“I always thought I was so terribly ugly in this photo and hated that, because it was apparently in the photo base of many media, I kept seeing it in all kinds of articles about me,” Katja writes with the photo of her in her early twenties. and was working for MTV Europe. “Now I look at it and I think…,” she continues, before referencing the message of Baz Luhrman’s song “Everybody’s Free.”
“Better be to yourself,” she writes about the lesson she now learned from the bad feelings of that time. ‘And not just about how you look. Also and especially about what you do, where you fail, or what you should do and be able to do better yourself.’
“Just try a little less hard,” she also tells her younger, critical self. ‘Strangely enough, things often suddenly get much better.’
Katja’s family has recently endured a difficult period in the run-up to and after the conviction of Thijs Römer, the father of her daughter Sammie (13). He is currently serving a month in prison for online abuse. After the verdict against Thijs, Katja announced via Instagram that she and Sammie were doing ‘well’ considering the circumstances.
Considering the crime he committed, Thijs will not have an easy time behind bars:
