losing a child, I can put things into perspective better. I have much more patience and am aware of the fact that we can count ourselves lucky with our children.”
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