Leena went back to native India: 'Grateful that I grew up here'

In this summer column, six people tell us which summer will be etched in their memory forever. 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 few months 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 took part in the Mis(s) Election, an initiative of 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 moving 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 had a wheelchair since I was three, so I've been sitting all my life. I don't know any better. I don't experience many disadvantages, I want to show that " says Leena cheerfully.

When Leena was eighteen months old and had been living with her adoptive parents in Groningen for a little over a year, she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy (a posture and movement disorder caused by damage to the brain, ed.). This limitation would be a result of oxygen deficiency at birth.

"I was born on the street in Mumbai, India. As far as I know, my biological mother took me to 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 I put a lot of emphasis on my physical disability and in my upbringing always looked at what is possible. I took that positive attitude from them."

Never left Groningen again

After seven months in the children's home, the adoption procedure is complete and baby Leena flies to the Netherlands with the director of the children's home Bal Anand, where her Groningen parents are waiting for her. "I still live in Groningen, I never left."

After a few years her parents adopt her 3.5 years younger brother Frank from the same children's home and the family is complete. "We have a very good relationship. We come from the same family, we are both tinted: we say that from an early age to each other and to anyone: we are brother and sister."

When Leena is 20 years old, she decides to make the journey of her life: back to her native Mumbai and to the children's home where she spent the first months of her life. Together with her good friend Janick and her father, she makes a travel plan for three weeks in India.

"I didn't know what to expect. What would it be like? What would it smell like? Feel? How would I feel about it? It was also very special for my father: my parents got me in the Netherlands. I've seen pictures of the place where I come from, but to see it all with my own eyes is something else."

With a western view to poverty

Not only Leena and her father are amazed in India, Leena herself is also an attraction. "I was the only one there in a manual wheelchair, that was noticeable." Leena herself falls short when she sees the bustling streets of Mumbai, the sacred cows that cross the street without being chased away. Those lovely people who seem to be happy with very little.

"But the children's home in particular made a deep impression on me. All kinds of things went through my mind. On the one hand I thought it was very nice to see how all those small children are looked after as well as possible. On the other hand I looked also with my western view and I also saw the poverty and what they didn't have.

'That's how I was too', Leena thinks when she sees the babies in the home. She immediately feels a bond with the little ones with a disability. "I realized: if they had known at the time that I also had a disability, I would never have been adopted. Then I would have stayed here and my life would have looked completely different. It made me extra grateful for the luck that I was allowed to go to the Netherlands for adoption. go and grow up here."

After Mumbai, Leena, her friend and father leave for the south, first to Goa, where they sit in a cottage on the beach and 'have a real holiday' and then on to Bangalore. Nevertheless, the visit to the children's home and the meeting with the director is at the top of Leena's most beautiful memories. "We now have a special bond. We have regular contact with each other and video calls once in a while."

During Leena's stay in Mumbai, the Umang care farm is just being built for older children with disabilities who come from the orphanage. "Before my visit to India, I was - since 2006 - ambassador of the Bal Anand foundation, which is committed to disabled children and the other children who live in the children's home. Now that I had seen it with my own eyes, I can The Netherlands is easier to talk about and can provide the director with more specific advice, such as? Don't place thresholds at the entrance of the building, for example. Simple things, but so important."

Mother of a son myself

When Leena gives birth to her son Silvan two years ago, the realization about her own birth comes in extra hard. "I was born on the streets there. And I've seen those streets in Mumbai… Here you go from check to check, from ultrasound to ultrasound and finally you give birth with the best care around you. My own mother didn't have any of that."

Moreover, with the arrival of her son, the ever-slumbered need to return to India one more time and look for her biological mother has become more intense. "The need to find her has become stronger. I am currently in the process of mailing my adoption papers to India, possibly to get more information about my birth mother. I don't know how far I will get, or if I will ever see her I'm going to find it, but if that works, I want to at least tell her that she did the right thing to give me up."

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