Judy Van Niekerk · 49 min
Locked up and enslaved by her father from early childhood until her early twenties, Judy Van Niekerk escaped with nothing and built multi-million dollar businesses almost immediately, not despite her trauma, but through a transcendent spiritual connection forged in its darkest moments.
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Judy Van Niekerk was locked away and tortured from age three until her early twenties. She escaped with nothing and within a week had two job offers in London. Within years, she built multiple multimillion-dollar businesses, became a competitive paragliding pilot, and represented South Africa in swimming and scuba diving. Yet despite having everything, she was in hell. The turning point came when she woke from her ninth overdose in eighteen months and understood what had happened: she had sacrificed her connection to her soul in order to fit in and be normal like everyone else.
At fifteen, locked in a bathroom after twelve hours of torture, Judy had a transcendent spiritual experience. She reached past her bruises and found something untouchable inside herself. In that moment, she was transported out of her body into nature, wrapped in unconditional love, and given absolute certainty that she would escape and live a life of love and prosperity. That knowing sustained her through six more years of captivity without a single moment of doubt. When she finally fled Dublin in the rain with nothing, her connection to something greater than herself was unshakeable.
Years later, after nearly losing everything to the overdoses, Judy made a choice that changed everything: she would rather have the whole world against her than lose her own soul. She went on to report her father to the authorities, leading to a public trial that opened conversation about abuse in Ireland. When her dying father finally called years later, Judy returned to his bedside and spoke words that surprised even her: thank you, Dad, I love you. In that moment of soul-to-soul connection, everything made sense, and she felt truly free. Her message to anyone struggling is simple: find love in small moments throughout your day, and watch how your connection to yourself grows stronger.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses abuse & exploitation and suicide & self-harm prevention, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • Blue Knot Foundation (complex trauma): 1300 657 380 · blueknot.org.au • 1800RESPECT (family, domestic & sexual violence): 1800 737 732 · 1800respect.org.au • Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au
“I'd rather have the whole world against me than my own soul that made everything come right again”
“no matter what torture I went through no matter what hell I went through on the Outside Inside I was in heaven”
“it wasn't so much a desire to die as such as much as a desire to escape just give me space give me give just time out”
The hero, today
Judy realised in that last overdose that she had created an outwardly successful life but sacrificed her connection to her soul to fit in, and in that moment decided: I'd rather have the whole world against me than my own soul. At fifteen, locked away and tortured, Judy had a transcendent experience in the bathroom mirror that showed her nothing could break her spirit or take her soul, and that knowing sustained her through the next six years until she escaped. After escaping, Judy never experienced self-doubt until she deliberately chose to disconnect from her inner knowing in order to be normal and fit in like everyone else, and that choice created the hell that the overdoses followed. When Judy went to see her dying father in Ireland, she spoke soul-to-soul with him across all the harm, and in that moment of unconditional love and forgiveness everything made sense and she felt truly free. Judy's message to people struggling is to find love in small moments throughout the day, even fleeting ones, and watch how your perspective shifts and your connection to who you truly are grows stronger.
Yes. Judy Van Niekerk is a real person who shared their own story in their own words. Kintsugi Heroes is a not-for-profit that shares first-person stories of overcoming adversity, told with the person's consent.
Kintsugi Heroes, a registered Australian not-for-profit. Every story is shared with the hero's own consent and reviewed under Kintsugi Heroes' trauma-informed content standard before it goes public.
Judy realised in that last overdose that she had created an outwardly successful life but sacrificed her connection to her soul to fit in, and in that moment decided: I'd rather have the whole world against me than my own soul.
At fifteen, locked away and tortured, Judy had a transcendent experience in the bathroom mirror that showed her nothing could break her spirit or take her soul, and that knowing sustained her through the next six years until she escaped.
After escaping, Judy never experienced self-doubt until she deliberately chose to disconnect from her inner knowing in order to be normal and fit in like everyone else, and that choice created the hell that the overdoses followed.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 00:07
Welcome to the Kintsugi Heroes podcast, where we share inspirational stories of everyday people going through different challenges and how they overcome them. Please be aware that the story you're about to hear may have moments of deeply felt emotions and personal experiences. If anything you hear has a triggering effect please reach out to someone who can help keep you safe. If you love this conversation, we'd love you to like and share it with your friends so we can continue to share more inspiration and hope to as many people as possible. Now listen up for our next hero story. This conversation with Judy van Niekerk was just almost out of this world, where there's trauma and then there's trauma. But what makes her story so remarkable is that she didn't come out of it in the typical way. When Judy escaped her imprisonment, really, for the first part of her life, she was able to transcend a lot of the attachment to the emotional triggers and the trauma that everyone else, or most people, have. And it enabled her to catapult herself into a new life that she could create and went on to set up and sell multimillion-dollar businesses and also play in the space of understanding human potential and this universal intelligence that she talks about. It's a fascinating conversation of someone who spearheaded a number of things, including opening up the conversation around domestic abuse in Ireland at the time when it happened. For anybody who's fascinated by how we can transcend trauma, this, this conversation is one to listen to— it's certainly one that left me feeling grateful-feeling! Grateful-feeling... Greatful-feeel-ing? Grea-tle fee-ling?! Grae-fule Fee-LING!? Grea-TLE FEEL-I-NG?? Gree-FULE FEEL-IN-GREATFUL FEE-LIN'??? GREA-TULF-FEELING!!! GRAETFUHL FEELING!! GRAYT FULL FEEL INGGH!!!! Grateful feeling, grateful feeling, grateful. Ah, it is another episode of Kintsugi Heroes, and I'm here with Judy Van Niekerk. How are you, Judy?
Judy Van Nierkerk (Guest) · 02:34
I am great, Evelyn. Thank you so much. So good to be here.
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When Judy went to see her dying father in Ireland, she spoke soul-to-soul with him across all the harm, and in that moment of unconditional love and forgiveness everything made sense and she felt truly free.
This conversation includes waking from the ninth overdose, locked up since childhood, the bathroom mirror at fifteen, transported into oneness, the certainty that lasted six years and escaping in the rain with nothing.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 02:37
So good to have you, and I'm really looking forward to hearing your story and just want to say thank you for, you know, agreeing to come and share and be open and vulnerable and help others you know, by sharing your story, because that's what this is all about.
Judy Van Nierkerk (Guest) · 02:53
Yeah, I'm so grateful for this opportunity, really, because I have been so lucky. So it is— I feel it's a great privilege to be able to share it.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 03:04
Wonderful. Well, let's get started. I'll hand the mic over to you and ask you to take us back to the beginning of your story.
Judy Van Nierkerk (Guest) · 03:12
Cool. Excellent. So I want to start off with a pivotal point. Um, it's not the beginning, it's not the end, it's sort of in the middle. And, um, one day waking up from another overdose, um, it was about the 9th I had taken in about 18 months. Very lucky to have survived some of them, most of them actually. And some, you know, the, the craziness, it wasn't so much a desire to die as such a as, as much as a desire to escape. Just give me space, give me, give just time out. And, um, whilst initially the first few overdoses worked, you know, they gave me time out and there was a period of calm, but then that period of calm got shorter and shorter and shorter. The refractory period between them got shorter, and to a point where, like, at one point I remember I was in hospital and then I came out and straight away another overdose back into hospital. It was just so crazy. I couldn't understand what was going on because at that point in time in my life— this is now about 20-odd years ago— at that point in time in my life, I really had everything. I had— I was like an entrepreneur. I had multiple businesses. I could create businesses like, like eating Smarties, you know. It was crazy. I would make great money. I was a sponsored pilot, competitive paragliding pilot. I was representing South Africa internationally World Championship swimming and scuba diving and all the, I had everything, but yet I was in hell and I couldn't understand what was going on. And it wasn't until I woke up from that last overdose and I'll never forget it. It was a, a summer morning. I woke up and all of a sudden it was like a light bulb went on and all of a sudden I could see color. And it was the thought, I'd rather have the whole world against me than my own soul that made everything come right again. Because I realized that whilst I had created this life that was, you know, as some people would say to me at the time, would give their right arm for, outside everything was great and heavenly and wonderful, but inside I was in hell. And then it crossed my mind back to childhood, and I remembered that through the years of torment and torture, like I was locked up and tortured for almost 2 decades, I used as a slave, and I like meant nothing. I was isolated from the world. I was treated like subhuman. But I got to a point, I had experiences during that time, supernatural experiences where I got to glimpse something bigger than our, who I am and who we are. And from that experience, I learned that no matter what happened, no matter what happened, nothing could break your spirit. Nothing could take your soul. Nothing could, could tear you from your infinite being, from Source, from the divine within. And, and from those experiences when I was about 15 years old, I remember that no matter what torture I went through, no matter what hell I went through on the outside, inside I was in heaven. I had this bliss. I had this joy. I had this calm. I had this sense of just knowing there was something bigger than this mortal body and it meant more than all of it. Everything meant more than this mortal body. And yet when I did escape and I knew I would escape in my early 20s, I created an amazing life on the outside. I was so connected to source and I will talk a bit more about that supernatural experience in a moment, but I was so connected to my divine. I was guided by the wisdom of my higher self, by the divine within, I created the unpredictable. I created— I would live in the field of potentiality and literally created what appeared to be miracles after miracles. After escaping, I managed to get a job within a week earning almost 6 figures, and I managed to hold it down. I managed to create businesses and learn sport. I managed to create the most crazy, crazy things. And one of the things I realized is I couldn't Even though I was creating these amazing things, there was still something missing. And that was I couldn't relate overly to people because like things like I can't, I don't know, I'm not sure, anything that was uncertain wasn't in my vocabulary because I had certainty, which is what our infinite being, which is our higher self, always has certainty. So I got to a point where I thought, well, I just want to be normal. So I decided I'm going to be normal, I'm going to fit in, and I'm going to have lots of friends, and I'm going to go to parties, and I'm going to be normal. And I'll never forget that moment when I made that decision. I had everything, but I had this— what I perceived to be missing was I wasn't normal. I didn't fit in. I didn't— I couldn't relate overly to people because they thought I was weird, that I'd have an idea one day and then go and do it the next, and people think you can't do that. Well, I just did. It's this crazy thing. And, and that is when I lost my connection to Source, to my Divine. That took about 18 months of sheer hell when I gave away my power in order to fit in, in order to— and I started looking outside of myself for value, for worth, for fitting in, for belonging, and all those things. And that was hell on Earth for me. That was, that was just crazy. That was agony. That was terrifying. Because when I look back, when I go back to when I was about 15 years old, I'd been locked up since I was about 3 or thereabouts, and I had been abused in the most horrendous ways. I'd been shot, I'd been stabbed, I'd been sexually abused and violated in the most horrendous, awful ways. And Many other things that were done to me. I literally ended up living like a slave. I felt I was just meat. I felt like I was nothing. And I remember this one day walking into the bathroom after about 12 solid hours of torture when I was about 15 years old, and I'd been locked away from society. I hadn't been educated and wasn't interacting with people. And I walked into the bathroom, I felt like meat and only alive because my heart was beating. And I would go to bed at night and I would beg for my heart to stop beating 'cause it was too awful. This one particular morning I walked into the bathroom, it was in Ireland, in Dublin, and it was a November morning. I remember that it was gray, it was drizzly. And I remember going up to the hand basin and looking at myself in the mirror. And it was the, I remember feeling like it was almost like it was the first time I remember seeing myself. Obviously I'd seen myself many times, but I just noticed myself. It felt like first time ever. And I started to look at myself beyond my physical form, beyond the bruises on my face, beyond the threadbare, pale blue nightie, torn and shredded. And I looked at myself and I found myself looking into my eyes and almost like reaching into my eyes and reaching down. And I grabbed something in my solar plexus. And for many years after that, I called it my something. I didn't have the language at the time to understand what it was. And it, you know, what I now know to be my soul, my spirit, my infinite self, my infinite being, my higher self. I grabbed it. And as I grabbed it and I flew at my something, I remember being transported out of my body and I was outside and not scared, not cold. I felt like just it was the most divine, exquisite experience. And being outside in nature and amongst the trees, the birds, even in the rain and the wind, and just feeling this tremendous sense of oneness with everything. No separation. One with the birds, one with the trees, the rain on the window. And just this oneness was the most extraordinary feeling. And then the next moment I got this sensation, which is like— it's so hard to articulate into words something that is so beautifully divine, but like unconditional love. It felt like 100,000 beautiful soft blankets being wrapped around me. And it was just this intense feeling, which I realized was love, this beautiful, unconditional, divine love. And as I looked up, I looked, I saw myself standing in front of the mirror, this scrawny little scared child, 15, underweight and all that. And in that moment, I just felt this unconditional love come from, from me to that child, to that girl. And it was like healing in that moment for everything I was going through, everything I had been through, and everything I was yet to go through. It was just like this unbelievable sense of healing and calmness. And not just for me, but it was also compassion and empathy for all of the abusers that were in my life at the time as well. It changed everything. Perspective shifted everything. And I, I remember seeing and feeling this sense of being in it like almost like a primordial field, almost like back to, to origin. And I could see so much. I could see the oneness. I could see infinite opportunity, infinite timelines, dimensions, infinite ways in which my life could unfold. And I remember in that moment feeling, knowing that I would live a life, I would escape, and I knew I would live a life of love, prosperity. I didn't call it prosperity at the time. I called it luxury. But now I, with the language I have, I know it's prosperity was the sense, the feeling. And adventure. I knew it. It was the most extraordinary, life-changing moment. And I came back into my body and I remember like not being surprised by it, just like not even being alarmed by it. Just like it felt completely normal. But I knew two things when I— by the time I got back into my body and I walked out the bathroom, I knew two things. One, that you could hurt my mortal body, but you could never take my something. My something was my connection to something greater and bigger. And that is what, that connection that gave me such tremendous peace and joy and inner freedom for the next 6 years. 'Cause it did take me another 6 years to escape, but I never once doubted I would escape. And the other thing I had in me And funny enough, given the depth of the spiritual experience I had this next bit, it's gonna sound a bit odd, but I knew that when I escaped, I would get work, I would get a job in stockbroking, oil and gas, merchant banking, or shipping. I didn't know what that meant. I had no idea what that meant. And in context with the deeply spiritual experience I had had, they seemed worlds apart. I was not educated. I had no idea. What does one do in shipping? What is merchant banking? What is even stockbroking? I had no idea. What is oil and gas other than the oil that you put in the radiators to heat the water on property? I had no idea. But for the next number of years, I remembered that no matter what happened, I never lost that connection to source. I was angry. I was hurting. But it was always so easy to come back home to me, always so easy to reconnect and feel that healing sense of love and joy in the most crazy, crazy scenario. So I started preparing myself for the day that I would escape. I knew it. I didn't know how. I didn't need to know how. I had no fear of that either. The day came and I escaped in the middle of the night with nothing. This was in Dublin. Again, it was in November. It was raining, common theme. It was cold. And I literally escaped in the middle of the night. And within 24 hours, I was— I had landed in London with nothing, knowing no one, knowing nothing, and with nothing, literally. And within one week, I had two job offers. One was in shipping, And one was, um, oil and gas trading accountant on a, on a trading floor. I took the oil and gas trading accountant on the trading floor and it was almost six figures in the '90s during the greatest recession that in modern history in the UK. And that was the start of the next number of years of creating from what I call the field of potentiality. When we connect and when we are connected to source, to our divine, to our infinite being, We have access to all wisdom, all knowing. There is nothing we are incapable of. I used to say things like, as long as you're not breaking the universal laws. Well, you know what? When you are connected to Source, you can break every universal law. There is just nothing you can't achieve, nothing you can't do. And that's what my life demonstrated for the next few years until I got to a point where I'd sort of, my emotional intelligence hadn't, well, my emotional maturity hadn't evolved whilst my knowing of and how to navigate life and create and make miracles and make money, you know, 'cause I hadn't got any of the conditioning that people normally have around money and self-worth and all that. You know, I didn't have any of that. But when it came to sort of a sense of fitting in. That was the part that was, um, that was missing for me. But now looking back on it, it was perfect. It had to happen. I had to experience this, the sacrifice it takes when you seek outside of yourself, when you are feeling that there's something missing. I had to experience that in order to fully totally appreciate that I'd rather have the whole world against me than my own soul. That no matter what, I have to be so devoted, so committed to my infinite being, to my— to the divine within me, that no matter what is going on in my environment, I never lose touch with that. Because only that is what matters. And only there do you experience— start to experience the fullest expression of who you are and where we get to create everything that we are here to create. So now looking back at it, I got to experience, albeit rather in 18 months and really tragic circumstances, and I could have died. I didn't. It wasn't my time. But I got to experience what so many people are living with. That's so many people. That is their reality, that their state of being is determined by what is going on outside of them. That's hell on earth. And the truth of the matter is we have the keys to heaven on earth, and the keys belong with our connection to ourselves, to our divine within. And it's led me to living life based on 3 principles. One is we are divine. We are one with everything. We are of this world. We are of this universe, and we can connect to infinite being at will. Number 2, we have infinite knowledge, infinite wisdom, infinite awareness, infinite intelligent access to infinite intelligence and intelligent love. And then whenever we experience a challenge, an obstacle, doubt, fear, uncertainty, anxiety, stress, that is big Ben alarm bells to come back home to you, come back home to the truth of who you are. But instead, we are programmed, we are conditioned to go faster, to do more, to try more, change direction, change strategy, look outside of ourselves, look further outside of ourselves, which creates more and more and more separation. And that is the root of all suffering and pain in humanity, in my opinion, is that sense of separation, where the truth is we are one. There is no separation. So what I do, what I speak to people is about turning that around and coming back home to yourself, coming back home to our truth, to the full expression of our true authentic self where there is nothing ever missing and there is infinite love and compassion and gratitude and appreciation. It's counterintuitive because we are conditioned to go further and further away from ourselves. So it's not an easy journey to come back. It feels like you're going to die because you're in survival. The more separation we have, the more we are— our nervous system is triggered, the more we are activated. Our stress hormones are like on sky-high alert. So we feel like we're in danger. And if we don't feel like we're doing something to— because of the way we've been conditioned, if we don't feel like we're doing something to create safety, it gets worse. But the truth of the matter is the only way home is back home to you. And when you're doing that, that's when everything falls right into place. That's when everything starts coming to you. That's when you start to create space and time and awareness and you start to become more discerning about where you put your energy and where you put your focus. And that's the key to heaven on earth.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 21:41
Yeah.
Judy Van Nierkerk (Guest) · 21:41
So that's like a really fast rundown of my experience.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 21:46
Wow. When you were describing the moment in the bathroom, I actually felt it as you were talking about the hand going in and going down. That was really quite visceral.
Judy Van Nierkerk (Guest) · 21:59
It's a long time ago now, like when I was 15, around about 15. That's a very long time ago now, but it's like it was yesterday. It was such a pivotal point in my life. And the interesting thing is a lot of people say to me, Do you have to go to the end of the line? Why did I have that experience? And do you have to go to the end of the line? Do you have to go to the end of the rope? Do you have to go to the cliff edge in order to have that experience? And I used to believe that that was the case. I used to believe that you have to surrender so much because I have nothing to lose. I surrendered my whole being, everything. Here I am. I have nothing. Nothing. I was completely in a state of serene surrender. And I used to believe that you have to get to that point in order to have this experience. But what I have learned over the years of like, I've spent 20-odd years now like studying and researching and understanding, you know, consciousness and awareness and all of that realm. And what I now know is that it's very easy for us, an actual fact, to have mystical experiences. It's very easy for us to create that level of serenity when we, one, we have awareness, and two, we use free will to connect back to the source, come back to ourselves. And it's easy then. I would actually go as far as saying it's easy. To connect to infinite being and to have those mystical and deeply moving and spiritual experiences. But it does require surrender. It does require being okay with being physically uncomfortable because we are so much more than our physical body. We are more than these mortal beings. When we lose that addiction, when we lose the addiction to the predictable, to knowing, to survival, and we trust in our, our bigger self. Every one of us can connect back to our infinite being. And then when we do that, surrender to that, and we can experience the most extraordinary awareness. Again, it goes against what society largely speaks about. It goes against what society largely largely promotes, you know, and it's sort of like children know it when they're born, they're aware, but it's beaten out of us in education, in society. And, you know, this fit, you've got to fit in, you've got to have the same beliefs, you've got to fit within the confines of what's acceptable and what's normal and all of that. It's all taken out of us, sort of stripped away from us. But when we are prepared to just— well, one of the things is when you're prepared to be the master of your destiny rather than the victim of your history, when you're prepared to just lean into the possibility that there might just be something more than this mortal being, it doesn't take much for the divine to show itself to you. That's an important message. It feels like you're so far away from it that there is— life is so chaotic. Life is so turmoil. There's recession. There's this drama. There's that drama. There's all this thing. It feels like it's so far away. But when you make the— use your free will to make the decision to come back home to you, to come back to connect with the source of who you are. You don't need to try too hard before the divine makes itself known. And then it gets really easy. But that's what that short time is, what I call the rapids. Your body is craving the addiction to predictability, craving the addiction to survival. We are not that. We are so much more than that.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 26:19
Sorry for the interruption.
Judy Van Nierkerk (Guest) · 26:21
This is Ian Westmoreland, the founder of Katsuki Heroes, and thank you for listening to this story from one of our amazing heroes. Our mission is for these stories to provide hope and inspiration to people experiencing life challenges and to also educate the broader community on how best to provide support. If you would like to help us continue to produce more hero stories and cover more adversity themes, we would welcome all donations. These can be made via our website, kintsugiheroes.com.au. The donate function is at the bottom of the homepage. We'd also welcome any feedback. You can email me direct using ian@kintsugiheroes.com.au. Now let's get back to the story.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 27:11
There's so much in that. I, I want to ask a question. When you went through that period of 18 months and you had your overdoses, so during that period of 18 months, had you forgotten your connection to, to your something?
Judy Van Nierkerk (Guest) · 27:30
Totally, completely. Because what happened was, and it was a slow, um, it was a slow distancing because I had so much and I was very social because I was in various different sports teams. I was traveling and I had my own businesses and all that. But I got to a point where I was really curious about why I don't fit in. Why don't I think like everyone else? And I thought there was something wrong with me. You know, I thought that, well, they, everyone thinks that, like that, everyone thinks the same. So there must be something I'm missing. Something I'm missing. Something I'm missing. Something I'm missing. Sobering I'm missing. Sobering I'm missing. Sobering I'm missing. Sobering I'm missing. Sobering I'm missing. Sobering I'm missing. Sobering I'm missing. Sobering I'm missing. Some of the codependent addictions that we have in life and in this environment or society that we live in. And it wasn't until I had— I woke up from that last overdose that I realized what I had done. I had sacrificed my something for this. Never again. Never again. I would rather have the whole world against me than my own soul. And at the time I was in my 20s and my life had just, you know, I'd spent over 20 years locked up. So, and in a very few, few short years, my life changed. I had so much freedom. I had so much money. I had so much created, so much achieved, so much. My emotional intelligence hadn't caught up. So there was a lot of naivety. But again, as I said a few minutes ago, I'm deeply grateful for that experience because I know what it's like to choose disconnection, and I would never do it again. And here's the irony of it. Sure, I felt that I didn't fit in, but now, no matter what, I choose my soul. I choose my sovereignty. But the strange thing is, when you can say And when you mean it with every fiber in your body, though I'd rather have the whole world against me than my own soul, that's a declaration. That's a sacred declaration. It's like, it's a sacred declaration like the I Am, I Am that I Am. I am it all and nothing is missing. It is a sacred declaration because you are declaring to your source, to the divine within, that that is everything and there is no sacrifice anywhere on the world, in the planet, in the universe worth giving that up for anything outside of me or anyone. And the irony in that is the whole world is not against you. That's the irony in it. Even though that's a declaration and you mean it from every fiber of your, of your being, both mortal and not, the whole world is not against you because You become such an inspiration. You become such your leader. You, you fly with the eagles and you inspire other eagles to fly with you. You inspire other chicks to fly with you. And those that don't, it's not their time yet. It doesn't matter. I didn't have the emotional maturity at the time to understand that. But again, it taught me so much nonetheless.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 30:55
Yeah, so, so powerful, and I couldn't agree more. I'm wondering about your healing. Um, you obviously had the first couple of decades of your life locked up. You came out without any limiting beliefs, so it sounded like you came out with freedom, no limiting beliefs. Was there a period of healing though? Did you have to heal from the trauma?
Judy Van Nierkerk (Guest) · 31:18
That's an awesome question.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 31:20
No.
Judy Van Nierkerk (Guest) · 31:21
No, no, not at all. And there's two things I wanna say about that. One is that when I, it's a funny story, when I did escape in the middle of the night and I ended up in London and within one week I had two job offers and I took this one job. After 10 months I was fired. Not because I couldn't do the work, I could do the work. In fact, I was doing daily trade reports to the chairman of the corporation in the US, in New York. I would have to have 1 o'clock my time, 9 AM New York time, I'd have to have a report on the day's dealings, the past 24 hours' dealings. So I was directly dealing with the chairman. It wasn't that I couldn't do the work, but it was that I didn't play nicely in the sandpit in terms of corporate. I didn't know how to play the political games. If I felt something, I said it. I didn't know how to do the weaving and the wheeling and all that. I just didn't. So when I was fired, I was paid to leave quietly. And there was a collective sigh of relief when I walked out the door. I know that. But I walked out with a bunch of money and I think, well, that's interesting. Okay. At no point did I say, oh, what was me? I'm not good enough. Oh my gosh, what am I gonna do now? Oh my gosh, I'm broke. Oh my gosh. No point whatsoever did anything like that cross my mind. Just, okay, what now? Get another job. Within a couple of weeks, I had another job doing something very similar. Another company in London, 10 months later, I was fired for the same reason. There was a collective sigh of relief when I walked out the door. And not one moment did I say, oh my God, what am I gonna do? What am I, am I not good enough? And all this, no, none of that went through my mind, none. Which is okay, that's interesting, what next? And it happened again. It happened I think about 5 times. I was beginning to make a career out of it. And then by this time I was living in South Africa. And I'll never forget the last time I walked out of a corporate. Again, I was hugely successful in the work, massively successful. But I know there was a— well, I don't know, I experienced the collective sigh of relief when I was paid to leave again. And I remember walking out and I'm looking up at Table Mountain, the sun is setting behind the mountain, and I'm saying, And now, where was this in the plan? I don't know what to do now. I say, "Might this, is this my life?" You know, I don't see the adventure in this. And then I got a clear message, "Do your own thing." Okay, I'll do my own thing. Never once up until that point had I ever thought about doing my own thing. Not that I understood what do my own thing meant. So by the time I got home, I had an idea. Okay, I never had toys when I was growing up and I had this, I was addicted to collecting teddy bears, right? Naive, I know, but I was addicted to collecting teddy bears and I thought, well, I'm gonna do something with soft toys. So I created a company called Dial-a-Teddy. It had never, nothing had ever existed. This is way before internet, way before online banking and all that. This was, and I hand drew posters and all this and it was a raving success. That was my first business. And from there on I went, creating one pioneering business after another, after another, after another. So I never did have the experience of self-doubt until I separated from myself when I gave up my power. So I carry the energy of that oneness, of that infiniteness, of that knowing that I am one with it all and there's nothing I can't do. And I had prepared myself because I had taught myself, for example, in the 6 years between that experience and escaping, I had taught myself about economics. I had taught myself about, I fervently studied economics. This is long before YouTube, right? I asked for books and stuff like that and I got them. I taught myself to paint. I taught myself to play violin. I taught myself to do all things with no teaching or training at all. But I had taught myself all of this and I carried that out into my life when I was freed when I escaped. When I was going through the 18 months of taking the overdoses, of course I was institutionalized many times and therapy after therapy after therapy. And all the therapists kept saying, wanting me to go back and talk about the heat, talk about my history and talk about the experience and try and heal me from that. And I kept saying, I don't need healing, that's not my problem. And they said, that is your problem, you're in denial. No, I'm not. Anyway, it's just one thing. It just, it just would never work. I, I knew it was nothing to do with that experience. That was done. That was healed. That, that supernatural experience I had, that transcendent, that out-of-body, if you want to say it, that experience, that was healed. It was purely that I had succumbed and separate, created separation and walked, turned my back on my own divinity, on my own infinite being. That's what created the hell. And it wasn't until I had the last overdose, woke up from the last overdose. And after that, I was more, I was back to my true self. And I was, I was, and that's what started me on a journey to explore more. And I was called to connect with a therapist who was the most magnificent woman. She was a professor at University of Cape Town. She was a psychologist and I connected with her. I remember walking in, I don't know why, she was an older woman and I don't know why I felt this draw, but that was how my life was. I just was drawn by, that's how I lived my life, draw myself. I didn't have to make sense. I didn't have to cognitively understand it. And I was drawn to her. And I remember saying to her, and I do not need or want your therapy. I want you to hear me talk. And amazingly, she started guiding me towards sort of more quantum physics and the spiritual thing. She's just gently guiding me. And that's what set me off the path that I am on now. Yeah. So that sort of answers your question. And one of the things that I would like to say, and this might be— I want people to understand something that that I've been on a massive, massive journey and I'm, and so sometimes if I say something, it might trigger you, but understand we all have our own journey and there's no right or wrong for any one of us. So one of the things that I did many years after I, not so many, but 7 years after I escaped, it was during the time of the overdoses or afterwards, I can't remember. I went back to Ireland and I reported my father who was the main person who was responsible. And it took a number of years for the police to investigate it. And eventually he was charged with 49 or something charges. And he went and he eventually after years pleaded guilty to 3 of the 49 charges and was, there was a, it went to the High Court of Ireland. Now I, again, one of those pulls that I couldn't cognitively understand one, why I reported him, 'cause I had no feelings of, anger or hate or anything like that, but it just, it was, I was told to do it and I did it. And then I was told, right, have it out of, out of camera. So in public, it had never been done before in the world, a case like this. So I had it held, I asked the judge to have it out of camera. It was held public. As you can imagine, it got a lot of news. He got 54 years and, um, the incidents of abuse or incest and and rape and slavery, when reporting of it went up like 75% in the country in Ireland at the time. A few years later, he's now gone to prison. I'm now married with my boyfriend partner at the time was with me in the court. We married and 23 years later we're still madly in love and then honeymoon, but, A few years later, I get a phone call. We're now living in South Africa again, and the police phoned me to say my father had been transferred to hospice. He was dying. And again, I knew exactly what I needed to do. I hung up the phone, turned to Tony, my husband, and I said, right, that's it, we've got to go to Ireland. We flew back to Ireland. I needed to see him. It made no sense. I didn't— I couldn't understand. I couldn't explain it. I just I just knew it was something I needed to do. So the plan was when I got to Ireland, my husband and I would go in to see my father. When we got there, my father said, nope, he's not prepared to see me with Tiny. So I went in alone. It was the hardest thing I ever did. So I walked into the room with him and I'll never forget it. I had no idea what to expect. I had no idea. Why I was doing this. None. And I saw him and he stood up. I saw him. I looked him in the eyes and then these words came out of my mouth and it was, thank you, Dad. I love you. And I felt the most extraordinary sense of the most profound unconditional love and compassion in that moment. It was the, it was the second most extraordinary moment in my life after that one I had when I was 15., and everything made sense. Everything made sense. Now, again, this is my journey. It's not for everybody. And, you know, many people have said to me, oh, Stockholm syndrome and all that. But trust me, I'm so far away from being a victim. But, um, it was not human to human. It was my soul speaking to his soul. Now, it didn't land to him. It landed to him in a mortal way. That's okay. It did not matter because my soul spoke to his soul, and I saw the perfection of everything, and that truly set me free.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 41:42
I'm sure people listening to this are sort of, you know, trying to fathom the enormity of that moment, and most maybe can't understand because, you know, the mind, you know, holds so much judgment, pain. You know, we hold on to these memories and all of that. But what you've said is it was a soul-to-soul connection. It wasn't about the mortal at all.
Judy Van Nierkerk (Guest) · 42:11
You know, it's not something that the human— this is why I have long since had a major issue with all— there's so much work being focused on mindset because it's confined, it's finite. We are infinite. The only work is connecting with the infinite being and everything comes right with that. Everything, everything makes sense. Everything. It's not about having a point of view. It's not about having— it's not even about having beliefs. It's about being all of who you truly authentically are. That level of devotion to be and live from the infinite being so the human being can experience it all. With all of the mindset and all of the sort of self-development work, it sort of goes back to front. It sort of tries to fix the corrupted ego, corrupted human with all the perceptions and conditioning and the, all the stuff that we're dealing with, which we're not meant to be dealing with it. We're meant to be the full expression of our soul to experience with our human being. See, that is the, it's the other way around.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 43:21
And that's a whole nother hour's conversation. And, and I'm sure some people will be going, what, what, what does that mean? Okay, it's planting that seed of, of, you know, something. Wow, what a journey. What a journey that you've been on. And you've obviously been living from that space of your infinite soul ever since, ever since you escaped, or by the 18 months of overdoses and disconnecting. Um, thank you for sharing your story. I have to say, when we listen to story, we want to connect and understand, and we place ourselves in those situations. And sometimes the stories are so horrific that we don't want to. The human has compassion, and there's often filters and preconceived ideas. Sometimes there's judgments. Oh, that's how I would have responded in that moment, or this is what I think, or, you know, and it comes from the mind. And, and, you know, like you said before, we go into fight or flight, and there's all these things that the human carries out as a response. And I just want to say what's been so delightful about talking with you today is the energy with which you carry yourself. And, and like you said, there's— you're not a victim, never. There's no victimhood. And I think that it's a complete shift. It's tough for some people to understand because we want to attach in our minds to a cause and effect relationship, and we want to place a reason for something, or blame, or vindication, or, you know. What a beautiful example that you've given, a new path for people to heal through their own soul. Because from your lived experience, by tapping into that, your something, your, your infinite being, the whole trauma or the healing has completely transformed, or the need for that has transformed.
Judy Van Nierkerk (Guest) · 45:23
That was beautiful. That is exactly it, is that it's from that place everything is resolved, everything is perfect. Why waste time on this beautiful, glorious planet that we have the deepest privilege to live with any of the noise, any of the trauma, any of the pain, any of the suffering? Forget all that. Connect with infinite being and experience it all. That's the magic.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 45:52
That's it. Oh, wow. Um, I ask every guest this question, uh, and, and you probably answered it anyway, But I'm still going to ask you the question, and that is, if there are people listening to the story now who can resonate, and it could be with the traumatic part of the journey, or it could be with any other parts of this, the journey that you've had that you've shared, what would you like to say to them right now?
Judy Van Nierkerk (Guest) · 46:18
Just one thing. Just, um, what I have learned is that You know, when, when people say to me, you know, they are, oh, you've got quite a story. And I say, yeah, my story is not what happened to me. My story is a story of love. And that is my focus, is finding love in everything. There is nothing more freeing, nothing more expansive and rewarding and glorious and beautiful than to find the love in anything. So, so right down to if I can't say I'd love to do something, I won't I'll do it. So it's finding the love in everything, even if it's for a fleeting moment. And the more of those fleeting moments you create during your day, the more your day becomes more love. And your perception, your perspective, and your awareness changes. And then all of a sudden you start connecting just a little bit more each day to the truth of who you are rather than responding to whatever is going on in your environment or whatever the thoughts are that have kept you trapped in a loop for so long. Just find the love. If it's feeling the sun on your skin, if it's feeling the wind on your face, if it's just looking at the buds on the trees, if it's just listening to the birds sing, whatever it is, just the smallest little thing, just build a bank balance of those moments until they become more and more dominant in your day. It helps a lot.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 47:47
Wow, Judy, that's such a gift. Really, really, really beautiful.
Judy Van Nierkerk (Guest) · 47:53
Thank you so much. Thank you for this opportunity.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 47:56
Oh, you're welcome. It's just been— it's been a joy. I'm really grateful for you. Thank you. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Kintsugi Heroes. Please like and share the show to your friends so we can get this out to even more people. If you have a story you'd like to share with us, please reach out using the contact details below. And join us next week for our next hero's story. Until then, keep being you, and remember that we are all heroes in our own unique way.
Judy Van Nierkerk (Guest) · 48:33
Only when it's broken Only when it's broken. When it hits you in the middle of the night and the truth burns so bright. Only when it's broken. Only when it's broken. Take pride in those cries. 'Cause it's only for tonight and then you rise. Only when you're broken. Only when you're broken. Only when you're broken.
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