The Women Who Hold Us

There was a big time in my life when I didn’t really trust women and definitely not women in groups.

That feels strange to say now, because some of the people who have carried me through the hardest period of my life have been women.

Women who have listened to me cry.

Women who have heard the same story more times than either of us could probably count.

Women who have sat beside me through grief, anger, betrayal, confusion and fear.

Women who have picked me up when I have been at my lowest.

And, perhaps most importantly, women who have never made me feel judged for any of it.

But I wasn’t always comfortable with female friendship.

Learning to be wary

As a kid, I tended to find friendships with boys easier, they were way less complex. I had female friends, but my circle was very small.

Then from age 11 I went to an all-girls Roman Catholic high school.

Like many schools, there were very clear groups. The popular girls. The girls whose families had money. The outsiders. The various little circles everyone seemed expected to fit themselves into.

I never really belonged to any of them, so I had my own little circle there.

I was bullied on more than one occasion, and those experiences left their mark.

I learned that groups of girls could feel intimidating. I saw the gossip, the alliances, the "Frenemies" and the things that were sometimes said behind people's backs.

And somewhere along the way I started to become very suspicious and cautious of female friendships.

Why does she want to be my friend?

Can I actually trust her?

What might she say about me when I’m not there?

Those beliefs followed me into adulthood.

The tea room

When I started working in hospital pharmacy, there was a staff tea room where everyone (male and female) would sit during their breaks and lunches.

I remember sitting there listening to people talk about colleagues who weren't in the room.

Sometimes that person would then walk through the door and the whole atmosphere would suddenly change.

Conversation stopped.

Everyone went quiet.

The looks that would pass between people.

And you could almost feel the discomfort in the room.

Occasionally, I was the person walking through that door.

You immediately start wondering:

Were they talking about me?

What have I done?

What are people saying when I'm not here?

It sounds like such a small thing, but environments like that really teach you to stay guarded. Trust no-one.

And I did.

Keeping my circle small

Later, when I married, much of our social circle naturally became connected to my husband's friendships. My own small circle of previous friends I didn't really see much of. Most of them were single and living their single lives whereas my life was tied up in being a wife and mum.

There were wives and partners within my husbands circle of friends and there were women I liked, but I still rarely allowed myself to become deeply close to people.

One friendship within this circle did become closer, but eventually trust was broken.

Alcohol played a significant part in that friendship becoming difficult for me over the years of our friendship and I had started pulling away due to it. There were evenings where I found myself monitoring somebody else's behaviour rather than enjoying myself, and there were confidences during the later stages of my marriage breakdown that ultimately did not remain confidential.

Eventually I pulled away completely.

And once again, it reinforced that old belief:

Maybe keeping people at a distance is safer.

I never cut people out of my life for no reason, that is not who I am. It takes a lot for me to do this, and I had enough reasons at this point.

Then something changed.

The weekend that changed how I saw women

Around May 2023, I began attending women's retreats.

The first was a large retreat near Harrogate. I went with my best friend Norna and another woman, and there were perhaps sixty or seventy women attending.

There were workshops, conversations, experiences and women from completely different backgrounds coming together.

I loved it.

But another retreat a few months later, this time in Wales and again with Norna beside me, changed something much deeper.

At the beginning of the retreat we sat together in a sharing circle.

One by one, each woman explained why she was there.

And every woman was carrying something.

Grief.

Child loss.

Broken relationships.

Sexual violations.

Life transitions.

Heartbreak.

Things that had perhaps never been spoken aloud anywhere else.

Nobody needed to compete over whose pain was worse.

Nobody needed to fix anyone.

Nobody needed to gossip.

We simply listened.

That night we all sat around an open fire in a Teepee and we each chose to throw something into the flames and stated our intention to let go of something that was holding us back. In that moment I felt something release in me and the tears started to flow. The women beside me didn't try to fix me or automatically throw their arms around me to comfort me. They asked me a simple question:

What do you need?

What a powerful question. No overstepping boundaries and assuming I just needed a hug and comfort, they gave me the opportunity for me to tell them what I needed in that moment.

Over those next few days I experienced something I hadn't really understood before.

I experienced what it feels like to be genuinely held by women.

To be listened to without judgement.

To be supported without somebody needing something in return.

To be surrounded by women carrying their own wounds who could still reach across and offer kindness to another person.

Something in me softened.

I realised how much I had been missing.

My own world falling apart

Over the past 4 years, as my marriage and the life I thought I knew began to unravel, female friendship stopped being just something lovely to have.

It became part of how I survived.

My best friend, Norna, has walked almost every step of this journey with me. I love her more every day. I used to say that my husband was my soulmate, and I did truly believe that until I discovered all the deceit. Now I recognise that my soulmate is actually my best friend.

She has heard the tears.

The anger.

The disbelief.

The screaming.

The questions.

The moments where I couldn't see beyond what was happening.

And the moments where I was at my absolute lowest.

She has held my hand through all of it.

She has helped me look at situations from another perspective when I couldn't find one myself.

She has reminded me who I am when circumstances made me forget.

And through everything, I have never ever felt judged by her. Not once. She will call me out if she thinks I'm wrong or acting rashly and I love her for it.

There are people in your life for whom the words best friend almost don't feel big enough.

For me, she is one of those people.

And here in Dubai, my friends my "Du-Besties" Nikie and Helen have done something equally precious.

They have listened.

Again.

And again.

And again.

To the betrayals.

The deceit.

The grief.

The loneliness.

The confusion of trying to understand how a life can change so dramatically, and they too have picked me up off the floor when I struggled to do it myself.

There has never been:

"You've already told me this."

There has never been:

"You should be over this by now."

There has simply been friendship.

And I will never forget that.

Sometimes we need to tell the story more than once

When somebody is going through trauma, grief or enormous life change, they often tell the same story repeatedly. I know I have.

Not because they enjoy living inside it.

But because their mind is trying to understand what happened.

Sometimes we need to say the words fifty times before our brain finally begins to accept them.

A good friend understands that.

She doesn't necessarily offer solutions.

She doesn't tell you what you should have done.

She doesn't rush you towards the version of yourself she would find more comfortable.

Sometimes she simply says:

I'm here.

And sometimes those are the most powerful words another human being can give us.

Sisterhood isn't what I once thought it was

For a long time, when I thought about groups of women, I associated them with gossip, competition and judgement.

Now I see something completely different.

I see wisdom.

I see generosity.

I see compassion.

I see humour.

I see women sharing experiences that might help another woman feel less alone.

I see women saying:

"That happened to me too."

"I understand."

"Come and sit with us."

And there is enormous healing in that.

My experiences on those retreats eventually influenced something else too.

They helped me understand what I wanted Ovata to become.

Because coaching, for me, isn't simply about sitting across from one woman and telling her how to improve her life.

I want to create spaces where women can come together.

Workshops.

Conversations.

Communities.

Places where women going through transitions can meet other women who understand that life sometimes falls apart before it rearranges itself.

Places where women can talk honestly about relationships, identity, ageing, hormones, intimacy confidence, grief, reinvention and all the messy parts of being human that we so often believe we have to deal with privately.

Because we don't.

Find your women

If there is one thing this chapter of my life has taught me, it is this:

Find your women.

Not lots of them.

You don't need twenty best friends.

Find the women with whom you can take off the armour.

The women you can call when the polished version of you has disappeared.

The women who will celebrate your wins without envy and sit beside you in your losses without judgement.

The women who will gently challenge you when you need it but never abandon you when you're struggling.

And then be that woman for somebody else.

Because life will change.

Relationships will change.

Families change.

Bodies change.

Careers change.

We lose people.

We lose versions of ourselves.

And sometimes we have to build an entirely new life from the pieces of the old one.

Doing that alone is possible.

But doing it while surrounded by women who genuinely love you?

That changes everything.

So to Norna, Nikie, Helen, and every single one of my friends who has sat beside me, listened to me, checked on me, made me laugh, let me cry, challenged me, hugged me or simply reminded me that I wasn't alone:

Thank you.

I used to believe female friendship was something to be cautious of.

Now I know it can be one of the safest places in the world.

And I wouldn't be without mine.