In this summer column, six people tell us which summer will forever be etched in their memory. This week: Leena de Wilde (33) was seven months old when she flew from her native India to her adoptive family in Groningen. Twenty years later, she visited the children's home where she lived for the first time. "If my disability had been discovered then, I would never have been adopted."
You might already know Leena de Wilde (33). At the age of nineteen, she participated in the Mis(s) Verkiezing, an initiative by former presenter and CDA MP Lucille Werner, for women with a physical disability. Since then, Leena has made her job of posing for the camera and goes from casting to casting. As a result, she regularly appears in commercials, videos and campaigns.
"I want to make a positive contribution to the image of people with disabilities. I've been in a wheelchair since I was three, so I've been doing everything sitting down my whole life. I don't know any better. I don't experience many disadvantages, I want to show that," says Leena cheerfully.
When Leena was one and a half years old and had been living with her adoptive parents in Groningen for almost a year, she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy (a posture and movement disorder caused by damage to the brain, ed.). This disability was said to be a result of oxygen deficiency at birth.
"I was born on the streets of Mumbai, India. As far as I know, my biological mother took me to the Bal Anand orphanage shortly after I was born, because she was unmarried and did not have the financial means to take care of me. My parents never put much emphasis on my physical disability and always looked at what was possible in my upbringing. I inherited that positive attitude from them."