Lenna discovered at the age of 25 that she had been circumcised: 'I tensed up at every touch, now I know why'

At the age of 25, Lenna van den Haak tries to understand what her biological mother has just said to her. She was circumcised as a baby. Her mother points to a tree in front of her house: that's where it happened. Suddenly everything falls into place: the pain when cycling and during sex, the intense reaction to being touched 'down there'. When she discovers the truth, her world collapses.

"There is a life before and after Zandvoort," Lenna (now 42) begins her story. We drink coffee at her home. Her son Benjamin is sitting on the couch with headphones on. The seagulls fly in front of the windows, the beach is around the corner. In Zandvoort she has rebuilt her life. Here she has reinvented herself.

'Three women could be my mother'

First we go back to 2002. Lenna wants to look for her biological mother and travels for three months through Indonesia, the country where she was born. Her Dutch adoptive parents accompany her for the first two weeks. The journey begins in a monastery in Jakarta. It is run by a Dutch woman, Sister Lemmers. She helped Dutch adoptive parents during their process in Indonesia.

Lenna is lucky, an uncle of one of the sisters in the convent is visiting, who works in Lenna's native region. He will make some inquiries. He reported back within three days. "Three women said they could be my mother, but one woman's story matched the details that only we knew. We even looked alike."

The whole village turned out

One calls the rapid search the hand of God, the other coincidence. A meeting is arranged. "It all happened much too fast. We had only just arrived in the country and were already driving into an inhospitable area. Over unpaved roads, past wet rice fields and kampongs, small villages with dilapidated houses."

After three hours they arrive, but there is no quiet introduction. The entire village has come out to see her. Women, children push against the car. They cry, scream. "I want to get away from here, I thought. What am I actually doing here?!" Sister Lemmers gets out of the car and shouts: 'Move aside, move aside! Which one of you is Lenna's mother?' People point to a woman at the back. "To be honest? I didn't feel anything. Tears did come when I hugged her, but that was more because I realized what this meeting meant to her."

Hysterical meeting

Brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, grandfathers, grandmothers, everyone is greeted and hugged. There is laughter and tears. There is a lot of hysteria, Lenna remembers. "My mother had given me up because she could not feed me. Two children who were born after me died from malnutrition. I was still alive and felt the impact that had on this woman."

Not much later, Lenna sits with her parents and sister Lemmers on the floor of her biological mother's house. The floor is packed earth. The walls are a few hung bamboo mats, curtains hang in front of open holes that serve as windows. "The toilet was outside the house, a hole in the ground. The house was almost falling apart. There was one cupboard and a mattress on the floor with the plastic around it, otherwise it would get dirty."

In the three months Lenna travels the country, she sees her biological family four times. "Each time I get more information."

'You are also circumcised'

Four years later, Lenna returns, she is on holiday with her then boyfriend and visits her birth village again. "My biological mother invited me to the circumcision of my seven-year-old half-brother, two weeks later. Or well, she asked if I wanted to come and pay for the circumcision."

Lenna does. "I knew that boys were circumcised in her culture." During the feast after the circumcision, they sit on the floor in her mother's house. The conversation turns to circumcisions. "In the Netherlands, boys are sometimes circumcised too," Lenna said, "But that's often for medical reasons. It doesn't happen to girls." "My mother laughed and said something in Sundanese, the language spoken in western Java. Sister Lemmers, who was there to translate, said, 'She says you were circumcised too, as a baby.'"

"I was completely… From that moment on…" Lenna takes a sip of coffee and continues. "I just froze. My biological mother acted like it was the most normal thing in the world."

Born and circumcised under the tree

Sister Lemmers sees that Lenna is paralyzed by the news and asks further. "She asked where and when this had happened. My mother pointed to the tree by the water opposite her house. There, by that tree, that's where you were born and that's where you were circumcised."

Girls are circumcised on the 21st day after birth, her biological mother says. That was tradition in their kampong. A piece of the clitoris is filed off and a piece of the inner labia is removed. That also happened to Lenna. "That night I had trouble falling asleep. My boyfriend and I'd had a bad sex life. I was always in pain, cramps, I stiffened up when touched. That explained everything."

'I didn't know what to do with it'

After the conversation with her mother, she doesn't think too much about the impact of the message. "We were on holiday and it was too big. I didn't know what to do with it." That only comes later, when she is back in the Netherlands and goes to her GP. He refers her to a gynaecologist and a psychologist. At the gynaecologist, she looks at herself with a new perspective for the first time. There is scar tissue around her clitoris. There is now an explanation for the cramps in her abdomen, the stitches in her pelvis and the tight feeling in her upper legs.

Her Dutch parents were also shocked by her discovery and asked the pediatrician who checked Lenna at the time if he had seen anything. "He had not looked between my legs, so he did not notice anything. My parents told me that I did not want to be changed as a baby. I screamed and kicked everything together. I was toilet trained quickly, just before I was a year old. Now I find that logical: I just did not want people to come near there."

'We didn't talk about sex'

Lenna never realized that she had been circumcised. "Friends sometimes had pain during sex. I didn't look for anything behind it." The more she thought about it, the more she got into trouble with herself. She called in sick at work. "Everything came out, anger, frustration, helplessness."

"My boyfriend had no idea what to do with the situation. 'It's your body,' he said. We didn't talk about sex. There was a lot of love and we hugged a lot, but now I needed more. Someone to talk to, a shoulder." According to Lenna, partly because of his strict religious upbringing, he can't handle it well and the relationship falls apart.

Recovery and acceptance

"I lost everything. My femininity, my relationship that ended because of this and our house, which we had to sell because of this." She moved back to her parents in Haarlem and eventually found her own upstairs apartment with an older couple in Zandvoort. "I really wanted to be alone and work on myself."

That first year in Zandvoort is all about recovery and acceptance. She goes to a psychologist and a sexologist. She joins a choir, volunteers at all kinds of events and finds a job again. "I did everything I could to get to know people. They didn't know anything about my past, so I didn't have to talk about it. Within a year I was integrated."

She decides to try again with her ex. "Because there was still love. But after a year I can say: love alone is not enough. We had grown too far apart."

41,000 Dutch girls and women circumcised

According to the Pharos foundation, 41,000 girls and women in the Netherlands have been circumcised. The World Health Organization (WHO) distinguishes three forms of female circumcision. In type 1, part or all of the visible clitoris or only the fold of skin around the clitoris is removed. Type 2 is a partial or total removal of the visible part of the clitoris and the labia minora, with or without removal of the labia majora. In type 3, the vaginal opening is narrowed by cutting away and joining the labia minora and/or labia majora, with or without removal of the visible part of the clitoris. This is the most drastic form and causes the most health problems.

Source: Pharos.nl

Sexual revolution

Then she goes on a voyage of discovery, a kind of sexual revolution. "I wanted to find out what I liked and what I didn't. The gynecologist had seen that there were still nerves around my clitoris, so I could come. Dominance is not really in my nature, but this time I wanted to keep control during sex and find out what worked for me. Every week I went home with a different man. I communicated clearly what I wanted and they always went along with that. I taught these men what I liked and what I didn't. When I look back on that period, I sometimes think: oh, how awful. But actually it was also just really fun."

After half a year she falls in love with one of the men in the café. After a while they move in together and have a son, Benjamin. He is now eleven. Circumcision has no effect on a natural birth.

Dating is complicated

The relationship with Benjamin's father ends after seven years. Since then, Lenna has been surviving as a single mother in Zandvoort. "I am more self-confident and am now open about what happened to me. Although I still find it difficult to discuss such a sensitive subject when I meet new people."

That also makes dating complicated. "I told a date after we had slept together that I had been circumcised. He was shocked. It is such a loaded subject that sticks, the next time you meet, everything takes on a different meaning. That happened now too. He was afraid he would hurt me. It wasn't his fault, it was my physical attitude. I am looking for love, but I find it easier to have a one-night stand every now and then, then I just don't say it, I keep control and I can enjoy sex."

Hundreds of responses

Since Lenna lives in Zandvoort, her circumcision is no longer a secret. She founded the platform ' Intiem Zijn ', for women who are looking for a better form of intimacy and sexual connection. Because of the international day of Female Mutilism, she shared her story in the Haarlems Dagblad. Hundreds of responses came from women who recognized themselves in it.

"The fact that female circumcision is prohibited in the Netherlands does not mean that it does not happen. We live in a multicultural society and it is still a tradition in many communities. Dutch girls are taken on holiday and come back circumcised."

'It changes your life'

Lenna can tell her story because she is adopted. "I have no family that I can offend by being open and honest. My mother has passed away, I have known for a few years now. My half-brother found me on Facebook and sent me a message to tell me."

"By sharing it, I hope to create more awareness, especially in families where female circumcision is still a tradition. I hope that they decide not to have their daughters circumcised, because circumcision changes your life."