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The memoir Chasing Windmills by Maya Butalid tells a powerful story of Filipino immigrant life in the Netherlands: a journey that shows what it really means to start over in a new country.
Learning to belong does not happen overnight because it takes years of small steps, quiet observations, and brave choices–and Maya’s story offers lessons for anyone who has ever felt like an outsider trying to find their place.
Finding Community Connection
When Maya first arrived in the Netherlands in 1983, she had one main purpose: to work for the Philippine revolutionary movement. Therefore, her life revolved around other Filipinos and Dutch people who supported the same cause, not thinking too much about becoming part of Dutch society.
Photo by wirestock
But something shifted over time.
Maya started getting involved with Filipino organizations in the Netherlands and even helped start a group called Silangan in Nijmegen. Later, she worked with Bayanihan, a women’s group that helped Filipinas in trouble. These groups had become her bridge.
“Membership in Filipino organizations seems to play a valuable role in the integration process of Overseas Filipinos,” Maya writes, having learned this through her own master’s research.
Many people think immigrants should stay away from their own communities to better fit in, but Maya found the opposite to be true: it was her Filipino community that gave her a safe place to stand while she learned to reach out to Dutch society.
The Long Road of Language
Language was one of Maya’s earliest challenges. There was one day at the train station in ‘s-Hertogenbosch that she heard an announcement in Dutch, not understanding what it meant as everyone around her started moving to a different platform. Panic had set in for her at that time.
“The feeling of panic and helplessness lingered for a while. It was such an awful feeling, I never wanted to feel that way again,” Maya wrote about that moment that changed everything. She knew she had to learn Dutch, but it had never been as urgent for her as it was then. So, she threw herself into acquiring the language, using audio lessons at the university, reading newspapers in complex Dutch, watching children’s news because the language was simpler but correct, and practicing with neighbors and friends. Within a year, she passed all her Dutch language exams.
Navigating Social Boundaries at Work
Starting a new job brought fresh challenges for Maya when she became the coordinator of a parenting initiative called Opstap, a program that helped families with young children, especially immigrants. As the coordinator, Maya found herself having to supervise Dutch staff members.
One day, she learned that her boss had told a Dutch worker to “support” her because she was a Filipina, revealing that he did not yet trust her abilities. Although she could do so, Maya did not make a fuss about it, keenly understanding that people need to see what you can do.
Later, another Dutch colleague was upset that Maya got a job she wanted herself, with the colleague hinting that Maya only got special treatment because she was an immigrant. When she asked about her education, Maya quietly replied, “I studied Psychology at Tilburg University.” This shut her colleague down.
These moments show how navigating social boundaries takes patience and strength. As an immigrant, Maya had to prove herself again and again, showing that her skills mattered more than her background.
Learning the Unspoken Rules
Every society has rules that nobody bothers to write down, banking on the collective knowledge of the society to maintain and pass them down. Well, in the Netherlands, Maya discovered that children do not just show up at each other’s houses to play, unlike where she came from. Instead, parents must make appointments first.
Simple things like birthday parties work differently, too. When Maya’s young daughter Elena invited a friend from school to her birthday party, the friend felt quite ashamed of not being able to afford a gift. Elena solved the problem by lending her some art supplies. “Make a beautiful birthday card for me,” she told her friend.
Maya learned something important from her daughter that day: the psychology of inclusion starts with small acts of kindness. Elena understood that her classmate often got left out, and she wanted to change that.
These small social rules matter more than people think. They shape who feels welcome and who stays on the outside.
Becoming Part of Local Life
Maya’s journey took a surprising turn when she got involved in local politics, with a local leader noticing how active she was in her community and asking her to run for the city council.
Maya served as a city councillor in Tilburg from 2003 to 2010.
This tenure gave her a new way to builda sense of place, from which she learned about poverty in the Netherlands up close, sitting on a task force that talked to poor families about their lives. She realized that poverty in the Netherlands looked different from that in the Philippines: though people had homes and health care, they still struggled, unable to afford birthday parties for their children and unable to join clubs, living isolated lives.
Maya pushed for changes, arguing that the task force should keep working through summer vacation. “People living in poverty do not take vacations,” she told the council. Nobody could argue with that.
Photo by Kireyonok_Yuliya
Building Bridges for Others
Maya still works to help other immigrants find their way, working with refugees through the Council for Refugees and helping them understand Dutch systems and build new lives, knowing their struggles because she lived them herself.
Once she walked forty kilometers in the Night of the Refugee, a fundraising event. While training for it, she walked through rain and wind, all the while thinking about refugees walking endless kilometers with no warm bed waiting at the end. “I know I could not offer hope for these refugees,” she wrote. “But by participating in the Night of the Refugee, I want to contribute to giving refugees a dry and warm bed, clean water and some food.”
This is what finding community connection looks like in practice: using what you have learned to help others on the same road.
Experience Maya Butalid’s full journey of finding home in a new land. Buy Chasing Windmills today and discover how one woman’s courage to belong can inspire your own path.
