Sanne Dijkstra-Downie: Suddenly your world is upside down and you have to figure out your life again

At school, I loved learning. I was an academic kid, quiet and shy. I went to school in the Netherlands. That’s where I grew up.  

We moved around a bit because my dad was in the military, so we spent a few years in the Dutch Caribbean. So, I changed schools a few times. We lived in Curaçao for three years between the ages of six and nine, and they were quite formative years. I spent a lot of time in the water, really developed a love of the sea and snorkelling. 

We moved back to the Netherlands to a place called Leerdam, famous for the Leerdammer cheese. It is quite a small and – certainly at that time – quite a conservative town.  

I studied in Utrecht, did my first degree there, and then ended up in Edinburgh to do a masters. That was about 25 years ago, and I’ve never really left. 

I would always rush back for the Dutch Prime Minister’s Questions when I was a teenager, but I didn’t think I’d ever work in politics.  

I joined the Lib Dems in 2003 during the time when Charles Kennedy was outspoken against the Iraq war. That motivated me to join. From there, I became active in the party. I’ve met lots of friends through politics; we campaigned together, and some of the people that I met campaigning for the first time in 2007 are still some of my best friends today – people like Alex Cole-Hamilton and Kevin Lang, who I’ve been friends with for the best part of 20 years now.  

I’ve always been interested in the environment, and so I would say I’ve come at politics primarily as somebody interested in civil liberties, but also the environment and climate change. It was really Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth that I remember as a real moment for me and it inspired me to make an impact on the climate and environment. I met Al Gore in 2021 at Cop26 and I was able to shake his hand and thank him for inspiring me. It was a really lovely moment. 

When I was elected as an MSP I was worried I was going to be really out of my comfort zone all of the time. Having been a councillor before, and having experience of dealing with casework, speaking in a chamber, doing some of the public-facing stuff, it’s surprised me how natural that kind of progression has been into this new role. 

A really good piece of advice I’ve had since I got into politics was around me having a real fear of public speaking. Up until fairly recently, I would get incredibly nervous and my legs would start shaking. And it was actually Alex [Cole-Hamilton] who said, ‘you know you feel all these butterflies, what you need to do is make those butterflies fly in formation and point them in the right direction’. Just visualising that really helped. I still get nervous and I still take it seriously, and I’m definitely not blasé about speaking in public, but it helps me to point the butterflies in the right direction.  

I was a fundraiser for the University of Edinburgh for a long time before I was an MSP. I loved that job. I loved talking about climate research and ocean conservation and getting people enthusiastic enough that they’d fund projects.  

I was a professional face painter in my spare time. At one of our local party dinners last year, the auction prize was for me to paint Alex Cole-Hamilton as a tiger.  

I got into it when my eldest was born. She’s 14 now. I always was interested in creative stuff and thought I needed a creative outlet. I’ve done stints at Edinburgh Zoo. I’m still on the rota, but I don’t really have the time for it now. 

Away from politics, the thing I am most proud of is the Ocean Leadership Programme that we set up at Edinburgh University. I worked on that right from the beginning with two academics who were really passionate about it. I helped raise the money for it, and what it does is support people who work on ocean conservation around the world.

Obviously, personally, [the other thing] would have to be my children. 

The worst thing that somebody’s ever said to me is that your child has cancer. Or actually, the exact wording was my husband saying “they found a tumour”. One of my kids was diagnosed with cancer when she was six.  

I’ve not spoken much about it, but we had a childhood cancer debate in the chamber and I spoke about it then, and obviously that changes your life completely as a family with a six-year-old and a three-year-old sibling. Suddenly your world is upside down and you have to figure out your life again.  

She’s well now, thankfully. But for that one year when we had to go through those treatments, we just had to keep going. You just have no choice but to deal with that. 
 
One of the things that motivates me in politics that has actually come out of that experience is supporting families of children who are going through a serious illness like that. Because one of the things we found is that, whilst she got good care, there was much less focus on the families.  

You’re the ones providing all the care, and a lot of it hangs on you as parents while you’re just trying to hold it together. I’m actually meeting with the minister later this month. She very kindly agreed to speak with to me about mental health provision, not just for the children who are going through this, but for the parents as well, because I think that is a piece that’s missing from the conversation, and that’s a bit of lived experience that I can bring to it. 

Families need to have access to mental health professionals. There’s so much that comes at you in that situation that even if there is some provision somewhere, you just don’t have the mental space to even look for that. So, for that to be offered to you, one way or another, I think is quite important.  

But that shouldn’t just be for kids with cancer. There are a whole range of parents going through something like this, and a lot of them come to me. Maybe that is because of my experience. 
 
I speak to a lot of parents of kids with additional support needs who are just at the end of their tethers, and they don’t know where to find support because they are dealing with their day-to-day all the time.  

We need to look after the parents a little bit better, because if the parents are okay, you know they can care for their children. It’s a bit like when you’re on a plane and they say put your own put your own mask on before helping others with theirs.