02/03/2026
We are not meant to do this alone...
Last Thursday, I had a small surgery. Nothing dramatic. And yet, since it had been booked almost 2 months earlier, I found myself preparing as if I were about to undergo an intense journey.
But if I’m honest, most of that preparation wasn’t about the procedure itself.
It was about feeling supported, especially being in a foreign country.
About the quiet fear of "What if something goes wrong?"
About not having family, just a phone call away.
About realising how vulnerable it feels to need support when my “default setting” is independence.
So I did something that doesn’t come naturally to me. I asked for help.
I asked friends to be available.
I asked my mother to be here.
I let people know I might need them.
And that might have been the real surgery.
Because something is humbling about admitting I cannot do this entirely on my own.
Luckily, everything went very smoothly. And afterwards, what stayed with me wasn’t the medical procedure. It was the warmth of messages. the check-ins, the quiet knowing that I wasn’t actually alone.
It softened something.
We often speak about independence as strength.
But being held — even from a distance — is a different kind of strength.
Now, back to work…
Maybe this experience is also why "Where Real People Meet" feels so important to me right now.
Not as an event.
But as a reminder.
That in a world where many of us live far from our roots, where we carry adulthood like a badge of self-sufficiency, there is something radical about gathering simply to be human together.
To land.
To relate.
To move.
To not pretend we don’t need each other.
Creating this day feels different after last week.
It feels less conceptual.
More personal.
Because I was reminded — in a very ordinary, very human way — that connection is not a luxury.
It’s medicine.
More info and registrations: https://demonsinlove.carrd.co/
