In ‘Through the Trees’, actress Frances Lefebure, pregnant at the time, is candid about a child she lost before the end of her first pregnancy. That was a few months before a new pregnancy. “I started this new pregnancy with anxiety.”
Today, the 35-year-old actress has been mom to Saul, the son she had with Boris Van Severen, for over six months. But the pregnancy itself was not stress-free. “I started this pregnancy with anxiety,” says Lefebure during her three days in the forest Through the trees.
Raison d’être
The solo trip, three days and nights alone in one cabin in the woods, at times it affected the actress. Not having company around you creates resistance. And tears. “I’m used to taking care of people, but I notice that it is very intense to do this just for myself,” Lefebure tells no one in particular. Only a camerawoman is present, but she interacts as little as possible with the guest in question. “When I’m alone at home, I also find it difficult to make food for myself. While as soon as someone else is there, everything will be fine down to the last detail. I fix things in a number of people’s lives every day, that’s pretty much mine raison d’être. I get a lot of satisfaction and happiness from it. Me time? I don’t even know what that is.”
The actress can manage to stay in bed for an extra hour. But that’s it. “I’m less inclined to make healthy food or even get dressed when I’m alone for a day. I would be a very bad single.”
READ ALSO. A kind of nature documentary in which you watch for forty minutes how someone deals with being alone: this was ‘Through the trees’
Miscarriage
The actress is pregnant with Saul at the time of the filming in the forest. The unborn child moves constantly in her belly, but during the first day in the hut it is remarkably quiet. “I think I feel that I am restless and therefore calm down a bit,” says Lefebure. “I think babies feel a lot in the womb. Whether you are happy or sad or stressed. I don’t think we should blame ourselves as mothers, we can’t just be happy for nine months.”
The actress also writes in a booklet for Soso, the name she and Boris give to the unborn child. “I had a miscarriage before Soso arrived. About two or three months before. I now need that booklet to describe each step. Maybe in case things go wrong again, as a kind of incantation that it was definitely real.” Frances Lefebure herself also received such a book from her mother. “She also did that for me and that was such a great gift,” she said. “Especially because she is no longer here.” Lefebure lost her mother when she was only seventeen years old. “Her last word was: ‘two’. I always remembered that in the sense that there are two sides to everything. There is no right answer to anything.”
INFO. ‘Through the trees’, on Monday at 8.45 pm on VRT1
Tags: Frances Lefebure candid miscarriage trees describe step booklet
 candid about miscarriage in ‘Through the trees’: “That’s why I now describe every step in a booklet”){kind=link}