The Companion Who Learned to Wait
Meet Mara, who walks beside the women in The Art of Companioning Through Life's Transitions.
Before you meet the women in The Art of Companioning Through Life's Transitions, meet the one who walks beside them.
Her name is Mara.
Throughout the book, Mara companions nineteen women through some of life's most tender passages: endings and beginnings, losses and unexpected unbecomings.
She is not a perfect guide. Like so many of us, she was shaped by her own life, her own losses, her own becoming.
Early on, Mara believed that helping meant guiding: offering insight, pointing toward a clearer path. Her conversations often ended well. People left feeling lighter.
But something stayed with her. She sensed she was moving too quickly. Afterward, she would find herself wondering:
What if she had waited?
The question changed the way she listened ...
- Instead of stepping in, she stayed.
- Instead of guiding, she began to trust.
She began listening for what lived beneath the words: the pauses, the shifts in tone, the hesitations. She noticed moments when someone stood at the threshold of something they weren't yet ready to name.
That might sound passive. It isn't. Staying takes restraint. It takes trust. It asks us to let another person's awareness unfold in its own time, without hurrying them toward a conclusion we already reached.
I suspect many of us recognize the early Mara. We care, so we step in. We offer the idea, the resource, the reassurance. And sometimes that helps. But sometimes, in our eagerness, we interrupt what was trying to emerge.
What I love most about Mara is that she is still earning. She still feels the pull to fix things too quickly.
But now, she also knows how to pause.
Perhaps that is what companioning asks of all of us. Not perfection. Just the willingness to pause long enough for someone else's becoming to find its own pace.
A question to carry
Think of a time someone simply stayed with you, without rushing to fix or advise. What did their presence make possible? And when do you feel the pull to step in too soon?
If you'd like to spend more time with her, you can meet Mara.
With warmth,
Pami
In the next letter, you'll walk with Mara as she meets Danielle, whose marriage has ended and whose next chapter has not yet revealed itself.
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