sometimes you need somewhere to set the weight down

Back in 2018, Dennis and I spent about three weeks travelling around Spain, visiting the cities of Madrid, Barcelona, Seville and Granada, while Dennis’s mum looked after the bunnies for us back home.

One night, in one of the Airbnbs we stayed in, I couldn’t sleep. Money was worrying me. It had been worrying me for a long time, enough that sleepless nights weren’t unusual, and lying there that night wasn’t helping. Eventually I got out of bed, went into the living room and cried.

And cried.

There wasn’t anything I could do about my situation in the middle of the night. I couldn’t solve what was happening by thinking about it for another hour, and I certainly hadn’t managed to solve it by lying awake worrying. I simply reached a point where everything I’d been holding became too much and I needed to let some of it out.

At the time, I was taking part in a six-month business mastermind run by a woman who had claimed she could help me turn my business around. The experience hadn’t been positive and the support I believed had been promised simply wasn’t there. Although when I was sitting alone crying that night, I know I was still holding onto some hope that I could reach out to her for help. So, the following day I contacted her PA and asked for help. I was told the host would get in touch with me.

She never did.

I don’t remember needing somebody to arrive with the answer to my money problems. What I remember needing was much simpler than that. I just wanted somebody to listen without judging me, to let me talk and cry, to comfort me and reassure me while everything felt too much.

Around that same period, another woman known to the mastermind host was offering 1-1 sessions, and I decided to trial one with her. That experience was completely different. She genuinely cared. She listened. She held space for me and allowed me to arrive with whatever I was carrying at the time, without needing me to package it neatly or have already worked out what I needed from her.

Now, nearly a decade later, I still have a 90-minute session with that very same woman every single month. Over the years she has become my energy mentor, my confidante, my rock and my anchor, and those sessions have become part of my life. They aren’t always the same because I don’t always arrive needing the same thing. Sometimes I spend much of the session talking while she listens and holds space for me. At other times she’ll use different tools with me. And sometimes, particularly when I’m going through a difficult period, what I really need is the freedom to have a good cry with somebody who is completely there with me while I do. For instance, during the year after Forrest passed, my first bunny to pass away, her support became particularly important. It was an extraordinarily difficult year for me, and I genuinely don’t think I’d have made it through that year in the way I did without having her there beside me.

Yet, at the same time, it has taken me a long time to recognise that there’s something else about those 90 minutes that matters so much to me. They are mine. I have people in my life who love me. I have Dennis, even though he doesn’t quite do emotions in the same way I do and there are subjects I don’t feel able to explore deeply with him. I also have my parents in Northern Ireland, although as they get older I find myself increasingly reluctant to burden them with my problems, particularly Mum because I know she worries. And then I have my FWOGS, the Foreign Wives of German Speakers, who are genuinely good friends. We met through that shared experience of being English-speaking women married to German speakers, and over recent years we have talked openly about what’s happening in our lives and supported one another through it. I value those friendships enormously.

Friendship, though, is reciprocal. My friends have their own lives and their own problems. Sometimes one of them needs support and I’m there for her. Sometimes I’m the one who needs support and they’re there for me. Nobody is keeping score because that isn’t how friendship works. We simply make room for one another as friends do. There’s also geography involved now. The other FWOGS are in Salzburg and I’m in Frankfurt. We have WhatsApp and we can stay connected, although a message isn’t the same as sitting together face-to-face and having a proper heart-to-heart.

My monthly session with my mentor gives me something different. For those 90 minutes, I don’t have to ask how she is, though I do like to know. I don’t have to wonder whether she has something difficult happening in her own life that I need to make room for. I don’t need to notice when we’ve spent a long time talking about me and perhaps should move the conversation onto her. For those 90 minutes, the space is all mine.

That’s really something quite unusual when so many of our relationships naturally ask something of us in return. It doesn’t make those relationships less valuable or less supportive. I wouldn’t want my friendships to become one-sided relationships where everything was about me, because then they wouldn’t be the friendships I value so deeply. I’ve simply come to recognise that there are times when I need somewhere I don’t have to reciprocate.

Perhaps living abroad has made me more aware of that over the years because the people I care about are spread across different places. My parents are in Northern Ireland. The FWOGS are in Salzburg. I’m now in Frankfurt. There are people I can reach out to, although reaching somebody and having a space that is entirely yours for a while aren’t quite the same experience.

My own personal experience of receiving that kind of dedicated support has inevitably shaped the 1-1 Personal Support I now offer other women. I know what it has meant to me to have somewhere I can arrive without having to hold everything together, and I understand the value of being given space to talk about what’s happening without the conversation immediately becoming about what I should do to fix it.

I think back sometimes to that night in Spain, sitting alone in the living room crying because my worries about money had become too much to continue lying in bed with. What I wanted that night wasn’t complicated. I wanted somebody to listen.

All these years later, there are still times when I arrive at my monthly session carrying something my mentor cannot change. I can talk for 90 minutes and whatever I was worried about may still be there when the call ends. The circumstances haven’t magically changed simply because I’ve talked about them. And yet I’m often left feeling a little lighter. Maybe because, for those 90 minutes, I didn’t have to carry everything and hold myself together at the same time. Because some of the weight was allowed to sit somewhere else for a while.