About

My name is Merel Carrijn. I am 29 years old and I’m from Belgium. I graduated as Master in Linguistics and Literature (English-Dutch), I’m a black belt judoka (2nd dan), play defense position in ice hockey, I am a podcaster, author and artist. That’s all the cool stuff that I get to do.

The bad news is that I am also ill. A week after my graduation at the university, in 2018, I completely crashed. Since then, I’ve been hospitalized 5 times and I’m diagnosed with autism, complex posttraumatic stress disorder, ARFID and depression.

In my life, I encounter a lot of prejudice towards mental illness or not contributing to society by working. With my podcast, my writing, my artwork and my videos, I try to break stigma surrounding that topic and I hope to at least convince one person that nobody ‘decides’ to become ill.

This website is a little bit of an overview of everything I do. I wanted to have a summary, so if people have questions, I could refer to one place being this one. Go check out the other pages to find out more about what I do!