Zoë van der Meer (16): the girl who no longer dared go to school, and wrote a book about it

The big doors of secondary school

Almost everyone remembers their first day at secondary school. The new classmates. The unfamiliar classrooms. The older pupils in the corridors. And the feeling that you are suddenly no longer a child, but not quite an adult either.

For Zoë van der Meer from Amsterdam, that period began with the same big change. From an early age Zoë loved the stage. She sang, acted and enjoyed performing. She was used to putting herself out there.

But at secondary school that changed. Suddenly there was a world full of unwritten rules. What do you wear? What do others think of you? When do you belong? And what happens when you are just a little different from the rest?

Zoë began to feel more and more pressure. Not only to get good marks, but also to get everything right socially. And it was that last part that proved complicated. She felt as though secondary school was a kind of game whose rules nobody had ever explained to her.

Everyone seemed to know how it worked. Except her.

The pressure to fit in

Secondary school is more than a place where you learn maths, writing and history. It is also where young people discover who they are. Friendships change. Cliques form. Clothes, appearance and behaviour take on a new meaning.

For many young people these are exciting, sometimes uncomfortable years. For Zoë, the pressure at some point became overwhelming. She later described how hard it could be to stay yourself when you are constantly preoccupied with how others see you.

In one of her poems, titled Het Spel (The Game), she describes for example the insecurity that can arise when you stand out. Even something as simple as a striking hair colour can suddenly feel like a risk at school.

It is a thought many teenagers will recognise. You want to be yourself. But you also don't want to fall outside the group. And between those two desires an enormous tension can build. For Zoë, that tension became harder and harder to bear.

When going to school was no longer a given

The problems were not limited to ordinary insecurity. Zoë began having panic attacks. Sometimes they were so severe that for long stretches she could only attend school part of the time. That meant she missed not only lessons, but also the ordinary moments with classmates.

The conversations at break time. Cycling home together. The small events that other pupils take for granted. It was not always clear to her friends why she was absent so often.

And for Zoë herself it was hard to explain what was going on. How do you tell someone that something that seems normal to them feels almost impossible to you? How do you explain that you really want to join in, but that your body and your thoughts sometimes won't cooperate?

In September 2026 Zoë told AT5 and NH Nieuws, Amsterdam's local and regional news broadcasters, that people did not really know what was going on with her. She also found it difficult to talk about it herself. That made her situation all the lonelier. Because even when people care about you, it is hard for them to help if they don't understand what you are going through.

A notebook for everything

Eventually Zoë found a way to put her feelings into words. She started to write. Not because she planned to become a famous author. Not to sell a book. But because it helped her understand what was happening inside her head.

In her diary she could write down things she hardly dared say out loud. About fear. About the pressure to perform. About the feeling of being different. About friendships and expectations. And about the search for who she really was.

Her psychologist encouraged her to keep writing. It became a way of giving her experiences a place. Gradually the diary entries turned into poems. Not traditional poems with a fixed rhyme scheme, but prose poems: short, personal pieces in which the line between story and poetry blurs.

Zoë discovered that with words she could express something for which she often found no room in conversation. The paper asked no questions. It did not judge. And she did not have to be afraid of saying the wrong thing.

A teacher sees something special

At some point Zoë told people at school about her poems. Her Dutch teacher saw something in them. Why not use those texts for her profielwerkstuk? The profielwerkstuk is normally a school assignment, a kind of final-year project, in which pupils research a subject or work out a project.

For Zoë it became something deeply personal. She gathered the texts she had written over the past few years. Poems about her experiences at secondary school, but also about the world around her.

In the end a collection of 24 prose poems took shape. The title became De grote deuren (The Big Doors). A reference to the doors of the school she had once walked through as a new pupil. Those doors stood for a new phase of life.

But also for the world in which she had felt insecure for years. What began as a personal diary now became a real piece of schoolwork. And that could have been the end of the story. A special school project, a proud teacher and a pupil who had made something that helped her come to terms with her experiences.

But things turned out differently.

A publisher who was impressed

The poems found their way to the publisher Luitingh-Sijthoff. A publishing house that brings out books by well-known Dutch and international authors. There the texts were read. And the editors were impressed.

Not only because Zoë was so young. But above all because of the way she described her experiences. Editor Paulien Sparreboom told AT5 in September 2026 that Zoë could not only reflect well on her own feelings.

She also saw sharply what was happening around her. The publisher found that ability remarkable in someone her age. Zoë was offered a contract. Her profielwerkstuk would actually be published as a book.

A sixteen-year-old girl who had struggled to go to school every day suddenly became a published writer. It was an enormous change. But not without new uncertainties. Because writing something down in a diary is one thing.

Sharing those same thoughts with unknown readers is something else entirely.

September 2026: her book is in the shops

In September 2026 De grote deuren was published in book form. The collection runs to about eighty pages and contains 24 prose poems. Its subtitle reads: De middelbareschooltijd in 24 prozagedichten (Secondary school in 24 prose poems). The book is about pressure to perform, social expectations, anxiety, low mood, recovery and personal growth.

But it is not a self-help book. Zoë does not try to offer a manual for how to be happy at school. She describes her own experiences. And precisely because of that, other young people can recognise something of themselves in it.

The book went on sale in bookshops in the Netherlands and Belgium. There was also an audiobook, which Zoë narrated herself. That last detail makes her story special. The words she once could not say out loud can now be heard in her own voice.

And anyone who opens the collection is not reading the thoughts of an adult looking back on their schooldays decades later. But those of someone who is still right in the middle of it.

Publishing a book doesn't solve everything

It would be a nice, simple story if Zoë had no longer been afraid of anything after her book came out. But life doesn't work like that. In September 2026 she said candidly that she still got nervous when she had to talk about her experiences.

She was proud of her book. But the idea that strangers could read her personal thoughts also felt daunting. The media attention brought new experiences that she had to process.

So she decided to seek therapeutic support again. Not because everything was going wrong again, but because a lot was changing in her life. She said she was now doing considerably better.

At the same time, she did not want to pretend that her problems had disappeared completely. That is perhaps one of the most important parts of her story. Success is not a miracle cure. A book contract does not undo difficult experiences.

And a positive review does not mean insecurity has suddenly vanished. But it can show how much someone has achieved in a short time. For Zoë, that realisation mattered.

The girl of a year ago

During the interview with AT5, Zoë looked back on herself about a year earlier. On the girl who felt insecure. Who struggled with school. Who mostly dared to write her feelings down only in her notebook.

She said how much she would have liked to show that girl where she stood now. That others found her work beautiful. That she had written a book. And that she now dared to do much more than she had thought back then.

It is a moving thought. Because when you are in the middle of a difficult period, it is sometimes hard to imagine that life could be very different a year later. Zoë could not have predicted that her personal writing would end up in a bookshop.

Let alone that she would give interviews about it. But that is what happened. Not because all her problems went away by themselves. But because she kept writing, got help and in the end dared to share her story.

A voice for a generation

The subjects Zoë writes about are not unique to her. Many young people feel pressure to get good marks. They compare themselves with others. They try to keep up friendships, find their place and at the same time meet the expectations of school, parents and themselves.

Social media can intensify that pressure, because it seems as if others are constantly having fun and have everything under control. But what is going on behind the scenes often stays invisible.

As a result, anyone who feels insecure sometimes thinks they are the only one. Zoë's poems show another side of teenage life. Not just parties, first crushes and friendships. But also doubts, tension and the feeling of falling short.

And because she describes those experiences while she is still young herself, her words sound different from those of adults trying to explain to young people how adolescence works. She speaks from her own life.

That gives her book a special significance.

October 2026: from school notebook to national radio

On 17 October 2026 Zoë was a guest on De Taalstaat, a programme about language, on NPO Radio 1. The programme discussed her book and the experiences behind it. It was another remarkable step. Just over a month after the publication of De grote deuren, she was now also talking about her work on national radio.

The young Amsterdam writer thus reached an audience far larger than her own school community. And the story that once began in a personal notebook was discussed on a programme devoted entirely to language.

Her book is still available, in print, digitally and as an audiobook. What Zoë will write next is not yet known. But her first publication is a fact. And perhaps more importantly: she has discovered that her own experiences can mean something to others too.

What makes it special is not just her book

Amsterdam has plenty of young talent. Children who excel at sport. Teenagers who make music. Young people who start businesses or achieve remarkable things at school. Zoë is now one of the young Amsterdammers who have published a book at an early age.

But that is not the only reason her story is special. It is also about the courage to make something personal visible. To say that things did not always go well at school. That she felt insecure.

That she needed help. And that it was sometimes hard simply to join in. Experiences like these often stay hidden. Not because young people don't go through them, but because talking about them can be difficult. Zoë found another way.

She started to write. And eventually she let others read along. That is no guarantee that all problems disappear. But it can be the beginning of something new.

The doors are still open

The big doors of her school were once the start of a difficult period. For Zoë they symbolised a world full of expectations and rules she did not always understand. Now those same doors form the title of her first book.

A book that shows how quickly a person's life can change. From a pupil who sometimes felt unable to go to school, to a young writer sharing her experiences with a national audience.

She is only sixteen. She has a whole life ahead of her. Perhaps she will write ten more books. Perhaps she will do something completely different. Perhaps she will return to singing or acting, which she enjoyed so much as a young girl.

We don't know yet. And we don't need to. Because what is special about her story is not that she already knows exactly what she wants to be. It is that she has found a way to make herself heard.

Zoë van der Meer shows that a remarkable Amsterdammer does not have to be someone who has already achieved everything. Sometimes it is a sixteen-year-old who discovers that her own story is worth telling.

And that makes her a remarkable Amsterdammer.

Sources

AT5 and NH Nieuws (20 September 2026), De Taalstaat on NPO Radio 1 (17 October 2026) and Uitgeverij Luitingh-Sijthoff. This portrait is based on public sources and does not contain a new interview. Personal experiences are included only insofar as Zoë has shared them publicly herself.