Challenges & life transitions

The session unfolds quietly. On the screen, her face looks more relaxed than in previous weeks. The results are reassuring. Those around her feel relieved. “You’re doing better,” they tell her. Things seem to be settling back into place. Schedules. Responsibilities. Projects that had been put on hold. She speaks about all this without emphasis. Then, after a slightly longer silence, she adds: “I don’t want to go back to the former formula.” The sentence is not provocative. It challenges nothing. It simply lands. And something shifts in the space between us. It is no longer only a matter of improvement. No longer about recovering what was interrupted. Something else is opening. More precise. More demanding. The word lingers for a moment. Formula. As if it referred to a precise arrangement, a combination that had held together until now. A particular way of distributing energy. Of meeting expectations. Of carrying the load. Of fitting multiple variables into an equation that more or less worked. That formula had allowed her to move forward. It was not absurd. It had even proved effective. But it relied on parameters that, today, are no longer the same. When one variable changes, the outcome changes as well. Even if we try to preserve the same gestures, the same schedule, the same commitments. The apparent balance no longer produces the same result. After a crossing—whether it is called illness, separation, burnout, or professional upheaval—something fairly predictable happens around us. We speak of recovery. We highlight progress. We celebrate that “things are getting back to normal.” Going back becomes a reassuring horizon. Going back to work. Going back to the usual pace. Going back to former availability. As if the episode had been nothing more than a parenthesis, an incident that could be neatly closed. This movement is understandable. It soothes. It restores familiar markers. It allows those around us to exhale. But it rests on an implicit assumption: that the original structure still holds. That we can reinstall the same parameters and obtain a similar result. And yet, the person concerned may feel something else. Not an inability to resume. Not a dramatic fragility. But a subtler misalignment. A sense that the former equation no longer quite matches who she has become. This is where the tension appears. Between collective relief and intimate experience. Between the idea of restored normality and the perception of an inner shift that cannot simply be sealed off. What has changed is not always immediately visible. It is not necessarily spectacular. It is not a total reversal or a grand revelation. It is quieter than that. Something has been felt to the point of limit. A fatigue that can no longer be minimized. A tension that has become tangible. A way of making oneself available that no longer feels natural. Sometimes it is the body that has spoken. Sometimes a relationship has cracked. Sometimes a sense of absurdity has settled where, before, one simply kept going without much questioning. What once held has revealed its cost. The former formula may have relied on the ability to absorb, to anticipate, to smooth over conflict, to maintain balance for everyone. It produced an acceptable result. It allowed life to function. But it required an expenditure of energy whose magnitude was not always fully conscious. The crossing has made visible what until then remained implicit. We do not emerge unchanged from a moment in which we have brushed against a limit. Even if everything appears stabilized on the surface, the inner gaze has shifted. Going back would therefore require something very particular. Not merely resuming activities, but reactivating the same inner parameters. The same availability. The same reflexes. The same way of absorbing what overflows. Going back would mean considering that the limit encountered was merely an accident. That the experience can be closed and the initial equation reinstated without modifying its data. But one variable has changed. Perhaps tolerance for overload. Perhaps patience in the face of incoherence. Perhaps the ability to remain silent when something feels wrong. When one element transforms, the overall reaction is no longer identical. We may attempt to reproduce the same gestures, the same organization, the same commitments. The outcome will not be the same. There will be tension—sometimes barely perceptible, sometimes very clear. Not wanting to go back does not mean rejecting stability. It means recognizing that the former combination no longer corresponds to the current configuration. It is not about breaking with everything. It is about not pretending that nothing has shifted. But refusing the former formula does not immediately provide the next one. There is a time without a clear equation. A moment when we know what we no longer wish to reproduce, without yet being able to name precisely what we want to build. This in-between can be destabilizing. Not only inwardly. Around us, familiar markers also waver. Those reassured by the idea of going back may grow impatient or fail to understand this new restraint. “But you’re better now…” The sentence is not malicious. It simply expresses the desire for things to become legible again. Gradually, another emotion may arise: guilt. The guilt of not matching the implicit expectation. The guilt of slowing down when, technically, one could resume. The guilt of introducing uncertainty where restored stability was hoped for. We begin to wonder if we are exaggerating. If we are complicating things. If we should simply make the effort to step back into the former framework. This is often where the temptation is strongest to reinstall the old model—to soothe collective unease, to silence doubt, to become reassuring again. And yet, it is in this interval that something more attuned begins to take shape. Not a spectacular transformation, but a finer coherence. A different relationship to energy, to time, to limits. A way of inhabiting one’s life that requires less tension and fewer renunciations of self. This intermediate time is not a whim. It is the condition for a more just

The world has never been so connected, and yet rarely so fragmented. Exchanges are constant, voices unceasing, and networks saturated with reactions, opinions, and alerts. At the same time, lines of fracture continue to multiply. Viewpoints harden, disagreements become matters of identity, and fear and anger circulate without always finding a space where they can be transformed. Hyperconnection no longer guarantees connection; it often deepens a more diffuse form of isolation. In this context, I came to understand that an inner sanctuary is not a refuge from the world, but a condition for remaining present within it. Not a way of withdrawing from what is happening, but a way of not being swept away by emotional currents that leave little room for nuance or breath. Like on an airplane, there is that simple, counter-intuitive gesture: putting on your own oxygen mask first, not out of selfishness, but in order not to run out of air. This is the place where I regenerate, so as not to be carried away by the currents of fear, anger, or resignation. It is a space that challenges me, where I am alone, where doubt is present. Who am I to step out of the herd? How will I survive without the noise, in the quiet? Will I find my place again when it is time to return? These are questions I ask myself. They are uncomfortable, but necessary. When I speak of inner sanctuary, I sometimes sense resistance, explicit or unspoken. As if the word immediately suggested withdrawal, stepping too far aside, or even disengagement. As if choosing a protected space meant turning one’s back on the world, stepping out of relationship, refusing what makes up the very substance of human connection. This confusion is one I carried myself for a long time. For a while, I believed that remaining open meant being available to everything, all the time. That filtering, choosing, or setting limits necessarily meant hardening, disappointing, or closing off. This belief was often accompanied by a subtler form of denial: denial of my fatigue, of my inner resistance, but also of what certain relationships expected of me without ever naming it. As long as I stayed open, I could avoid seeing what was really at play, both within myself and in the gaze of the other. From this perspective, sanctuary appeared as a radical, almost suspect option, incompatible with ideas of presence, generosity, or connection. As if relationship could only exist at the cost of constant availability, even when that availability was slowly eroding from within. Not choosing it made it possible to maintain a fragile balance, avoiding the need to look at what no longer nourished, what rested on projections, implicit expectations, or roles that had become too narrow. Over time, that equation cracked. Not because the world had lost its importance, but because the denial had become too costly. It was not relationship itself that exhausted me, but the constant effort of remaining in relationships that no longer asked me to be present, only available. What then emerged was not a refusal of the world, but a way out of denial — a way of meeting relationship differently, from a place that was more lucid, more inhabited. ✦ I. Taking Care Is Not Closing Off It is often here that the shift occurs, almost without our noticing. Taking care of what is alive within us is easily confused with withdrawal, as if any limit immediately restricted connection, movement, or relationship. I long believed that tending to something essential in me meant distancing myself, stepping back, even disappearing from view. Experience has taught me otherwise. What belongs to closing off has a much more global quality. It is a movement that spreads beyond what is necessary, cutting too widely, often after fatigue, saturation, or disappointment. It carries away not only what harms, but also what might still nourish. In such moments, the world itself can begin to feel suspect, and relationship loses its sense of safety. What is at stake here, by contrast, requires a finer, more demanding gesture. It is not about withdrawing, but about discernment. Recognising that not everything can enter the same place, at the same time, with the same intensity. This is not a refusal of connection, but a refusal to dissolve within it. It means accepting that certain presences, words, or expectations no longer have access to what has become central, sensitive, and alive. Within this movement, it sometimes becomes necessary for certain relationships to pause or come to an end. Not out of hardness or rejection, but because maintaining them would come at too high a cost. Such a break does not signal withdrawal from the world; it is a precise response to what is no longer just. What matters is not the interruption itself, but what remains intact around it: the ability to stay in connection elsewhere, differently, from a place that is no longer constantly eroded. II. What Silence Makes Inevitable This is not only a space where certain relationships recede. It is also a place where agitation diminishes, sometimes abruptly. As solicitations decrease and exchanges become less constant, something shifts in the texture of everyday life. There are fewer intermediaries, fewer detours available. Silence settles in — not as immediate relief, but as a demanding presence. This silence compels. It confronts what could previously be diluted in connection, movement, or dispersion. Without these external supports, it becomes harder to maintain certain inner fictions, to tell ourselves that everything is fine simply because something is still circulating. This space removes subtle shock absorbers. It makes tensions, fatigue, and unanswered questions more visible, without offering ready-made answers. It is often here that the choice truly begins to carry weight. Not because it isolates, but because it reduces possibilities for avoidance. Some relationships, even impoverished or unbalanced ones, still offered a form of noise, a sense of movement, sometimes even an unconscious proof of existence. Silence, by contrast, sustains no illusion. It calls

When people ask me what I do, what I offer is often very quickly reformulated: “Oh, so you help people with their problems.” Each time, something in me freezes. Not a clear opposition, but rather a form of dissonance, a quiet misunderstanding. I find myself wondering what is really at play: is it a way of simplifying, of reassuring oneself, a projection, or a refusal to look at what escapes familiar categories? It took me time to find the right word, the one that does not seek to reduce or explain too quickly, but simply to clarify. Today, I have found the formulation that makes sense to me: I accompany women through life passages. There are moments that call for neither solutions, nor methods, nor processes, nor objectives, nor transformation. Moments when life does not ask to be understood, but to be crossed. Not because it is obscure or absurd, but because it unfolds on another register altogether, more raw, more fluid, less governable. A passage is not a project one manages. It is not a clearly marked before and after. It is not a promise of outcome. It is an in-between, often unforeseen, in which one finds oneself carried by a river already in motion, without immediately realizing that the crossing had already begun. The current is there. Life imposes itself. We no longer control it in the same way. And sometimes, in those moments, all that is possible, all that is truly supportive, is not to be alone in the boat. ✦ I. When the word “problem” fails to speak to lived experience Speaking of a “problem” is often a quick, and most often unconscious, way of naming what a woman might be going through, without fully measuring the real impact such a word can have. The word “problem” carries something reassuring, distancing, almost practical. It presumes an identifiable cause, a circumscribed difficulty, and somewhere, a solution to be found. It installs the idea that what is being lived is a temporary and individual dysfunction, calling for repair, correction, a return to balance. In some situations, this reading may be relevant. But there are moments in life that radically escape this logic. Moments in which what is unfolding is not a problem to be solved, but a deep displacement of being, a loss of bearings that cannot be approached as a simple obstacle on a path imagined as already laid out. To speak of a problem in such passages often reduces the lived experience. Not out of ill intent, but because the word has no room for what is blurred, unstable, still unformed. It closes too quickly what is, in reality, in the process of coming undone, without yet knowing what might, or might not, take shape again. This way of naming things often reassures those around. It gives the impression that the situation is contained, that it can be understood from the outside, that it will eventually resolve itself. It also allows, at times, a certain distance from what unsettles us, from what calls into question our own certainties about continuity, meaning, and the control we believe we have. But for the one who is crossing, this reformulation can become an additional experience of isolation, even of unintentional judgment. Because what she is living is not necessarily repairable. It is not always about getting better, nor even about understanding what is happening. Sometimes it is about remaining present while something collapses, while former identities, roles, and inner reference points cease to function as before. In those moments, ordinary language lacks substance. It slides past the real experience. It leaves no space for the in-between, for that uncertain zone where one no longer knows what is dying nor what might be born. It allows neither duration, nor slowness, nor the disorientation that so often accompanies such passages. II. Passage as a fundamental human experience We are brought, at times, to confront a loss of bearings: the old world stops working, first in imperceptible ways, then more loudly. What once provided reference points — roles, certainties, ways of defining ourselves and projecting forward — gradually loses its relevance or its meaning. Nothing has yet fully collapsed, and yet something no longer holds. Familiar gestures become hesitant, words fail us, and known frameworks no longer offer the support they once promised. In these passages, it is not only an external situation that changes, but the very way we inhabit our lives. Reference points fall away, not always noisily. There is not yet an intelligible narrative, no global understanding, no stabilized meaning to lean on. What is being lived is often diffuse, difficult to name, and this is precisely what makes the experience so disorienting. These moments can take many forms. They may be woven through visible or invisible losses, identity shifts, bodily transformations, relationships that unravel, move, or disappear. At times, they manifest as a formless inner call, a persistent sense of dissonance, a feeling of no longer being able to continue as before, without yet knowing how to do otherwise. What characterizes these passages is not so much their content as their quality. They suspend what once seemed obvious. They undo overly coherent narratives. They place us in a particular time, where we move without a map, without guarantees, often without adequate language. A time in which one can neither go back nor truly project oneself forward. Passage is a fundamental human experience because it touches that fragile zone where identity reshapes itself without our mastering the process. It lays bare our relationship to time, to loss, to uncertainty. And it reminds us, sometimes painfully, that life does not always unfold according to the scenarios we had imagined. ✦ III. Speaking of passage differently: the metaphor of the river The word “transformation” is everywhere in contemporary narratives. It suggests a marked passage, oriented toward an expected betterment, tinged with a will toward ascent. It presumes that one state gives way to another, that a before leads to an

Those well-intended words that can quietly wound There are words we never forget. Not because they were meant to be violent, but because they landed in the wrong place, at the wrong moment, with a force no one had anticipated. They often appear during times of crisis, and most particularly when illness enters the picture. Words spoken to reassure, to understand, or simply to fill the silence — and which sometimes, despite themselves, wound deeply. I have lived this gap between what was said to me and what I was actually experiencing. And today, in my work, I accompany women every day who are facing similar trials: cancer, burnout, separation, a loss of bearings. In these moments, words play a crucial role. They can open a space or close it. They can support or weaken. This article was born from this double experience: that of a woman who has known shock and inner freezing, and that of a practitioner who now understands the psychological mechanisms at work. This is not about blaming or judging. It is about shedding light on what truly unfolds within the relationship, and offering points of reference to better accompany someone going through a time of vulnerability. When a person announces a serious illness, something immediately shifts in the relational field. Time thickens. The body goes into alert. A zone of uncertainty opens — for the person concerned, of course, but also for those around them. In this fragile space, words carry a particular weight. They can become a bridge, or a wall. And yet, what hurts is not always perceived in the moment. Very often, the person who is ill does not react immediately. She absorbs it. She continues. She faces the urgency of what she is living. The mechanism of shock can be completely silent: an inner freezing that does not express itself, but leaves a trace. It is sometimes only later — days, weeks, or even years afterward — that the absurdity or unintended violence of certain phrases becomes fully visible. When the nervous system finally releases. When memory reorganizes itself. When meaning returns. What hurts is not the other person’s intention — it is often clumsy but sincere — but their inability to remain present with vulnerability. A phrase that is too quick, too rational, too clever can give the impression of being brought back to a place where complexity is no longer allowed to exist. The wound comes from there: from the feeling that lived reality must be lightened, corrected, or covered over, instead of being truly heard. When someone learns that a loved one is ill, something intense is stirred within them as well. Illness brings uncertainty, finitude, and a loss of control — realities that the psyche naturally tries to avoid. Faced with this tension, several internal mechanisms are set in motion, often without our awareness, and give rise to these clumsy yet frequent phrases. ✦ Discomfort with vulnerability It is difficult to remain present with the suffering of someone we love. The mind then looks for a quick way out: to reassure, to minimize, to explain, to stay positive. This is a human reflex, not a lack of love. ✦ Fear of doing the wrong thing Many people are afraid of saying “the wrong thing” and compensate by speaking too quickly, too forcefully, or by retreating into ready-made phrases. Words then become a way of calming their own anxiety. ✦ Denial Denial is a powerful protective mechanism. The mind temporarily refuses the gravity of the situation. Hence these phrases that attempt to bring reality back to something manageable, as if seriousness could disappear through the force of words. ✦ Projection The person speaks less about you than about themselves. They express their own fears, their own representations, their own relationship to illness. The phrase becomes an involuntary mirror of their anxieties. ✦ The need to control what cannot be controlled Faced with what escapes them, some people cling to statistics, anecdotes, or external examples. “I know someone who…” or “But statistically, this is a type of cancer that heals very well.” This is a way of making the unknown less threatening, by reducing it to numbers or narratives that primarily soothe their own fear. ✦ Social pressure to “stay positive” We live in a culture that values performance, courage, and optimism. Vulnerability, on the other hand, is often poorly understood. Hence injunctions such as “You’re strong,” “You’ll get through this,” or “You’re a warrior.” These mechanisms are neither intentional nor conscious; they are clumsy attempts to cope with what feels disturbing. Recognizing them helps us understand why these phrases arise, and how to accompany more justly. Certain phrases come up repeatedly when illness enters a conversation. They may seem harmless, sometimes even encouraging. But when heard in the midst of an ordeal, their effect can be quite different. “But… hadn’t you felt anything?” Intended meaning: to understand, to make sense of what happened. Real impact: this question can create a latent sense of guilt, as if not having “seen it coming” were a fault or a lack of attention to oneself. “At least you’re well taken care of now.” Intended meaning: to reassure oneself, and the other, by relying on medical care. Real impact: the phrase bypasses anxiety, uncertainty, and the time of shock. It gives the impression that the situation is already “under control,” while nothing has yet stabilized inwardly. “I work in this field, I see lots of people recover, I’m not worried.” Intended meaning: to normalize, to lighten the situation. Real impact: the person’s illness is dissolved into a statistical generality. What is lived as singular and deeply unsettling becomes just one case among others, which can intensify the feeling of being misunderstood or drowned in technical discourse. “Oh but you, you have the light treatment… I know someone who…” Intended meaning: to reassure through comparison. Real impact: comparison invalidates lived reality. It denies the specific difficulty of the journey and suggests that “it