A fresh start after 60 years: I was angry that I was left out of my father's will. Then I found peace in the woods

In her rented house in the center of Amsterdam, where she lived for many years, Moniek Kramer dreamed of greenery. She grew up near the Amstel River on the outskirts of the city, until her parents separated when she was 10, and, perhaps, "wanted to go back". As an adult, she never stopped looking for a house, “a little house”. She had almost given up when, at 65, she found him.

Kramer was reading an article in the newspaper De Groene Amsterdammer about Henry David Thoreau, the 19th century American century philosopher whose book Walden is based on his experience living in a wooded cabin. An ad caught her eye: "'Are you looking for your own Walden hut?"

The next day she was on a train from Amsterdam, and an hour later , the sellers met her at the station. “Antlers were growing in the house,” she says. There were trees, thorn bushes and rubbish. The cabin had a sinister vibe. "But I saw the possibilities." She plundered her boarding house - and moved in. "I saw that I could make room here."

Kramer has worked as an actor, filmmaker, screenwriter and creative writing teacher. Her husband is a composer. "We don't have a lot of money. It was all I had. His mother had raised Kramer and his three siblings on her own, so she had always considered money as her 'safety belt'. "So I was scared. But I did."

Kramer, now 68, must have felt even more vulnerable when the pandemic hit, but somehow another, the "wooden house" as she calls it, began to alter her perspective. Soon after buying it, she and three colleagues from the creative writing school where she was teaching at Amsterdam decided to start a screenwriting school. "I thought, 'If I can do it from my wooden house, I won't feel so uncomfortable.'

So the house gave him the courage to take matters into his own hands, in a freer space? "I realize it was also because of my father," she says. Kramer stayed in contact with him after having another family. Although she found him "difficult to live with", she says: "I always had this feeling that he loved me. I am very old, but you are still a child with your parents."

Her father died a year before she bought the house, but when his will was read, there was no mention of Kramer and his siblings from his first marriage. "I was so sad and angry," she says. It wasn't because she was hoping for financial benefit, but "I felt so unseen, so disconnected." The exclusion seemed to “symbolize a lack of love”.

So the wooden house took on additional meaning. “I wanted to make this paradise for my children [she has two sons] and grandchildren. When I die, there will be something to show them love.

The first year in the house was scary. "I had to prove to my family that this was the place I had seen." Or else she had to go to the place she had seen.

"There was so much to do," she said. She carried all the tools by bike. "I was working way too hard because I wanted to for my kids." It took a triple hernia to slow her down, and then she realized, "I had to decide to do this for myself and my husband," Kramer says. It wasn't fair to involve the children in her attempt to reconnect with what she had lost. "But I'm very grateful that they like it here."

For almost 40 years, Kramer has been organizing Zen retreats. "Zen is about 'not knowing,' about penetrating paradox into everything," she says. Finally, in June, she completed the Jukai ceremony to become an official Zen Buddhist.

She had always felt like "I was running behind me." What is she doing? What's going on," but during the ceremony, she felt an "ebb of affection and connection," and realized that the feeling of connection "goes the other way." Even the disconnect with his father had now changed. "I went through the anger and the pain, and in the end I realized he couldn't help it."

The wooden house has responded to more than Kramer's dreams. “It all starts with a desire,” she says. "But those desires have a life of their own and they will find a way to materialize."

Tell us: Did your life take on a new direction after turning 60?