BE YOU by Marusha van den Berge - but who am I?

Yes, indeed, who am I, Marusha van den Berge?

 According to me, there are different kinds of 'knowing someone'. You can know them in the sense of having information about them, or you can know someone in the sense of seeing, in their glance, that something is bothering them.

I can’t provide latter for you unless you’re in my inner circle and we understand each other at the depth, we’ve met ourselves. Yet, what I’m giving you through this text are various stories of my life, silly moments, likes and dislikes, a list of information’s, values and thoughts.

You may still not know me afterwards, but I will be more of a human being you can connect with. Someone you might have shared values with, someone that has similar experiences as you, or simply a human being that isn’t afraid anymore to be vulnerable and trusts in the goodness of humanity.

With that, have fun reading!

[Left: Me, two years old, holding my biggest teddy. Right: Me, Summer 2026]

Marusha – Is my first name, derived from my Ukrainian great-grandmothers name. (due to history’s complexities, she had several formal and informal names, but I knew her as Marysia)

Maja, Catharina – Are my second and third name. When being baptised, my parents thought, "why not let both sides of the family, choose a name for our firstborn too?" :). So, my Polish family chose Maja (like the bee), and my Dutch family chose Catharina.

van den Berge – Is my surname, a rather usual one in the Netherlands. Which is funny, because it can be translated as “from the mountains” … Like yeah, which mountains? Surely not Dutch ones, hahah.

03.04.2005 – Is my date of birth, qualifying me to be a member of Gen-Z, including it’s typical clichés… I might should write a blog about how I view all those prejudices, because they need some differentiation… just one thing straight away, I grew up inventing games out of thin air, inhaling books, adjusting antennas to get noise-free FM-Radio signal, spending my summers outdoors with nothing more than a garden and a communist metal swing, and sending self-made, handwritten Christmas cards to every family member.

Schwyz – Is the municipality in which I was born. Its canton, which is also called Schwyz, gave Switzerland its name. On that basis alone, I ought to be Swiss, but bureaucratically speaking, I’m not, hahah.

The Netherlands – Is the country of my father’s origin (thus half of my family) and currently the only country counting me as their citizen.

Poland – Is the country where my mother’s roots lay… and I’m deliberately not saying that the other half of the family comes from Poland, because my great-grandmother was, after all, from Ukraine.

Languages – Are for sure one of my strengths. With great gratitude towards my parents, they taught me Dutch and Polish since birth. In school, I started learning German as an official language and Swiss German in everyday life. Due to Switzerland’s official multilingualism, I learned French beginning in 3rd grade, and Italian later in 8th grade. English in 5th grade, as a foreign language. (And deepened my knowledge on all of them in grammar school). A year ago, I wanted to sharpen my Polish skills and persuaded myself it would be more effective if I learned Ukrainian simultaneously to it. Yeah, and just for fun, I started creating a vocabulary poster that includes all the languages above, adding Spanish and Croatian to it :)

DO IT YOURSELF – Is my motto for life, hahaha. Whenever I desire a product, or would need a service, the first question is always: “How can I do this myself?”. I would rather look a YouTube video on how to fix a clogged sink, instead of calling a plumber right away… that’s how I ended up with self-made shelves, upcycled clothing, homemade food and a brand called BE YOU ;)… but I’m honest, for some areas of life or when there is severe risk or danger, I do call for professional help!

“What’s your job/profession?” – Is the one question that confuses me most, because my answer depends on the information the interviewer needs. See, if they want to know my job title, I could say “Integrative Coach”, or mention my Matura (The grammar school Diploma in Switzerland), although the latter is not a JOB title. If they want to know about my work experience I could answer with: “I had my first job at 13 and cleaned a couple hours per week an optician’s shop. I stayed there for some years and got upgraded to assistant in whatever-needed-to-be-done. So I learned administrative skills, customer service, some marketing stuff, cleaning, selling and consulting. After that I paired my hospitality-study with a six-month internship in service in a five stared hotel. And continued afterwards working in service, but in an urban Pizzeria”. Or are they interested in my current employment? Which might or might not be defined as “entrepreneur whose role is that of a content creator, accountant, salesperson, strategist, analyst, author, product developer, marketer, coach, photographer, web designer… “.

“Go left…. no, the other left” – Is the sentence I heard most [although, now I think about it, I heard this one more often: “shhhht, don’t be so loud!”, hahah]
… I wouldn’t say that I have a right-left weakness, but I do have a brain that works very visual and sometimes assumes too quick where we’re heading to.

[From left to right, first row: My great-grandmother and me baking together | a picture I took of a dutch windmill in Leiden | the communist metal swing in my grandmothers hometown in Poland. Second row: Swiss mountains, picture taken on the Axalp | Me, next to it my screaming little brother] 

As a toddler…

…I nearly got lost in a cornfield playing hide-and-seek.

…my first impression of my younger brother was: “what a cute human, my buddy for life!”, and his was, screaming on top of his lungs… probably thinking: “Who tf is she?”, hahah

…I helped my great-grandmother with cooking and baking… she might be the reason why I developed this love for creating nurturing dishes.

 

In primary school…

…I once got suspended for saying out loud what everybody thought: “This movie sucks!”

…we had to wear slippers in class (leaving our shoes in the hallway, underneath the bench). Once, to be on time for a class at the end of the hallway, I took a sprint, but I slipped and smacked, very cartoon-like, into the wall :)

…a teacher made fun of me for drinking milk out of a glass bottle.

 

As a teen…

…I underwent a six year long procedure of getting my jaw and teeth fixed. With like four different kinds of brackets, hahaha.

…in 7^th grade, we had to introduce ourselves by explaining why we had chosen certain colours for our painting. I planned on saying “because they are cheerful colours” [DE: frohe Farben], but instead I said “colourful colours” [DE: farbige Farben]. That slip of the tongue became my nickname for the rest of the school year :/

…I still thought doctor or radiologist was my dream profession

 

In grammar school…

…all the bad stuff happened, that needed to happen, for me to start my journey of remembering who I was beneath conditioning (aka the birth hour of BE YOU).

…we had a very… I shouldn’t even try to describe that person. They were French teacher, that’s what you need to know, and their type of person awakened my most provocative version. I wasn’t the most punctual person in general, but I would come just on time, or too late, to lessons on purpose. Because look, they had favourite students based on grades, and used to be VERY unfair to those, whose talents were elsewhere. What I basically did for four years was actively trying to show them how wrong their behaviour was, by having very good grades and still refusing to buy their shit. As a cherry on top, I did something, they would have NEVER expected. I went to my oral final exam without having read a single word, of the books we had to. You should have seen their face… at least the expert had a good laugh. I might have a terrible grade for French in my Diploma now, but I left with a hilarious anecdote, and skills still good enough to be understood by the French ;)

…I used to have terrible migraines, especially after exams. When stress peaked in the last year, they got regularly so unbearable that I had to go home. It happened so often, that statistically I missed every 18th lesson…

[Might have been my darkest chapter, but I’m grateful, deeply grateful, because without those experiences and lessons I wouldn’t be where I am today.]

[From left to right, first row: How I looked, when starting grammar school | me at my graduation ceremony wearing a "dress" | me in Spain, 2023 . Second row: my first selfie made with a digital camera in primary school | me as a teen | me wearing braces] 

Things that have never changed…

…asking questions as if my life depended on it, hahaha. I’m just an incredibly curious person, that loves to question things/beliefs/systems to the annoyance of some people ;)

…having a face with two settings only, on or off. You either get the full range, subtitles to every emotion and thought going through my mind, or I’m spaced out, leaving my facial expression somewhere between Slavic stare and angry bird.

…being a master with numbers in terms of pattern recognition but having trouble to solve 36 + 19 + 7 in under ten seconds, hahahah.

 

I love…

…traveling, especially by train [Interrailing is absolutely worth it]! I love discovering new places, cultures, languages, nature, people and their stories… taking beautiful pictures, eating local specialities and making memories for life.

…hospitality in the widest range of the word. With having an own café in mind, I started studying hospitality and simultaneously worked in service. Which then made me realise that too many places lack functioning systems, and mostly depend on the memory of underpaid, overstressed and permanently tired employees. To protect my own resources and because I heavily disagreed on how and what kind of knowledge the school transferred, I quit before the end of the second semester. My café will exist, but not until I found a way to create a consistent system. One that makes employees want to come to work, because they feel seen, heard and protected. A system that makes people feel alive, instead of sucking the life out of them.

…all kinds of stones, especially gemstones :)… yet according to my parents’ stories, as a toddler I used to fill my pockets with “beautiful” pebbles, eventually landing in the washing machine, hahaha.

 

I strongly dislike…

…people with a strong double moral and no self-reflective abilities. To prevent allergic reactions, I must keep my distance from that sort of human being.

…Swiss cheese, which is actually a sad story. I used to love raclette and fondue, and all the wonderful cheeses Switzerland has to offer.
Until one day I visited a cheese factory as a part of the mandatory classes of my hospitality-study. We spent a whole day surrounded by the awful smell of maturing cheeses, ate cheese for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and had a cheese tasting including 20 different kinds of cheese (even such that didn’t look edible anymore, but supposedly were)… I spent the following three days in bed, unable to consume any food without it immediately leaving my body again. Ever since then, the smell of (Swiss) cheese alone makes me sick.

…conventional make-up and conventional cosmetics in general. I trust in simple homemade or bought natural cosmetics (latter especially for my make-up).
Although there is one tiny exception to be made: my Lancôme Idôle – eau de parfum. I’ve been using it for nearly a decade now and will use it for the next… x-decades, hahaha.

Since I started remembering who I am beneath conditioning…

…I like cars again, to such a degree, that I am reading a workbook on car mechanics for beginners, hahaha, and I am fascinated! Don’t even consider that was possible until three years ago. Like, I used to hate every kind of motorised vehicle…

…respect got a whole new definition. I still treat everybody with respect, no matter who you are, what you are or how you live… but now I expect the same from you: to treat every fellow human being, including yourself, with equal respect.

If you choose to break that rule, repeatedly, you will only notice me wishing you the best and disappearing from your life… and for the sake of our future I recommend not pulling that final move when my social battery is run out completely… as I will still wish you the best and disappear from your life, but before that, you’ll probably make acquaintance with the version of me, even I do fear sometimes.

…I realised I could learn, do and have whatever I want. So, my list of interests kind of exploded, hahaha. To just name a few: Cooking, snowboarding, crocheting, sewing, surfing, baking, fashion, magazines, mixed media art, cars, entrepreneurship, colours, languages, positive psychology, jewellery, hospitality, mindset, interior design, historical architecture, coffee, fitness, routines, neuroplasticity, body language, craftsmanship, …

 [Just some self-made dishes, from left to right: mixed salad with eggs, croûtons and camembert | quinoa, pea-feta-mousse, baked pumpkin | pulled pork and homemade BBQ-sauce on pumpkin-dough pizza] 

 

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations (for enduring the ugly archive pictures, hahaha)… You do have quite some information about me now! If you want to know more about yourself, especially finding out who you are beneath conditioning, I sincerely recommend you our latest book: [CH-Bookshop // EU-Bookshop]. You might love it, especially if you liked the writing style from the text above and are more into varied magazine articles rather than black on white textbook-guides, hahaha.

All the best I wish,

Yours, Marusha