losing confidence in something you used to do

My first walks in Frankfurt’s Stadtwald (literally, city forest) felt far more significant than they probably looked from the outside. They weren’t recognised trails with reassuring signs telling me where to go next. I had Google Maps open and was relying on it completely, checking where I was, following the route and trying not to think too far ahead about whether I’d manage to get myself where I intended to go.

The strange thing was that none of this should have felt particularly significant. I’ve walked all my life. When we lived in Switzerland, I regularly went out walking alone for four, five, even six hours, walking through forests and countryside from one train station to another. I didn’t think of myself as brave for doing it. I didn’t need to build myself up beforehand. Walking alone was simply something I did.

Yet in Frankfurt, years later, deciding to go walking by myself and actually leaving home turned out to be two very different things: I’d decide I was going to do it, and then my head would kick in and talk me out of it. I’d promise myself again that I would go, then doubts would start appearing and I’d find another reason to wait. This went on for around two weeks, which felt slightly ridiculous when I knew how many hours I’d once spent wandering around Switzerland alone without giving it much thought.

Eventually, I followed through. I walked. I followed Google Maps. I arrived where I meant to arrive. Then I did it again. Those early walks were deliberately fairly straightforward. They didn't need to be anything more. What mattered was that every time I went out, something I’d stopped trusting became a little less uncertain. I could navigate. I could walk for hours. I could get myself where I wanted to go. I wasn’t discovering new abilities. I was finding evidence that some of the old ones were still there.

The loss of confidence had happened much more quickly. Soon after we moved to Salzburg, I’d gone out alone to explore. At that point I was used to the way walking routes had been signposted in Switzerland. There, yellow walking signs were everywhere, and I’d become accustomed to being able to follow them without worrying too much about what happened next.

On that first Salzburg walk, I followed the route until the signs simply stopped. I didn’t yet know the area. I struggled for a long time to work out how to get home, turning what could have been a journey of around thirty minutes into something considerably longer. By the time I finally arrived back, I was exhausted and my confidence had taken quite a knock. It takes so much to build up your confidence and so little to shatter it. That's for me anyway.

Afterwards, Dennis increasingly took care of the navigation when we were out exploring together. He’s not a walker nor did he suddenly decide he wanted responsibility for finding every route. I was struggling with something and he stepped in because he was more confident with maps and technology. I stepped back, he stepped forward.

For a while, that was useful. Over the years, though, I became accustomed to leaving those things with him. If we were walking somewhere unfamiliar, he checked the map. If we needed to work out the route, he did it. There was no particular moment when I decided I could no longer manage these things myself. I simply became less practised at doing them because somebody else was already doing them.

Then our circumstances changed and, if I wanted to walk as much as I wanted to, I could no longer rely on Dennis always being there. Once I’d managed those first few Frankfurt walks, something began to shift through repetition rather than determination. I didn’t wake up feeling more confident one morning. I went out uncertain, came home having managed, and the next time my mind started telling me I couldn't do it, I had evidence that I could.

As the local walks became easier, I began getting bored with covering similar ground and started looking further afield. That was when I found the Spessartweg, a series of three long-distance walking routes through a large, heavily wooded low mountain range not too far from Frankfurt, where each route is marked by a stylised woodpecker. My virtual AI walking companion and I began referring to these walks as "following the Woodpecker", which is essentially what I would be doing: finding one marker, then the next, and continuing along the trail.

Before that first walk, I had no idea whether the signposting would be reliable or whether I would even enjoy the route. It turned out to be beautifully marked, and I loved it. Only after completing that first section did the possibility of doing all three Spessartweg routes begin to feel realistic. Altogether they cover around 180 kilometres, and I plan to complete them over multiple days, returning home after each day’s walk rather than treating them as one continuous expedition. Only a few weeks earlier, I wouldn't even have been looking for something like that.

My growing confidence, however, was not uninterrupted. During a walk through Frankfurt's Stadtwald, I became aware of a man some distance behind me and started wondering whether he was following me. I still don’t know whether he was. My route changed direction several times and, eventually, I lost sight of him. The experience shook me. Afterwards, I found a practical way to give myself a little more reassurance when walking alone, and gradually I began going out again without that one experience becoming the reason I stopped.

That mattered because I could easily have allowed it to confirm every earlier doubt. Instead, there were more walks. More routes where Google Maps worked. More Woodpecker markers that appeared where I hoped they would. More occasions when I went out alone and returned without anything particularly noteworthy happening. Somewhere amongst all that ordinary evidence, I stopped being quite so aware of myself as a woman walking alone.

On one recent section of the Spessartweg, I saw a cyclist early in the walk. For the rest of the three hours I saw absolutely nobody. It didn’t faze me at all. I noticed that afterwards because there had been a point when being that alone would have occupied much more of my attention. This time, I’d simply been walking.

Then I got home and found myself thinking about a section I'd walked through that day called Wolfsgarten (literally, wolf's garden). Something that hadn't really registered while I was walking suddenly crossed my mind. What else might I encounter alone in those forests? Deer wouldn’t bother me. Rabbits or hares certainly wouldn’t. Foxes would probably be fine. Then my mind moved on to wild boar. Wolves. That caused another wobble.

I’m still having wobbles every now and then. Confidence hasn’t yet returned as some permanent state where I no longer question myself or imagine what might go wrong. A difficult experience can still unsettle me. Something unfamiliar can still make me hesitate. What seems different now is how much authority that hesitation has.

When Living Abroad Changes What You Rely on Your Partner For

Living abroad creates plenty of opportunities for one person to step forward when the other is struggling with something unfamiliar. Sometimes that’s exactly what we need. The difficulty can come much later, when the original reason has passed and we realise we’ve become accustomed to leaving that part of life in somebody else's hands.

This is something that can emerge in Personal Support sessions too, when a woman begins noticing that confidence, independence or some other familiar part of herself has become quieter after years of adapting. There isn’t always a single event to unravel. Sometimes there’s simply a part of herself she hasn’t used for a while.

I don’t know yet how I’ll feel when other uncertainties similar to “Wolfsgarten” will appear as I work my way through the Spessartweg. For now, I know that one appeared and I didn’t immediately decide to stop. That feels different from where I began.