08/08/2026
Dear all,
Today is 08-08, the well-known day of the Lion’s Gate.
I have a wonderful personal story to share.
This is the story of my family that came pouring out of me spontaneously today. August 8, 2026, has become a very special day: an ode to my family line. Because it is my parents' wedding anniversary.
It is a story about lionhearted strength, love, and the courage that is passed down from one generation to the next. I am sharing it with you from the deepest place within my being.
In the photograph, I am showing you my parents, with my maternal grandmother standing between them.
THEIR YES ON 8-8-1935 ALSO GAVE ME LIFE
For many people, 8-8 is a special spiritual day. Within contemporary spirituality, this day is connected to the Lion’s Gate: a symbolic portal of heart-centred strength, courage, transformation, and fully daring to take your rightful place in life.
But for me, 8-8 carries an even more personal meaning.
Because exactly 91 years ago, on August 8, 1935, my father, Frans Soekdew Haridat, and my mother, Somaria Crescentia Saltanti, said YES to one another.
If they were still alive today, they would be celebrating their 91st wedding anniversary.
When I realised this, something moved deeply within me. Because their story is not only the story of a marriage.
It is about where I come from. About strength. About courage. About twelve new lives.
And ultimately, about my life too.
They were given to one another. My parents had an arranged marriage. Their marriage did not begin with the romantic ideal through which we often view love today. They lived in a different time, shaped by different cultural traditions and expectations.
Two young people were brought together and stepped into a life without knowing what that life would bring them. And today, that is precisely where I recognise their courage. Because it is easy to recognise strength when someone overcomes something.
But there is another kind of strength too. The strength it takes to step into an unknown future.
To carry responsibility. To keep meeting life again and again when it unfolds differently from what you had imagined. To remain standing despite hardship.
Like a LION!Not constantly roaring. Not fighting to prove how strong it is.
But present and deeply rooted in its dignity. Knowing that strength does not mean life will never be deeply painful or filled with sorrow. Strength means that, again and again, you are able to rise and reclaim your place.
They lost their firstborn daughter, my eldest sister, before she had even reached the age of one. After her, eleven more children were born.
Twelve times, they said YES to life. Twelve children were born from their union.
Pause for a moment and truly take that in.....
Twelve lives. Twelve human beings who would each go on to write their own story. Twelve times their family line was carried forward. And I am one of those twelve children. The youngest, who also wrote her own script.
When I look at my parents in this way, I suddenly understand the symbolism of 8-8 on an entirely different level. Long before I existed, long before anyone knew my name, and long before I began searching for my own path in life, a doorway was opened on August 8, 1935, a doorway through which my life would eventually enter.
Of course, my parents could not have foreseen any of this on their wedding day. They could not have known who their children would become. Which grandchildren would follow. Which paths we would walk. Or which questions we would one day ask about our origins.
BUT THEIR YES SET SOMETHING IN MOTION THAT WOULD BECOME FAR GREATER THAN THEY WERE.
62 FULL YEARS
My father and mother remained married for 62 years. Sixty-two years.
I do not want to turn their marriage into a fairy tale. Living together for that long does not mean that every day was easy. It does not mean there was no pain, worry, conflict, disappointment, or hardship. Nor does it mean that their lives overflowed with happiness.
Quite the opposite! A marriage of 62 years encompasses almost an entire human lifetime, with all its seasons filled with light and darkness, pain and joy, loss, abundance and scarcity, closeness and distance.
Yet: Life continued THROUGH THEM.
And that is precisely why I now view their long union through the eyes of strength. Because raising a family of twelve children and walking through life together for 62 years asks something profound of people.
It requires COURAGE. It requires THE STRENGTH OF THE LION!
I come from THEIR LIONHEARTED STRENGTH.
My family history reaches back much further than my parents. Behind my father and mother stand their parents. And behind them, many other generations.
My parents’ family lines lead back to India and to the history of Hindustani migration to Suriname. People left the land of their birth, some through coercion or after being recruited under false pretences, others voluntarily, and all were forced to build an entirely new existence under extremely difficult circumstances.
When histories like these are told, the focus is often primarily on what was done to people. And of course, those hardships must never be erased. Their stories must be told, precisely because this history also contains immeasurable strength.
I want to remember my parents and my ancestors through their strength. Because I do not come only from what my ancestors endured. I also come from the strength with which they MOVED THROUGH it.
For me, that changes everything.
ONLY 25 DAYS
And then there is another part of my parents’ story that touches me deeply. After 62 years of marriage, my father and mother passed away only 25 days apart. Two people who were joined together when they were young.
Who had twelve children. Who grew older together.Who shared 62 years of each other’s lives. And when their earthly journey came to an end, only 25 days separated their departures.
I have not tried to investigate what may have happened at soul level during that final period. I do not need to know. The image alone is enough for me.
Sixty-two years together.
Twelve children.
And in the end, only 25 days between their goodbyes and their departures.
I PAUSE AND TAKE THAT IN.
MY OWN YES ON 8-8
And that is why this 8-8 feels like so much more to me than a special spiritual date. It feels like a moment to look back. Not to remain in the past.
Today, in my thoughts, I bow before my father and my mother. And behind them, I bow before my grandparents. And behind them, before all those people whose names I may still have to discover. I do not have to relive their hardships in order to honour them. I do not have to carry their pain in order to belong to them.
What I AM allowed to carry forward is their strength.
Their courage. Their will to live.
Their ability to continue after adversity.
Their ability to bring forth life under difficult circumstances.
That is the inheritance I consciously and EVEN MORE DEEPLY EMBRACE today.
And perhaps, for me, that is the true meaning of the Lion’s Gate: daring to receive and embrace where you come from, without remaining imprisoned within it.
With your ancestors behind you and life stretching out before you, you take your own rightful place.
With DIGNITY.
OPEN.
COURAGEOUS.
With the courage of the lion.
And so, today, I also say YES.
YES to my father, Frans Soekdew Haridat. YES to my mother, Somaria Crescentia Saltanti.
YES to my ancestors and to my beloved Nanie, whom I was blessed to know.
YES to my Origins. YES to the strength that travelled through all those generations and eventually reached me too.
And above all: YES to my own life.
Papa and Mama, thank you for your YES on August 8, 1935.
At that moment, you could not have known where that one word would lead.
But 91 years later, one of your twelve children is sitting here, looking back with profound and intense LOVE, RESPECT, and GRATITUDE.
Your lionhearted strength and courage live on.
Your YES continues to live.
In me and through me.
I bow deeply before you.
Jeane Theresia Haridat
(Jane Mahalini Haridat)
PS: Do you have a special memory to the Lions Gate? Feel free to share with me/or all of us here...
P.S. Dear {%name%}, do you also have a special family memory connected to 08-08? Please feel free to share it with me.
Offered to you with love,
