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Time moves forward, but its stories ripple backward.
Daughters of Time began with the curiosity of a daughter — Susan — and the memories of a mother — Antoinette.
What started as a few questions about the past — about her grandparents, their choices, their journeys — slowly grew into a larger search for understanding.
For connection. For roots.
Our story, like so many others, begins in places shaped by history.
My father was born on a farm in the north of Namibia, when it was still South West Africa, and grew up in South Africa. He was in a children’s home, even though both his parents were alive. After the Second World War, the country was in the clutches of a depression. His parents’ marriage had broken apart — a story we will share — and his stepmother refused to take the children in. With little money and few options, the orphanage became his home.
My mother’s story began far away, in the Netherlands. She was only eight when her family emigrated to South Africa, encouraged by a post-war government that offered money to families willing to start anew abroad. They left behind a country rebuilding itself and arrived in one still bearing its own scars.
Two lives. Two directions of exile and hope. Together they became my parents — and the beginning of our own story.
Now, through Daughters of Time, my daughter and I are retracing those threads: the Vorsters, the Kuipers, the Van Doelands, the Du Toits, and the many other names that make up our lineage.
We are exploring not only the facts — the documents, the dates, the photographs — but also the silences between them. The emotions, the echoes, the quiet inheritance of memory that passes through generations even when words fail.
Here, we will share what we find: family histories, forgotten details, small revelations. Some stories we lived ourselves; others have travelled through time, kept alive by retelling. Each one is both a step into the past and a reflection of who we’ve become because of it.
This is not just about ancestry — it’s about humanity. About resilience, love, loss, and the ways history leaves fingerprints on every life that follows.
We write to remember.
We write to understand.
We write to tell the stories that time almost forgot.
Welcome to Daughters of Time.
The story begins again.