Dr Margaretha Montagu – described as a “game changer”, “gifted healer”, “guiding light” and “life-enriching author” – is a certified transformational retreat leader who guides her clients towards their most meaningful and fulfilling lives, particularly when navigating life transitions – virtually, or with the assistance of her Friesian Horses, at their home in the southwest of France.
Sophie stood at the kitchen window of the ancient half-timbered farmhouse. Vineyards stretch across the rolling hills, their geometric rows precise even in dormancy. The gnarled trunks of the vines are twisted with age. The leaves are long gone, leaving only the dark, knotted wood, almost black against the frost-whitened earth.
A morning mist still pools in the valleys, thick and stagnant, obscuring where the vineyard rows end and the next hill begins. It moves slowly, deliberately, with intention. Finally, the sun breaks through—thin and watery, a December sun that promises light but not warmth—the mist burns off in patches, revealing the landscape piece by piece: a stone chai here, a distant farmhouse there, the Pyrenees rising sharply and startlingly white on the horizon.
Behind her, Clara’s bedroom door was firmly closed—had been closed, in fact, for most of the three weeks since they’d moved here from Toulouse. The silence from that room was solid and slow, something physical she kept bumping into.
A sudden, persistent knocking at the front door startled her from her reverie. In three weeks, exactly two people came knocking: a curious postman (once) and a confused delivery driver looking for a different address (once).
A woman in her seventies stood shivering on the doorstep, shaking a dripping umbrella with one hand and clutching a covered dish in the other. She had the kind of face that suggested she’d seen everything worth seeing and found most of it less than amusing.
“Bonjour! I am Madame Belmont. I live three houses down, the one with the blue shutters. I have brought you some cassoulet.”
Sophie, who had in fact been planning a jambon-fromage dinner, accepted the dish gratefully. “Très grand merci. This smells awesome. So very kind.”
“Bof. It’s just beans and duck.” Madame Belmont peered past her into the house. “You have a daughter, oui? Fifteen? Sixteen? I saw her once, looking very much like someone who would rather be anywhere else than in Ste Suzanne.”
“Sixteen. And yes.”
“Ahh. The age of such self-righteousness! When you are certain your mother has ruined your life and that small villages are where joy goes to die.” She said this with such cheerful matter-of-factness that Sophie almost laughed. “I have a proposition for your daughter. May I come in?”
Maybe Sophie should have said no. Maybe should have protected Clara’s fragile privacy, her right to be furious about this relocation. Instead, she found herself saying, “Coffee?”
Sitting at Sophie’s kitchen table, drinking terrible instant coffee without complaint, Madame Belmont explained the concept of the Crèche Vivante.
“Every Christmas Eve, we bring the Nativity to life in the village square. Real people, real animals. Last year the donkey ate Baby Jesus’s straw bed and we had to improvise with someone’s jacket. All very authentic, actually.”
“That sounds… chaotic.”
“Entièrement! En plus, this year, our costume maker, Colette, a lovely woman, terrible sense of style, created everything from brown potato sacks, has moved to Pau to live with her daughter. We are desperate.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “I saw your daughter’s fashion sketchbook. She left it on the garden wall last week. I did not snoop—it was open, the wind was turning pages like it wanted me to see. She has talent.”
Sophie’s chest tightened. “Clara’s going through a difficult time. We both are. I don’t think—”
“I am not asking you to think. I am asking you if she knows how to sew.”
“She… used to. Before.”
Before the divorce. Before Sophie’s ex-husband decided his new life didn’t have room for weekend custody. Before Sophie looked at their Toulouse apartment—expensive, cramped, full of memories that hurt—and thought: We need to get away from here.
“Parfait.” Madame Belmont stood, decision apparently made. “I will ask her myself. Which door?”
“She won’t—she doesn’t—” But Madame Belmont was already in the hallway, knocking firmly on Clara’s door with the confidence of someone who’d raised four children and wasn’t intimidated by teenage sulking.
“Clara! I am Madame Belmont. I need a costume designer for our village Christmas pageant. Your mother says you sew.”
Silence. Then, incredibly, the door opened a crack.
“I don’t know anyone here,” Clara whispered.
“Bon. Then you can design the costumes without worrying about hurting people’s feelings, oui?”
The door opened wider. Clara stood there in an oversized sweatshirt, her dark hair in a messy bun, looking younger than sixteen and older than she should have to. “What kind of costumes?”
“Mary, Joseph, shepherds, wise men, angels, animals. The usual suspects.”
The corner of Clara’s mouth twitched. Almost a smile. “I’d need to see the fabrics you have.”
“Naturellement. Come to my house tomorrow, three o’clock. I will show you everything. Also, I make excellent hot chocolate, not the powder nonsense, real chocolate melted with milk and melt-in-the-mouth calissons on the side.”
After Madame Belmont left—leaving the cassoulet, her phone number, and a subtle frison of revival in her wake—Clara emerged fully from her room for the first time in days.
“You told her about my sketchbook?”
“Not I. The wind did, apparently.”
Clara sat at the kitchen table, pulling the cassoulet toward her and eating directly from the dish with a spoon. “Her house is the one with blue shutters?”
“Three down.”
“Okay. I’ll go. But just to look. I’m not promising anything.”
“Understood.”
“And I’m still moving back to Toulouse as soon as I finish school.”
“Noted.”
Clara took another bite. “This is really good.”
Clara started disappearing to Madame Belmont’s house daily, the one with blue shutters that Sophie could see from the kitchen window, and return hours later with fabric scraps in her hair, pins stuck to her sweater, talking about seam allowances and Biblical-era authenticity and whether angels should have practical footwear.
Sophie started helping—not because she knew anything about costumes, but because Madame Belmont recruited her with the same cheerful inevitability she’d used on Clara.
“You can hem, oui? Everyone can hem. It’s just making things shorter with thread.” Not patronising at all then.
Madame Belmont’s house smelled like hot chocolate and old books, a place that had been lived in happily for decades. Her dining room had become costume central—fabrics draped over every surface, Clara’s sketches pinned to the walls, the sewing machine (older than Sophie, still functioning perfectly) humming at all hours.
Other village women appeared: Thérèse with her mother’s lace collection, Anne-Marie with sheets they could dye for shepherd robes, and young Émilie, who was taught how to embroider by her grandmother. They worked in companionable chaos, drinking coffee, sharing gossip, teaching Clara techniques she wouldn’t have found in YouTube tutorials.
Sophie hemmed angel robes beside Thérèse, who told stories about her son in Paris—also sixteen, also angry about village life until he’d left and realised he missed it, desperately. Or maybe he just hated having to do his own laundry.
“Your daughter,” Madame Belmont said one evening, watching Clara explain her design vision to Émilie with the confidence of someone who’d found her element, “she is gifted. Not just at sewing.”
“She gets that from her father,” Sophie said automatically.
“Non.” Madame Belmont’s voice was firm. “She gets it from watching her mother be brave enough to start over. From learning that sometimes leaving is the only way forward.”
Sophie’s eyes burned. “I don’t feel brave. I feel like I’ve dragged her to the middle of nowhere and ruined her life.”
“Bof. You’re a mother. Feeling guilty is part of the job description.” Madame Belmont patted her hand. “Look, she’s laughing now. When did you last hear her laugh?”
Clara was indeed laughing at something Émilie had said about last year’s donkey fiasco. The sound resonated around Madame Belmont’s dining room like a Christmas bell.
Two weeks later, Christmas Eve arrived cold and crystalline, the kind of night where breath hung visible in the air, and stars felt close enough to touch. The village square of Sainte-Suzanne glowed with hundreds of candles, tapers flickering in iron lanterns hung from the plane trees, their flames wavering in the December wind but refusing to die. Behind it all, the stone church rose ancient and implacable, its romanesque walls honey-colored in the candlelight, its bell tower dark against the indigo sky.
The entire village had turned out for the Crèche Vivante—elderly couples in heavy coats, families with sleepy children bundled in scarves, teenagers trying to look bored but enchanted anyway—everyone gathered in that particular hush that comes when a community anticipates entertainment. The air smelled of wood smoke and beeswax, cold stone and the faint sweetness of vin chaud being poured at a makeshift stand near the church steps, steam rising from cups clasped in gloved hands.
Sophie stood with Madame Belmont at the edge, watching Clara make last-minute adjustments to Mary’s costume, pins in her mouth, completely in her element.
Then Mary and Joseph (and the donkey, on a lead, because he was so not carrying anyone or anything) started walking around the square, their costumes glowing in candlelight. Clara’s designs transformed the familiar story into something ethereal. The shepherds’ robes moved like water. The angels’ wings caught light as if they might actually take flight. Even the wise men looked properly regal instead of like revenants wearing brown potato sacks.
When it ended, the village burst into spontaneous applause. Someone shouted Clara’s name. Then someone else. She stood there, stunned, as people she’d barely met thanked her, complimented her work, and welcomed her.
Walking back to their farmhouse later, Clara slipped her hand into Sophie’s—something she hadn’t done in years.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“I still want to go to art school in Toulouse eventually.”
“I know.”
“But maybe… I could just go during term.”
Sophie squeezed her hand, afraid to speak, afraid she’d cry.
“It’s still the middle of nowhere.”
“It is.”
“But it’s kind of our middle of nowhere now. You know?”
Sophie did know. She looked back at the village square, still glowing with candlelight, and at Madame Belmont’s house with its blue shutters, and thought about how home wasn’t something you returned to—it was something you built, stitch by stitch, with people brave enough to knock on your door and refuse to let you isolate yourself in your grief.
“En effet,” Sophie said. “I know.”
The Making Friends and Maintaining Friendships Masterplan
In winter, the vineyards might look like they’re dying, but the vignerons know better—beneath the frozen ground, the roots are growing ever deeper, intertwining with neighbouring vines in an underground network of support that will sustain them through the growing season.
Friendship works the same way: it’s in the cold, dormant seasons of life that the surprising new connections can form, initially invisible but soon essential, so that when spring finally comes, you discover you’ve been held up by roots you didn’t even know were there.
Today, join one community activity where you live, especially if you’re going through a difficult transition—even if (especially) if you’re convinced you don’t belong there yet. Volunteer for something. Join a committee. Show up to a community event. Offer your skills, whatever they are—cooking, organising, designing, hemming, showing up with hands willing to help. Worst case scenario: You spend a few awkward hours with people you don’t know well, contribute something small, and go home still feeling uncomfortable about being the new person. Best case scenario: You accidentally find your Madame Belmont—the person who sees past your walls and your grief and your conviction that you don’t belong, who recruits you and your daughter into community with the cheerful inevitability of someone who knows that isolation is a choice and belonging is work worth doing. You discover that talent and contribution are better icebreakers than small talk, that your teenager starts laughing again because someone gave her purpose beyond her anger, that home isn’t about geography—it’s about being seen and needed and welcomed for exactly what you can offer. You realise six months later that you’ve stopped planning your escape because somewhere between hemming angel robes and finding out which is the best boulangerie, you accidentally built a life, and the people who were strangers became the ones you text when anything—good or bad—happens, because they saw you at your most lost and said “here, try this” and refused to let you disappear into your grief and behind your closed doors.
Have you ever been recruited into a community project or tradition that you initially resisted, only to discover it made all the difference? What was it, and how did it transform your experience of that place?
Share your stories about the volunteer committees, the pageants, the potlucks, or the community events that turned strangers into neighbours and neighbours into family.
Newsletter Subscription
I’m still collecting subscriptions to my news letter with these post, so if you haven’t subscribed already and would you like to find out what type of friend you are, how well you know your friends or if you and a new friend really are compatible, subscribe my filling in your email address in the box below and I’ll send you a set of light-hearted quizzes, quotes and questions to help you do just that. Just fill in the form below and you’ll get immediate access to them all. You can unsubscribe from this list effortlessly and at any time. Included:
–How well do you know your Friends? Quiz – What is Your Friendship Style? and Are your Friendship Styles compatible? Quiz – 20 of the Most Inspiring Friends and Friendship Quotes and – 20 lighthearted Questions you can ask to get to know a new Friend
Discover how to build meaningful, lasting friendships and create a support system that truly has your back—delivered straight to your inbox!
Friends and Friendships
Discover how to build meaningful, lasting friendships and create a support system that truly has your back—delivered straight to your inbox! (newsletter subscription included)
Thank you so much!
More information about making friends and maintaining friendships (including the quizzes I mentioned) is on its way to you. You have also successfully subscribed to my newsletter.
If you are currently facing a major life transition or any other dramatic change in your circumstances, and you have no idea how you are going to cope, the good news is that the strategy presented in this book can help you, step by step, to improve your ability to handle the stress caused by change, even if you feel entirely powerless at the moment.
Author Bio: Dr Margaretha Montagu – described as a “game changer”, “gifted healer”, “guiding light” and “life-enriching author” – is an experienced medical doctor, a certified NLP practitioner, a medical hypnotherapist, an equine-assisted psychotherapist (EAGALAcertified) and a transformational retreat leader who guides her clients through life transitions – virtually, or with the assistance of her Friesian and Falabella horses, at their home in the southwest of France.
Maya stood in her minuscule apartment staring at the empty cardamom jar like it had personally betrayed her. Which, in a way, it had.
It was Christmas Eve. She was thirty-eight years old, a “mature student” (academic code for “your life fell apart so spectacularly you had to start over“), and she’d been in France for exactly four months. Long enough to know where the best boulangerie was. Not long enough to receive an invitation to any celebrations.
The recipe was her grandmother’s—handwritten on an index card so stained and worn the measurements were more memories than instructions. Cardamom cookies. The smell of her childhood Christmases, back when she’d had a job and a plan and hadn’t been “let go due to restructuring” which was corporate-speak for “we’ve decided you’re expendable.”
She’d bought all the ingredients yesterday. Checked the list twice. Somehow still managed not to buy cardamom, which was possibly the most on-brand thing that had happened to her this year.
Outside, Pau was doing its picturesque French Christmas thing—the Pyrenees snow-capped in the distance, lights twinkling on the Boulevard des Pyrénées, families heading to réveillon dinners. Inside, Maya was having a small crisis over a spice while her upstairs neighbours’ footsteps creaked overhead and their television soundtrack sounded like a dubbed version of Love Actually.
She could go to the store. Except it was 6 PM on Christmas Eve and everything was closing. She could make different cookies. Except these specific cookies were the entire point—her one attempt to make this silent apartment feel less like exile and more like choice.
She could also just give up, eat a jambon-beurre for dinner, and watch Christmas movies until she felt sufficiently sorry for herself to justify going to bed at 8 PM.
Or.
She looked at her apartment door. Directly across the hall, in 5B, her neighbour lived. The woman she’d seen exactly three times: once on the stairs, once collecting mail, once taking out recycling with the grim efficiency of someone who had opinions about proper sorting.
Mrs. Petrov. That’s what the name on the mailbox said. Somewhere in her seventies, steel-grey hair always in a bun, the kind of posture that suggested either ballet training or military service. She’d nodded at Maya precisely once. The nod had contained multitudes, none of them particularly welcoming.
Maya stood at her door for a full two minutes, conducting an internal negotiation with her inner critic.
She probably has cardamom. Old ladies always have spices.
She also probably wants to be left alone on Christmas Eve.
Or.
Or she might be lonely too.
What if she thinks you’re an idiot American who can’t plan ahead?
You ARE an idiot American who can’t plan ahead.
Helpful, thanks.
She knocked before she could talk herself out of it.
Silence. Then footsteps—measured, unhurried, the footsteps of someone who wasn’t expecting company and wasn’t particularly excited about the prospect.
The door opened.
Mrs. Petrov stood there in an apron dusted with flour, holding a wooden spoon like a weapon. Her expression suggested Maya had interrupted something important, possibly state secrets or a very serious conversation with her cat.
“Bonsoir,” Maya said, then switched to English because her French deserted her under pressure. “I’m so sorry to bother you. I’m your neighbour, Maya, from 5A, and I’m making cookies—trying to make cookies—and I’ve run out of cardamom and everything’s closed and I know this is incredibly presumptuous, but I was wondering if possibly you might have any I could borrow?”
She said all of this in one breath, like verbal diarrhoea, and immediately wanted to sink through the floor.
Mrs. Petrov stared at her. Maya couldn’t tell if the expression was judgment, irritation, or gas.
“Cardamom,” Mrs. Petrov said finally. Her English was accented, precise, with something Eastern European underneath. “For cookies.”
“Yes. My grandmother’s recipe. It’s—it’s stupid, I know, I should have checked, I’m terrible at planning, I just—” Maya heard herself spiralling steadily downwards and forced herself to stop. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
She started to back away.
“What kind of cookies?” Mrs. Petrov asked.
“Um. Cardamom. Swedish, actually. My grandmother was—”
“Swedish cardamom cookies. With pearl sugar on top?”
“Yes! Exactly those.”
Something shifted in Mrs. Petrov’s face. Not quite a smile, but a thawing. “I have cardamom. But you will ruin them if you use old cardamom. When did you buy yours?”
“…September?”
“Bozhe moy.” Mrs. Petrov shook her head, a gesture that seemed to encompass all of Maya’s poor life choices. “Come. I will give you fresh cardamom. Also, you will help me with koledna pitka because my hands are old and the dough is stubborn.”
Before Maya could process what was happening, she was inside Mrs. Petrov’s apartment.
It smelled like heaven. Yeast and butter and something warm and spiced that made Maya’s stomach growl audibly. The kitchen was small but immaculate, every surface covered with evidence of serious baking: cooling racks, mixing bowls, a massive round loaf of bread studded with walnuts and dried fruit.
“Sit,” Mrs. Petrov commanded, pointing at a chair. “You look like you haven’t eaten today.”
“I had coffee—”
“Coffee is not food. Americans. Pffft.” She said it with the weary tone of someone who’d been dealing with American nonsense for decades. “I am making koledna pitka. Bulgarian Christmas bread. You will eat, then you will take cardamom, then you will make your grandmother’s cookies properly.”
She cut a thick slice of the bread—still warm—and placed it in front of Maya with a small dish of honey and butter. The bread was golden, studded with walnuts and what looked like dried apricots, the crust crackling, the inside impossibly soft.
Maya took a bite and almost cried. Not because it tasted like her grandmother’s cookies—it didn’t. But because it tasted like someone’s grandmother’s something, and she hadn’t realised how desperately she’d been missing that.
“Good, yes?” Mrs. Petrov said, sitting across from her with her own slice.
“It’s incredible.”
“Koledna pitka. Christmas bread. In Bulgaria, we make it Christmas Eve, hide coin inside for luck. Here in France, I make it anyway. No one to share with usually, but the bread doesn’t care.”
She said it matter-of-factly, but Maya heard the loneliness underneath.
“How long have you been in France?” Maya asked.
“Forty-three years. Came in 1981, from Sofia. My husband was French, worked in Pau. I spoke no French, knew no one, understood nothing.” She broke off a piece of bread, dipped it in honey. “First Christmas, I cried for three days. Tried to make banitsa, burned it because French ovens are different. Sat alone in apartment smaller than this, eating burned banitsa, thinking I had made terrible mistake.”
“What happened?”
“Neighbour knocked. Old French woman, very proper, very stern. She could smell the burning, thought maybe I had set the flat on fire. Instead, I was crying over pastry.” Mrs. Petrov smiled—actually smiled, a real one that transformed her entire face. “She invited me for réveillon. Her family, twelve people, all speaking French too fast to understand. I sat there like deaf person, smiling, nodding. But they fed me, gave me wine, taught me French Christmas songs. And that woman—Madame Dubois—she became my French teacher, my friend, my family here.”
She looked at Maya directly, her eyes sharp but kind. “You are alone for Christmas, yes?”
Maya nodded, not trusting her voice.
“Your family is where?”
“California. I couldn’t afford the flight. New student budget.” She tried to smile. “Plus I got laid off from my job six months ago and I’m still kind of… figuring things out. Coming here to study felt like either a great idea or the worst decision of my life. Jury’s still out.”
“Ahh.” Mrs. Petrov stood, started pulling down spice jars from a cabinet. “You are running away.”
“I prefer ‘strategic relocation.'”
“You are running away,” Mrs. Petrov repeated, but not unkindly. “Is okay. I ran away too. Sometimes running away is just running toward something you cannot see yet.”
She placed a jar of cardamom on the table—the good kind, whole pods in a glass jar. “Fresh. From the Indian shop on Rue Serviez. You grind yourself, yes? Better flavour.”
“I don’t have a grinder—”
Mrs. Petrov produced a mortar and pestle like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat. “You grind here. I teach you. Then you make cookies here, in oven that works properly, not your terrible American apartment oven that heats up and cools down too fast.”
“I couldn’t possibly—”
“You think I want to eat the entire koledna pitka alone? You will make cookies, I will make banitsa, we will eat together. This is how Christmas works.”
It wasn’t a question.
For the next three hours, Maya ground cardamom, learned that Swedish cookies and Bulgarian bread had more in common than she’d thought, and listened to Mrs. Petrov’s stories about Sofia in winter, about learning French, about Madame Dubois and the family that adopted a lonely Bulgarian woman forty years ago.
The kitchen filled with the smell of cardamom and butter and yeast and something else—the particular warmth that comes from cooking with someone who understands what it means to be far from home.
Maya’s cookies came out perfect—golden, fragrant, studded with pearl sugar that Mrs. Petrov produced from her improbably well-stocked pantry. They ate them warm with strong coffee while Mrs. Petrov’s banitsa cooled, and somewhere between the second cookie and the third story about Madame Dubois, Maya realised she was laughing. Actually laughing, for the first time in weeks.
“Your grandmother,” Mrs. Petrov said, examining a cookie critically. “She was good baker.”
“She was. She died two years ago.”
“Ahh. So you make cookies to remember her.”
“To feel less alone, maybe.”
Mrs. Petrov nodded slowly. “We carry our grandmothers in recipes. In bread, in cookies, in things we make with our hands.” She placed another cookie on Maya’s plate. “But you cannot eat cookies alone in sad apartment. This is not what grandmothers want. They want you to share, to make new family, to keep living.”
“Is that what you did?”
“Is what Madame Dubois taught me. She died ten years ago, but I still make koledna pitka every year. Still invite lonely people who knock on my door asking for cardamom.” Her eyes crinkled. “Still believe that Christmas is for finding family wherever you are.”
They sat in comfortable silence, eating cookies and bread, while outside, Pau celebrated Christmas Eve and inside, two women from different continents and different generations shared the universal language of butter, flour, and generosity.
“Next week,” Mrs. Petrov said, standing to brew more coffee, “you come for dinner. I teach you to make proper banitsa. Also, you will meet my friend Simone from downstairs—French teacher, very bossy, will improve your French whether you want her to or not.”
“I’d like that.”
She poured coffee, placed a cup in front of Maya. Maya wrapped her hands around the warm cup, feeling something unknot in her chest. “Thank you. For the cardamom. For everything.”
“Nishto. Is nothing. Is Christmas.” Mrs. Petrov raised her cup. “Chestita Koleda. Merry Christmas, Maya from California, who bakes vintage Christmas cookies.”
“Merry Christmas, Mrs. Petrov, who saves Americans with incomplete spice collections.”
They clinked cups while church bells rang across Pau, and somewhere between the bells and the bread and the overwhelming smell of cardamom, Maya realised this was exactly what her grandmother would have wanted: not perfect traditions recreated in isolation, but new traditions built with whoever happened to be there, sharing whatever they had.
Stop second-guessing yourself. Start owning your success. This book gives you the step-by-step roadmap to break free from imposter syndrome, build unshakable confidence, and finally believe you deserve every bit of your success. You ARE Good Enough!
The Making Friends and Maintaining Friendships Masterplan
Friendship also means setting boundaries to protect your energy, especially during challenging life transitions. It’s okay to say no to invitations or expectations that don’t align with your well-being. True friends will understand and respect your needs.
This Christmas, give yourself permission to prioritise what feels right for you. Saying no isn’t about shutting people out—it’s about making space for the connections and activities that truly matter.
Today, knock on a neighbour’s door—literally or metaphorically—and ask for help with something small. Borrow sugar. Ask for directions. Request a restaurant recommendation. Admit you don’t know how something works. Be the person who’s willing to be vulnerable first. Worst case scenario: They say no, you feel awkward for three minutes, life continues. Best case scenario: You discover that your stern neighbour is actually lonely too, that asking for help is how friendship starts, that the people who seem most intimidating are often the ones who most understand what it means to start over in a strange place. You end up with cardamom, Christmas bread, stories about Sofia in winter, and an invitation to dinner next week, where you’ll meet your neighbour’s friend who will improve your French whether you want her to or not.
Have you ever knocked on a neighbour’s door for help—or had someone knock on yours? What happened, and did it change your relationship?What’s your “cardamom moment”—a time when running out of something small led to something bigger and more meaningful?
Newsletter Subscription
I’m still collecting subscriptions to my news letter with these post, so if you haven’t subscribed already and would you like to find out what type of friend you are, how well you know your friends or if you and a new friend really are compatible, subscribe my filling in your email address in the box below and I’ll send you a set of light-hearted quizzes, quotes and questions to help you do just that. Just fill in the form below and you’ll get immediate access to them all. You can unsubscribe from this list effortlessly and at any time. Included:
–How well do you know your Friends? Quiz – What is Your Friendship Style? and Are your Friendship Styles compatible? Quiz – 20 of the Most Inspiring Friends and Friendship Quotes and – 20 lighthearted Questions you can ask to get to know a new Friend
Discover how to build meaningful, lasting friendships and create a support system that truly has your back—delivered straight to your inbox!
Friends and Friendships
Discover how to build meaningful, lasting friendships and create a support system that truly has your back—delivered straight to your inbox! (newsletter subscription included)
Thank you so much!
More information about making friends and maintaining friendships (including the quizzes I mentioned) is on its way to you. You have also successfully subscribed to my newsletter.
Author Bio: Dr Margaretha Montagu – described as a “game changer”, “gifted healer”, “guiding light” and “life-enriching author” – is an experienced medical doctor, a certified NLP practitioner, a medical hypnotherapist, an equine-assisted psychotherapist (EAGALAcertified) and a transformational retreat leader who guides her clients through life transitions – virtually, or with the assistance of her Friesian and Falabella horses, at their home in the southwest of France.
Theme: The Importance of Making Friends and Maintaining Friendships during Difficult Times
Today’s Story: Au Café des Platanes
Friends as Chosen Family
The air outside the Café des Platanes smelled like caramelised sugar, finest dark roast coffee, and old radiators working overtime against the sudden cold. A hand-lettered sign propped up in the window read “Atelier d’Écriture Créative—Tout Les Mardis à 19h” with a small fountain pen sketched beneath it.
Outside, Natalie was trying to keep her footing on the treacherous cobblestones. Through the steamed-up glass, she could see four women already seated at a corner table. Behind her, a group of laughing people was setting up the Christmas market on the town’s central square—wooden chalets strung with garlands, the smell of roasting chestnuts drifting on the cold air, someone testing speakers with a crackly recording of French carols.
She clutched her A4-sized notebook, containing a random collection of half-finished stories, against her chest like a shield.
You don’t have to go in, her brain offered helpfully. You could walk to the boulangerie, buy a croissant aux amandes, go home to your rented apartment, and curl up on the sofa with your cat and a chocolat chaud.
But her sister in London had been annoyingly insistent during their last video call: “You need to get out more. Mingle. Meet people. Join some groups. You moved to France to start a new chapter, not to become a hermit in a French flat, however cosy and comfortable.”
Natalie pushed open the door.
The brass bell above it jangled. Heads turned. The café was pleasantly warm, despite the struggling heaters, all three-legged wooden tables and mismatched wooden chairs, strings of white lights woven around exposed beams. The room was dominated by a huge Christmas tree decorated with vintage postcards. A dog was fast asleep in a basket next to the roaring fireplace. French jazz played softly from speakers that had probably been installed in 1977.
“Bonsoir, Madame et bienvenue!” A woman with silver-streaked hair in a violet scarf waved enthusiastically. “Vous êtes là pour l’atelier de l’écriture? Sorry, you’re here for the writing? I’m Patricia. British, been here twelve years, still can’t properly conjugate a single irregular verb. Sit, sit—Marc will bring you something to drink.”
Marc, presumably the owner, appeared with a knowing smile and a café crème.
The other women introduced themselves: Amara, French-Senegalese, with box braids and paint-stained fingers, who’d recently moved down from Paris; Jin, Korean-American, speaking careful French with a perfect accent that suggested expensive language lessons; Sophie, French, roughly Natalie’s age, wearing a sweatshirt that said “J’ai des sentiments mitigés” and holding a large glass of dark red wine; and Lisa, Austrian, who still missed her children who had moved to Vienna and Stuttgart ten years ago.
“I’m Natalie. American. Moved here three months ago.” She settled into a chair that was actually comfortable, unlike the avarage plastic torture device in every community centre she’d ever entered in the States.
“Right,” Patricia said, adding sugar to her espresso with the dedication of someone who’d given up pretending to like it bitter, “who brought something to share?”
Silence. Outside, someone was hanging lights in the plane trees. The Christmas market music drowned out the café’s jazz—an accordion version of “Petit Papa Noël.”
“Right,” Patricia said. “First meeting nerves. perfectly understandable. Maybe we should start with why we’re here? I’ll go first. I’m recently widowed, my children in Manchester think I should sell this house and move into one of those ghastly retirement communities, and I’d rather eat my own boots. I’ve always wanted to write, but spent forty years convinced I had nothing interesting to say. Then Roger died last Christmas Eve—horrible timing—and suddenly I found I had rather a lot to say.”
The silence shifted—still dense, but less defensive. Someone’s phone buzzed. The dog in the basket snored.
“I’m going through a divorce,” Natalie heard herself say. “I used to write. Before I got married and somehow forgot I was a person with interests beyond making dinner reservations and pretending my husband’s jokes were funny.”
Sophie raised her glass of wine in a sardonic toast. “Similar situation, different catastrophe. Broke up with my boyfriend of seven years. He kept the Paris apartment, and I got the ancestral house in the countryside that needs new plumbing and possibly an exorcist. I know exactly four people here: my notaire, my pharmacist, the woman at the tabac, and the man who delivers my Amazon packages and definitely judges my life choices.”
Jin laughed softly. “Corporate burnout. Silicon Valley tech startup, eighty-hour weeks, stock options I never cashed because I was too busy building someone else’s dream. Had a panic attack during a funding presentation, decided France sounded ‘interesting,’ applied for a skills visa. My mother in Seoul is thrilled I’m finally ‘finding myself.’ She hopes it’s a phase.”
“Cancer,” Amara said simply, and the word landed like a stone in still water. Marc, delivering more coffee, squeezed her shoulder gently. “Courage, ma belle.” She smiled up at him. “Finished treatment in September. Everyone keeps congratulating me like I won a competition, but mostly I feel like someone took me apart and put me back together without looking at the instruction manual. Missing pieces, extra pieces in weird places. I’m trying to figure out who this version is.”
Lisa was last. She folded her hands around her steaming tea—something herbal that smelled like Christmas spices. “Empty nest. Both children long grown and gone, living in cities I can barely afford to visit. Husband and I looked at each other across the breakfast table six months ago and realised we’d forgotten how to talk about anything except the children. So I came here—this was my grandmother’s house, left to me. He stayed in Austria. We’re… figuring it out.”
Patricia looked around the table at this mismatched collection of women. “Well,” she said, a smile crinkling the corners of her eyes. “at least we have lots of life experience. Writers need material. Nothing says ‘compelling narrative’ like an existential crisis during the most wonderful time of the year.”
Someone giggled nervously. Soon they were all laughing, with relief mostly, at not having to pretend everything was magical just because there were Christmas lights everywhere.
“Right,” Patricia said, pulling out a battered Moleskine. “I brought a short story. It’s probably dreadful. It’s about a woman who ‘accidentally’ destroys her husband’s antique cricket bat collection.”
“I need to hear this immediately,” Sophie said, refilling her wine glass.
Soon, they developed habits.
Patricia always arrived first, claiming the corner table near the radiator. Marc would have their usual drinks ready—café crème for Natalie, espresso for Patricia, dark Madiran wine for Sophie (“An acquired taste,” she insisted), ginger tea for Lisa, and hot, melted chocolate for Amara, who said after chemo everything else tasted like metal. Jin brought pastries—sometimes kouign-amann from the Breton bakery, sometimes pain aux raisins, once an entire galette des rois, even though it was barely December. Amara sketched in the margins while people read, creating tiny illustrations of their stories. Lisa had started bringing stollen from the German bakery one town over. Sophie appointed herself sommelier, bringing different wines each week and explaining their terroir with the seriousness of someone who’d grown up in wine country. Natalie, who’d barely spoken that first week, now brought printed copies of her work, her confidence growing like a seed tentatively reaching toward the light.
They wrote about everything. Amara wrote speculative fiction where women with bodies that had betrayed them transformed into creatures with wings. Jin wrote sharp, funny essays about the tech world that had chewed her up. Lisa wrote aching pieces about the rooms filled with ghosts her children left behind. Sophie wrote experimental poetry that made no sense grammatically in either French or English but somehow captured exactly what heartbreak felt like at 3 AM in an empty house that creaked with loneliness. Patricia was working on a novel about a woman who started by destroying her husband’s cricket bat collection and then moved on to ever more ambitious targets.
“It’s very therapeutic,” Patricia explained.
“It’s slightly concerning,” Jin said.
“Et alors?” Patricia teased.
Natalie wrote about divorce, but sideways—stories about women who woke up in different countries, living different lives, in different dimensions where they’d made different choices. Stories about becoming unrecognisable to yourself in foreign languages.
“These are good,” Amara said after Natalie finished reading one evening. Outside, the Christmas market was still in full swing—carousel music drifting across the square, the smell of vin chaud and croustade, children shrieking with joy near the ice rink they’d set up. “Like, actually good. Vraiment. You should submit this somewhere.”
“Oh, I don’t know—”
“Submit it,” Sophie said firmly. “We’re not doing that thing where we diminish our own work because we’re women who were socialised to apologise for existing, in three languages.”
The meetings stretched longer. Till eight, then nine, then Marc would finally start stacking chairs around them, and they’d realise it was past eleven and he wanted to go home. They exchanged phone numbers. Started a WhatsApp group that soon featured the best writing memes, recipe exchanges and 2 AM messages like “cannot sleep, obsessing about mortality, someone send cat videos.”
When Natalie’s ex-husband got engaged, she texted the group at 11 PM: Is it normal to want to set things on fire? Asking for a friend.
Five responses came within minutes: Very normal (Patricia) What things? Be specific (Jin) I’m bringing wine (Sophie) Coming over with cookies straight-from-the-oven (Lisa) Already in my car, be there in 10 (Amara)
They all showed up at her flat. Brought wine, melt-in-the-mouth cookies, and Patricia’s latest chapter, which involved increasingly creative uses of sporting equipment as murder weapons.
“I’m fine,” Natalie said, which was a lie, and they all knew it.
“Bien sûr,” Lisa said, opening the wine. “That’s why we’re here. To be fine together.”
They stayed until 2 AM, reading terrible reviews of her ex-husband’s favourite restaurant aloud in dramatic voices, workshop-editing Patricia’s murder scene (“More visceral! More conviction!”), and letting Natalie cry when she finally stopped pretending she wasn’t going to. Outside, everything was silent except for the wind whipping around the bare branches of sleeping trees and the distant sound of church bells marking the hour.
On Christmas Eve, they met at Patricia’s house, which smelled of pine needles, woodsmoke, and pain d’épices. Candles flickered on every surface. And over the fireplace, stockings hung—six of them, each in a different fabric, clearly handmade.
“I may have gotten carried away,” Patricia said, catching Natalie’s look.
Each stocking had a name stitched on it: Patricia. Amara. Jin (in Hangul). Sophie. Lisa. Natalie.
Something in Natalie’s chest cracked open.
They settled into Patricia’s living room with champagne and sablés and the particular comfort of a space warmed by both fire and friendship.
They talked about the year, about survival, about the strange gift of falling apart in good company in a foreign country where even buying stamps was an adventure.
“I joined this group,” Natalie said quietly, “because I was desperately lonely and my sister threatened to fly here and physically drag me to social events. I thought I was coming to practice writing in my second language.”
“Plot twist,” Sophie said. “Tu as trouvé une famille.”
“Very Hallmark Channel of us,” Jin added.
“I’m serious. A year ago, I didn’t know any of you. I was married and miserable in a different country. I thought moving to France would fix me, or at least give me a better choice of cheese while I figured my life out. And instead I found—” She gestured helplessly at the room, the stockings, the faces watching her with understanding from four different continents. “This.”
“Through the universal language of the written word,” Patricia said. Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed midnight.
Outside, church bells rang Christmas Eve into being. Marc texted the group chat a photo of the café’s Christmas tree with the message “Joyeux Noël, mes écrivaines préférées,” and somewhere in the warmth of that room was every good reason to keep showing up, keep trying, keep believing that the best things in life often come disguised as Tuesday night writing groups in cafés that smell like coffee and caramel and hope.
“Mardi prochain?” Lisa asked.
“Mardi prochain,” they agreed.
Today, join one group—online or in person—centred around something you genuinely care about, even if (especially if) you’re going through a difficult time and even if it’s in a language you’re still learning. Book club. Writing group. Hiking club. Cooking class. Language exchange. Art workshop. Choir. Whatever sparks even mild interest. Worst case scenario: You spend a few Tuesday evenings with people who share one interest, stumble through conversations in mixed languages, and decide it’s not for you. Best case scenario: You walk into a café and walk out six months later with five people from four continents who have stockings with your name on them, who show up at midnight when you’re falling apart, who become the family you didn’t know you were building while you thought you were just learning to write better dialogue in your second language. Tuesday after Tuesday, story after story, crisis after crisis, until one day you realise you’re not alone anymore in this foreign country and you haven’t been for a while, and the word “home” suddenly means something different than it did when you arrived.
Making Friends and Maintaining Friendships Masterplan
The holidays can highlight the importance of family, especially if you’re going struggling through a major life crisis, but for some, traditional family relationships may feel strained or distant. This is where friends can become your chosen family—a group of people who truly see, accept, and support you.
Maybe take a moment to appreciate the friends who’ve stepped into that role in your life? These relationships are a testament to the idea that family isn’t always about blood—it’s about love, loyalty, and shared experiences.
How well do you know your new friends? If you and a new friend are really compatible? For my Radical Renaissance students, I have created a set of light-hearted quizzes, quotes and questions about frienship, as I firmly believe a strong support group is invaluable in a crisis. Just fill in the form below and you’ll get immediate access to them all. I’ll also add you to my newsletter list, though you can unsubscribe from this list effortlessly and at any time. Included:
– How well do you know your Friends? Quiz
– What is Your Friendship Style? and Are your Friendship Styles compatible? Quiz
– 20 of the Most Inspiring Friends and Friendship Quotes and
– 20 lighthearted Questions you can ask to get to know a new Friend
Discover how to build meaningful, lasting friendships and create a support system that truly has your back—delivered straight to your inbox!
Friends and Friendships
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I put the essence of who I am, and everything I have experienced that makes me who I am, with great enthusiasm, into my retreats, courses and books. – Dr Margaretha Montagu (MBChB, MRCGP, NLP master pract (cert,) Transformational Life Coach (dip,) Life Story Coach (cert) Counselling (cert,) Med Hypnotherapy (dip) and EAGALA (cert)
High-Functioning Burnout Symptoms Are Easy to Miss when you’re still “holding it together”: A doctor’s guide to rebuilding after burning bright for too long.
Additional feature: High-Functioning Burnout Symptoms at Christmas: Why this season reveals the cracks in your carefully constructed coping mechanisms
What this is: A clear-eyed look at the specific type of burnout that doesn’t announce itself with obvious breakdowns, the kind that lets you keep performing whilst quietly eroding your foundations. This is about recognising the whisper before it becomes a scream.
What this isn’t: A productivity hack disguised as self-care, a “push through it” pep talk, or another article telling you to take bubble baths and practice gratitude. This isn’t about doing more; it’s about understanding why you’ve been doing too much in the first place.
Read this if: You’re over 40/50/60, you’ve navigated a major life transition (divorce, loss, illness, career shift), and you’re intellectually ready for your next chapter but emotionally running on fumes. Read this if people tell you how “well you’re handling everything” whilst you secretly fantasise about disappearing to a remote island.
5 Key Takeaways
High-functioning burnout is a slow-burning fuse, not an immediate explosion – You can appear successful, organised, and “fine” whilst your nervous system quietly accumulates debt that will eventually demand payment.
Christmas doesn’t cause your burnout; it reveals it – The holiday season acts as a magnifying glass on already-strained capacity, exposing the gap between how you appear and how you actually feel.
Your greatest strength became your greatest liability – The very resilience and capability that got you through your life crisis is now preventing you from recognising you need to rest, reset, and rebuild differently.
Recovery isn’t about returning to your previous pace – It’s about designing a sustainable next chapter rather than simply resuming the patterns that depleted you in the first place.
Burnout symptoms include unexpected emotional volatility – Crying at adverts, snapping at loved ones, and feeling inexplicably rage-filled at minor inconveniences aren’t character flaws; they’re your body’s late-stage alarm system finally getting your attention.
Introduction: When “Fine” Becomes a Four-Letter Word
When you are working your way through a major life crisis, the adrenaline that carries you through the acute phase has an expiration date. And when it runs out, you don’t gradually slow down. You hit a wall you didn’t even see coming.
If you’ve recently navigated divorce, bereavement, unexpected illness, redundancy, or any other seismic life shift, you probably became exceptionally good at functioning under pressure. You made decisions, handled logistics, showed up for work, kept your household running, and reassured worried friends that you were “absolutely fine.”
And you were. Until you weren’t.
This is for you if you’re intellectually ready to start your next chapter but emotionally feel like you’re treading water in wet concrete. You’ve done the hard work of getting through the crisis itself, but now you’re discovering that “getting through it” and “actually recovering from it” are two entirely different projects.
What you’re experiencing isn’t laziness, weakness, or a character defect. It’s high-functioning burnout, the achiever’s affliction. You’re still showing up, still delivering, still appearing remarkably capable to the outside world. But inside? You’re running on vapours, duct tape, and the muscle memory of competence.
The good news: recognising this is half the battle. The better news: recovery isn’t about returning to your old pace. It’s about designing something entirely more sustainable for the life you’re actually building now.
In this article, I’ll share what I’ve learned in 20 years as a doctor with a special interest in stress management, 15 years hosting transformational retreats where guests walk the Camino de Santiago, and through writing eight books about navigating life’s most challenging transitions. More importantly, I’ll help you understand whether high-functioning burnout is what’s standing between you and the next chapter you’re ready to claim.
The Story of Elena Hartfield: When Excellence Morphed into Exhaustion
Elena Hartfield woke at 5:47 a.m., thirteen minutes before her alarm, her heart already racing with the day’s to-do list scrolling behind her closed eyelids like ticker tape. The dawn light filtering through her bedroom curtains felt accusatory somehow, as though even the sun was disappointed she hadn’t managed to wake feeling refreshed.
She’d been divorced for eighteen months now. Eighteen months of proving to everyone, including herself, that she was absolutely fine. Better than fine, actually. Thriving.
The evidence was compelling: she’d been promoted at work, had taken up wild swimming, maintained her book club attendance, never missed her daughter’s rugby matches, and had recently started dating again. On paper, Elena was a case study in resilience. Her friends marvelled at how well she was handling everything.
So why, she wondered whilst forcing herself upright, did her bones feel like they were made of jelly?
The morning unfolded with its usual precision. Shower, efficient. Coffee, strong. Emails, answered. She chose her clothes carefully, a navy shift dress that conveyed competence, paired with the silver earrings her mother had given her. Armour disguised as accessories.
By 9:15 a.m., she was in her third meeting, nodding attentively whilst her colleague Marcus droned on about quarterly projections. The fluorescent lights hummed their eternal tuneless song. Someone had brought pastries; the smell of almond croissants made her stomach turn. When had she last been actually hungry? She couldn’t remember. She ate because her body required fuel, approaching meals with the same grim efficiency she applied to everything else.
“Elena? Your thoughts?”
She blinked. Seven faces turned toward her expectantly. She had no idea what the question was, but eighteen months of high-functioning survival had taught her the art of strategic vagueness.
“I think we need more data before committing to that approach,” she said smoothly. Heads nodded. Meeting continued. Crisis averted.
But her hands were trembling slightly as she reached for her water glass. She pressed them flat against her thighs, willing steadiness.
Lunchtime arrived, and Elena ate a sad desk salad whilst reviewing the presentation she’d give that afternoon. The lettuce tasted like wet paper. Everything lately tasted like wet paper. Or like nothing at all. Her taste buds had apparently joined the general rebellion her body was staging against her iron will.
The afternoon presentation went brilliantly. She knew this because people told her so. Elena herself felt like she was watching someone who looked remarkably like her deliver confident insights about market positioning. Dissociation, her therapist had called it. Elena preferred to think of it as efficiency. Why waste energy being fully present when autopilot worked just as well?
By 6:30 p.m., she was home, standing in front of her open refrigerator, staring blankly at its contents. Her daughter was at her father’s this week. The flat was quiet, which should have felt peaceful but instead felt like the walls were pressing in.
She should eat something. She should call her mother back. She should respond to that text from James, the nice man she’d had three dates with. She should do laundry, review tomorrow’s agenda, sort through that pile of mail accumulating on the counter.
Instead, Elena sat down on her kitchen floor, still wearing her coat and heels, and felt the first genuine emotion she’d experienced all day: a bone-deep exhaustion so profound it felt archaeological.
The tears came then, sudden and shocking. Not delicate, photogenic tears but ugly, gulping sobs that shook her entire frame. She cried for twenty minutes, possibly longer. Time felt elastic down here on the cold tile floor.
When the storm passed, she noticed three things: her chest hurt, her face was swollen, and she felt oddly lighter. As though crying had released some pressure valve she hadn’t known was jammed shut.
Elena pulled out her phone with shaking hands and googled “why am I so tired when I’m doing everything right.”
The top result read: “High-Functioning Burnout: When Success Becomes Survival.”
She read the article twice. Then three times. Each symptom felt like someone had been taking notes on her life: emotional numbness punctuated by sudden volatility, physical exhaustion despite adequate sleep, loss of joy in previously pleasurable activities, persistent anxiety coupled with achievement, feeling like an imposter in your own successfully functioning life.
The article explained that high-functioning burnout was particularly insidious because you didn’t collapse. You kept going. You kept delivering. But you were doing it all on borrowed reserves, and eventually, those reserves ran dry.
Elena sat on her kitchen floor until her legs went numb, reading about something she’d been living without having words for it. The relief of recognition was so intense it felt physical.
She wasn’t failing. She wasn’t weak. She wasn’t broken.
She was burned out. And she was finally ready to admit it.
The next morning, Elena sent her manager an email requesting to take two weeks of accumulated leave. She cancelled her social commitments for the following month. She booked an appointment with her doctor. And she stopped telling people she was fine.
The real recovery, she was learning, could only begin once you stopped performing it.
Understanding High-Functioning Burnout: The Achiever’s Invisible Crisis
High-functioning burnout is about succeeding whilst simultaneously disintegrating. It’s burnout in a tailored suit, burnout with a tidy inbox, burnout that shows up on time and delivers quality work whilst slowly eroding your capacity for joy, connection, and authentic presence.
In my two decades as a doctor, I’ve watched countless capable people, particularly those navigating major life transitions, mistake high-functioning burnout for simply “being busy” or “getting older.” They don’t recognise it because they’re still performing at a high level, still meeting their obligations, still appearing remarkably capable to everyone around them.
High-functioning burnout isn’t about what you’re still managing to do. It’s about what it’s costing you to do it.
The classic burnout narrative involves dramatic collapse, inability to get out of bed, and obvious decline in work performance. High-functioning burnout is far more insidious. You’re getting out of bed. You’re going to work. You’re handling your responsibilities. You’re just doing it all whilst running on fumes, feeling increasingly disconnected from your own life, and wondering why everything that used to bring you satisfaction now feels like you’re checking boxes on someone else’s list.
This type of burnout is particularly common after major life transitions because you’ve spent months, possibly years, in survival mode. You developed extraordinary coping mechanisms to get through your divorce, bereavement, illness, or career upheaval. Those mechanisms worked beautifully for the acute crisis. The problem is, you never downshifted. You’re still operating at crisis-management speed even though the crisis itself has passed.
Your body and mind are trying desperately to tell you something important: it’s time to stop just coping and actually recover. But if you’re a high-functioning person who prides themselves on resilience, that message feels like failure. So you override it. You push through. You tell yourself you’re fine.
Until one day, you’re sitting on your kitchen floor in your work clothes, ugly-crying for no apparent reason, and you finally understand: you’ve been fine for so long that you’ve forgotten what actually feeling good feels like.
This matters profoundly as you contemplate your next chapter. You can’t build something sustainable on a foundation of depletion. Whatever you create from this exhausted state will simply replicate the patterns that burned you out in the first place. Recovery isn’t a luxury or an indulgence; it’s the prerequisite for the life you’re trying to design.
The impact extends far beyond your personal wellbeing. When you’re running on empty, your relationships suffer. Your creativity diminishes. Your decision-making capacity narrows. Your ability to be present for the people and projects you care about erodes. You’re not showing up as your best self, you’re showing up as your most defended, depleted, dissociated self.
Recognising high-functioning burnout and choosing to address it rather than push through it can become a pivotal moment, not just for you but for everyone who orbits your life. When you model genuine recovery rather than performative resilience, you give others permission to do the same. When you acknowledge that strength includes knowing when to rest, you challenge the toxic productivity culture that convinced you burnout was simply the price of success.
Your burnout recovery can ripple outward, changing not only how you approach your next chapter but how your children, friends, colleagues, and community understand the relationship between achievement and wellbeing. This is how individual healing becomes collective transformation.
How Do I Know If I Have High-Functioning Burnout?
What Are the Key Symptoms I Should Look For?
High-functioning burnout symptoms are notoriously difficult to self-diagnose because they masquerade as personality traits or minor inconveniences rather than presenting as a coherent syndrome. Here’s what to watch for:
Physical symptoms that persist despite adequate sleep:
Waking exhausted regardless of hours slept
Frequent headaches or muscle tension
Digestive issues that appeared seemingly from nowhere
Susceptibility to every passing cold or virus
Physical heaviness, as though moving through molasses
Emotional symptoms that feel out of character:
Emotional numbing, feeling like you’re watching your life from outside
Sudden tearfulness or rage at minor inconveniences
Loss of enthusiasm for activities that previously brought joy
Persistent low-level anxiety that colours everything
Feeling like an imposter in your successfully functioning life
Cognitive symptoms that affect performance:
Difficulty concentrating, even on important tasks
Decision fatigue around trivial choices
Memory lapses that weren’t previously an issue
Reduced creativity or problem-solving capacity
Reliance on external structures because internal motivation has vanished
Perfectionism is intensifying as a control mechanism
Inability to rest even during designated downtime
Why Does High-Functioning Burnout Feel Different from “Normal” Burnout?
The key differentiator is that you’re still performing. To outside observers, you appear successful, capable, organised, and on top of things. You’re meeting your deadlines, honouring your commitments, and showing up where you’re supposed to be. The crisis is entirely internal.
This makes high-functioning burnout particularly isolating because you can’t point to external evidence of struggle. Your life looks fine. You look fine. So why do you feel like you’re barely holding it together?
High-functioning burnout is what happens when your conscious performance exceeds your unconscious capacity. You’ve trained yourself so effectively to override your body’s signals that you’ve severed the connection between what you can technically do and what you can sustainably do.
Can I Recover Whilst Still Managing My Responsibilities?
Yes, but recovery requires fundamentally redefining what “managing responsibilities” means. You can’t recover by simply adding self-care tasks to an already overfull schedule. That’s not recovery; that’s performative wellness.
Genuine burnout recovery involves:
Ruthless prioritisation: Identifying what truly matters versus what you’ve been doing because you always have
Permission to be “good enough”: Releasing perfectionism as a coping mechanism
Rebuilding rest capacity: Relearning how to actually rest rather than just collapsing
Processing rather than bypassing: Actually feeling your feelings instead of managing them
Redesigning your next chapter intentionally: Rather than defaulting to previous patterns
This isn’t about returning to your pre-burnout pace. It’s about acknowledging that pace was unsustainable and designing something entirely different.
Christmas and High-Functioning Burnout: When the Holidays Expose the Cracks
Why Does Christmas Push High-Functioning Burnout Over the Edge?
Christmas doesn’t cause your burnout; it reveals it. The holiday season acts as a stress test on systems that are already strained, exposing the gap between the capable person you’re presenting to the world and the depleted person you actually are.
Here’s why Christmas is particularly brutal for high-functioning burnout sufferers:
Expectation inflation: The cultural narrative around Christmas intensifies all existing pressures. You’re not just managing your regular responsibilities; you’re also expected to create magic, foster connection, purchase thoughtful gifts, attend social events, and radiate festive cheer. For someone already running on empty, this is gasoline on embers.
No permission to opt out: Unlike other social obligations, Christmas comes with moral weight. Declining participation feels like you’re being Scrooge, disappointing children, or failing at basic human connection. So you override your limitations and show up, even when showing up depletes your last reserves.
Forced proximity: The holidays often involve extended time with family, which can be wonderful but also requires enormous emotional energy, particularly if you’re navigating complex family dynamics, managing others’ expectations, or fielding questions about your life transitions.
Performance pressure: Christmas cards, social media posts, family gatherings, all invite comparison. High-functioning people already struggle with imposter syndrome; Christmas creates additional stages on which to perform being “fine” whilst privately falling apart.
Rest that isn’t restful: The holidays are theoretically time off, but for people managing households, organising gatherings, or coordinating family logistics, they’re often more exhausting than regular work weeks. You’re busy in different ways but not actually resting.
What Does Christmas Burnout Actually Look Like?
In my practice, I’ve seen Christmas-induced burnout crashes present in remarkably consistent patterns:
Crying in the car park at the supermarket because they’re out of cranberry sauce
Snapping at loved ones with a viciousness that shocks you
Feeling inexplicable rage at festive music or decorations
Fantasising about Christmas being cancelled entirely
Physical illness that conveniently provides permission to withdraw
Drinking more than usual to numb the overwhelm
Going through all the Christmas motions whilst feeling completely disconnected
If you’re experiencing any of these, you’re not a terrible person who hates Christmas. You’re a burned-out person whose capacity has been exceeded, and Christmas simply made that undeniable.
How Can I Protect Myself During the Holiday Season?
Radical simplification: Choose three things that actually matter to you about Christmas and release everything else. Not reduce, release. Give yourself permission for “good enough” to be genuinely good enough.
Proactive boundary-setting: Decide in advance what you will and won’t do, then communicate those boundaries clearly before others have set expectations. “We’re doing a quiet Christmas this year” is a complete sentence.
Schedule actual rest: Block time in your calendar for genuine rest, and protect it as fiercely as you’d protect an important meeting. Rest is not the reward for completing everything; it’s the foundation that makes everything else possible.
Lower the performance bar: The goal isn’t Instagram-worthy magic. The goal is surviving this season without completely depleting yourself. If you achieve that, you’ve succeeded.
Seek support: If you’re navigating your first Christmas after divorce, bereavement, or other major loss, acknowledge that this season will be particularly challenging. Reach out for support rather than white-knuckling your way through alone.
Remember: protecting your wellbeing during Christmas isn’t selfish. It’s the prerequisite for actually being present for the connections that matter.
Five Critical Mistakes to Avoid During Burnout Recovery
Mistake #1: Treating Recovery Like Another Project to Excel At
High-functioning people approach burnout recovery the same way they approach everything else: with goals, metrics, and determination to do it perfectly. This is like trying to put out a fire with more fire.
Recovery isn’t about optimisation. It’s about permission. Permission to be messy, incomplete, uncertain, and ordinary. Your burnout was caused, in part, by your relentless drive to excel. Applying that same drive to recovery simply replicates the pattern that depleted you.
Instead: Approach recovery with curiosity rather than goals. Notice what helps without needing to systematise it immediately.
Mistake #2: Waiting Until You’ve “Earned” Rest
Many high-functioning people operate under the belief that rest must be earned through sufficient productivity. But when you’re burned out, you’ll never feel productive enough to have earned rest. The bar keeps moving because the problem isn’t productivity; it’s permission.
You don’t earn rest by completing tasks. Rest is a biological necessity, not a reward for good behaviour. Your body needs it whether or not you’ve checked everything off your list.
Instead: Schedule rest first, then build your commitments around it. Treat rest as non-negotiable infrastructure, not optional luxury.
Mistake #3: Isolating Because You’re “Too Much” for Others
Burnout often comes with shame. You’re ashamed you’re struggling when your life “isn’t that bad.” You’re ashamed you can’t handle what you used to handle effortlessly. So you withdraw, convinced you’re burdening others with your mess.
But isolation intensifies burnout. Connection is healing, even when, especially when, you feel like you have nothing to offer. The people who truly care about you want to support you. Letting them do so isn’t weakness; it’s trust.
Instead: Reach out to safe people and tell the truth. “I’m really struggling right now” is often met with relief and reciprocal honesty.
Mistake #4: Expecting Linear Progress
Recovery isn’t a straight line from burned out to recovered. It’s two steps forward, three steps sideways, one step back, then inexplicably better for a week before crashing again. This isn’t failure; it’s the nature of nervous system healing.
If you expect linear progress, every setback feels like evidence you’re not really recovering. This creates additional stress that compounds the original burnout.
Instead: Track overall trajectory rather than daily fluctuations. Are you slightly more resilient than you were three months ago? That’s progress, even if today is difficult.
Mistake #5: Returning to Exactly the Same Life That Burned You Out
The most seductive mistake is thinking recovery means getting back to “normal.” But if normal burned you out, why would you want to return to it? Your burnout is valuable information about the unsustainability of your previous patterns.
Recovery isn’t about restoration; it’s about redesign. The question isn’t “How do I get back to how things were?” It’s “What needs to change so I can sustain the next chapter I’m trying to create?”
Instead: Use this pause to examine which commitments, relationships, and patterns are life-giving versus life-draining. Design your recovery toward a different life, not your previous one.
Intention-Setting Exercise: Reclaiming Your Energy
Find a quiet space where you won’t be interrupted for ten minutes. You’ll need paper and something to write with.
Step One: Acknowledge What Is Write this sentence and complete it honestly: “Right now, my energy feels…” Don’t edit. Don’t make it sound better than it is. Just tell the truth.
Step Two: Identify Energy Drains List five things currently depleting your energy. Be specific. Not “work” but “attending meetings that don’t require my input.” Not “family” but “feeling responsible for managing everyone’s emotions during gatherings.”
Step Three: Claim One Boundary From your list, choose one energy drain you could reduce or eliminate in the next fortnight. Not five things. One. Write: “To protect my recovery, I will…” Complete this with one specific, actionable boundary.
Step Four: Design One Energy Source What genuinely restores you? Not what you think should restore you, what actually does. Even small things count. Write: “To rebuild my reserves, I will make time for…”
Step Five: Set Your Intention Complete this sentence: “I’m recovering from burnout because I want to…” This isn’t about returning to productivity. What do you actually want? Presence? Peace? Connection? Joy? Name it.
Place this somewhere you’ll see it daily. Your recovery has a purpose beyond simply “not being burned out anymore.” Keep that purpose visible.
From Surviving to Storytelling
“When I joined Dr. Montagu’s Rooted in Resilience online course, I was six months post-divorce and convinced I was managing beautifully. Everyone said how strong I was. Inside, I felt like I was performing strength whilst quietly dissolving. The storytelling circles were revelatory. For the first time in years, I wasn’t trying to have the right answer or appear capable. I was simply sharing my truth and hearing others share theirs. The other women in the circle held space for my mess without trying to fix it. Between the course modules and our weekly storytelling sessions, I finally understood that my burnout wasn’t failure, it was my body insisting I design a different life. Those circles gave me permission to stop performing recovery and actually experience it.” — Sue M., Virtual Storytelling Circle Participant
Further Reading: Books That Understand Burnout
1. Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski I recommend this book because it brilliantly distinguishes between the stressor and the stress itself, explaining why you can remove the cause of stress but still carry the stress in your body. The Nagoskis provide practical, science-based strategies for completing the stress cycle, which is essential for high-functioning burnout recovery.
2. Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey This book reframes rest as a radical act rather than a luxury. Hersey’s work is particularly powerful for high-functioning people who’ve internalized capitalism’s message that our worth is tied to our productivity. Her perspective helps readers understand that choosing rest is political, personal, and revolutionary.
3. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk Van der Kolk’s work illuminates how trauma and chronic stress live in our bodies, not just our minds. For people experiencing high-functioning burnout after major life transitions, this book explains why you can intellectually process your experiences but still feel physically depleted. Understanding the neuroscience is often the first step toward compassionate recovery.
4. Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown Brown’s exploration of 87 different emotions and experiences helps readers develop the emotional vocabulary needed to understand what they’re actually feeling beneath the numbing fog of burnout. High-functioning people often excel at doing but struggle with feeling; this book bridges that gap beautifully.
5. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell Odell’s book challenges the very premise that our time must always be productive, optimised, and monetised. For high-functioning burnout sufferers who’ve lost the ability to simply be, this manifesto offers both philosophy and permission for reclaiming attention, time, and presence.
P.S. My book, Embracing Change, in 10 Minutes a Day, offers daily reflections and practices specifically designed for people navigating major life transitions. It’s structured to meet you where you are, even when where you are is exhausted, overwhelmed, and uncertain.
Five FAQs About High-Functioning Burnout
How long does it take to recover from high-functioning burnout?
There’s no universal timeline because recovery depends on how long you’ve been operating in deficit and how willing you are to fundamentally redesign your patterns rather than simply rest briefly before resuming. That said, most people notice initial improvements within 6-8 weeks of implementing real changes, with substantial recovery taking 6-12 months. The key is accepting that recovery is a process, not an event.
Can I experience burnout even if I’m not working full-time?
Absolutely. Burnout isn’t just about employment; it’s about chronic depletion exceeding your capacity to recover. Caregiving, managing a household, navigating a major life transition, processing grief, or any sustained high-stress situation can cause burnout regardless of employment status. High-functioning burnout particularly affects people who are managing multiple significant demands simultaneously.
Is high-functioning burnout the same as depression?
They can overlap and co-occur, but they’re distinct. Depression typically involves a pervasive low mood, loss of interest in nearly everything, and often includes feelings of worthlessness. High-functioning burnout is characterised by emotional exhaustion specifically related to prolonged stress, and people often retain the ability to function at high levels even whilst depleted. That said, untreated burnout can develop into clinical depression, so it’s worth consulting a healthcare professional if you’re unsure.
What’s the difference between self-care and actual burnout recovery?
Self-care often involves adding restorative practices (bubble baths, meditation, exercise) to an already overfull life. It’s necessary but insufficient for burnout recovery. Actual recovery requires examining and restructuring the systems that caused burnout: your workload, your boundaries, your relationship with productivity, and your capacity to disappoint others. Recovery is about saying no, releasing responsibilities, and redesigning your life, not just treating the symptoms with occasional yoga.
How do I know if I need professional help for burnout?
Seek professional support if you’re experiencing any of the following: persistent suicidal thoughts, inability to function in basic daily activities, physical symptoms that aren’t improving, substance use to cope, relationships deteriorating significantly, or you’ve tried implementing changes for several months without improvement. A doctor, therapist, or coach who specialises in life transitions can provide crucial support. You don’t have to recover alone.
Conclusion: The Gift Hidden in Your Burnout
Your burnout is telling you something important: the life you’ve been living is no longer viable. Not because you’ve failed, but because you’ve outgrown it.
The person who entered your major life transition is not the person who emerged from it. You’ve been changed by what you’ve survived. Yet you’ve been trying to slot your transformed self back into your previous life’s structures. No wonder you’re exhausted. You’re forcing a changed person into an unchanged container.
Your burnout is the friction of that mismatch. It’s your body’s wisdom insisting that what got you here won’t get you where you’re going.
As writer Mary Oliver asks, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Not the life you had before. Not the life others expect. This life. The one you’re building now. The one your burnout is demanding you design differently.
Before you move forward, pause here for clarity. My Turning Point Quiz helps you assess your readiness for change and identify exactly where you are in your transition journey. Understanding your current position is the first step toward designing what comes next.
A Different Kind of Reset: Walk Toward Your Next Chapter
Sometimes recovery requires removing yourself from the machinery of your daily life entirely. Not to escape, but to create space for something new to emerge.
My 7-day Camino de Santiago Crossroads hiking retreats in the southwest of France offer exactly this: intentional space for people navigating life transitions. These aren’t fitness holidays or tourist experiences. They’re carefully designed containers for transformation.
You’ll walk ancient pilgrimage paths, surrounded by the timeless landscape of the Pyrenees foothills. The rhythm of walking creates what conversation cannot: permission for your nervous system to finally downshift. The physical movement completes stress cycles that have been stuck in your body for months, possibly years.
Each evening, we gather in intimate storytelling circles with my Friesian horses. There’s something profoundly healing about being witnessed by both humans and horses, creatures who respond only to authentic presence, not performed capability. In these circles, you’ll share your truth without needing to package it neatly or make it palatable.
The groups are small, maximum four people, ensuring genuine connection rather than performative sharing. You’ll be with others who understand the particular loneliness of high-functioning burnout: looking fine whilst falling apart, ready for the next chapter but too depleted to imagine it clearly.
This retreat isn’t about pushing yourself to complete another challenging thing. It’s about permission. Permission to rest deeply. Permission to speak honestly. Permission to imagine a next chapter designed around sustainability rather than just survival.
If your burnout has been asking you to stop, to listen, to redesign rather than just recover, this retreat might be your answer.
What would become possible in your life if you gave yourself the same compassion you readily extend to others?
Stress destroys Lives. To find out what you can do to safeguard your sanity by taking my insight-giving quiz, subscribe to my mailing list.
Designed for those navigating a life transition, the Radical Renaissance Protocol guides you through an identity reset, helping you reconnect with your purpose, realign your values, and reclaim the clarity you thought you’d lost. This isn’t about fixing what’s broken: through reflection, strategic reinvention, and soul-anchored mentoring, you’ll transform uncertainty into direction and dormant potential into meaningful impact.
If your soul is craving fresh air, meaningful movement, and a chance to reconnect with nature, join us on a Camino de Santiago Crossroads Retreatin the southwest of France. This isn’t just a scenic hike – it’s a powerful, natural reboot for your body, mind, and spirit. Imagine quiet paths, rolling hills, cozy evenings, and slow conversations. No fitness requirements. No forced bonding. No pressure to have a breakthrough. Just one foot in front of the other, and a journey that meets you exactly where you are.
“I am an experienced medical doctor – MBChB, MRCGP, NLP master pract cert, Transformational Life Coach (dip.) Life Story Coach (cert.) Stress Counselling (cert.) Med Hypnotherapy (dip.) and EAGALA (cert.) I may have an impressive number of letters after my name, and more than three decades of professional experience, but what qualifies me to excel at what I do is my intuitive understanding of my clients’ difficulties and my extensive personal experience of managing major life changes using strategies I developed over many years.” Dr M Montagu
By the time Claire Dubois signed her divorce papers on December 18th, she felt as if she had spent five years inside a malfunctioning emotional blender—one of those noisy, lid-jumping contraptions with several warning labels and a tendency to splatter carrot puree on the ceiling. So when her three closest friends—Sophie, Marianne, and Elodie—announced they were taking her to Bagnères-de-Bigorre for a spa day to celebrate her newfound freedom, Claire didn’t protest. She needed pampering. She needed steam, serenity, and something resembling a full nervous system reboot before facing Christmas dinner with her well-meaning but relentlessly nosy family.
The drive to the Pyrenees felt like slipping inside a snow globe. Fresh powder dusted the mountain peaks like royal icing on a gingerbread landscape. The air smelled of pine resin, wood smoke, and cold stone. Christmas lights twinkled from the windows of wooden chalets along the road—reds and golds reflecting off the snow—and somewhere in the distance a church bell chimed Adeste Fideles, muffled by the crisp mountain air. Roadside vendors sold roasted chestnuts and vin chaud from steaming pots. By the time the four women arrived at the thermal spa—its elegant stone façade rising out of the valley, draped in garlands of pine and white lights—Claire felt her shoulders finally unclench.
Which was, of course, the moment the day started slipping sideways.
Inside the spa, a calming soundtrack of flutes and trickling water played, occasionally interrupted by instrumental versions of Christmas carols that made “Silent Night” sound like meditation music. Miniature Christmas trees dotted the reception area, their ornaments catching the soft amber light. Each locker offered a neatly folded white cocoon of terry cloth. Sophie’s and Marianne’s looked plush enough to double as duvets. Claire’s XXXS version looked like it had shrunk in the wash—or been designed for an unusually modest elf. She tried to put it on anyway. It wrapped around her torso with all the generosity of a disgruntled dish towel. Her left hip staged an immediate escape attempt. Elodie took one look and doubled over laughing, loud enough to attract stares from two indignant retirees in matching terry cloth, attempting to preserve the sanctity of spa silence. Claire couldn’t help it—she had to laugh too, the kind of laughter that bubbled up unexpectedly like champagne.
She marched to the reception, one hand clamped across her chest to preserve her dignity (and modesty, although why she bothers…), the other attempting to hold the robe closed. The receptionist, without even blinking, sighed as though this was a daily occurrence and murmured, “Oh. Yes. Er, our apologies.” She disappeared into a back room and returned with a robe so enormous Claire could have hosted a community meeting inside it. But it fit, and it was warm, and smelled faintly of cinnamon. Disaster averted.
Robe secured, the four friends floated toward the outdoor thermal pool. Steam rose in soft curtains from the turquoise water, backlit by strings of white lights wound through the surrounding pine trees. Snowflakes drifted from the grey winter sky, melting the instant they touched the surface. The air smelled of minerals and eucalyptus, with an undertone of mulled wine from the spa bar, a scent suggesting festive promise. Claire lowered herself into the water and felt it envelop her like a warm exhale from the earth itself.
“This is bliss,” she sighed, leaning back. “This I could get used to.”
The universe, hearing her, chuckled and said, “Hold my spiced cider.”
Just as Claire began to relax, a sudden roar erupted behind her. Before she could turn around, something flew across the water. Her robe. The huge, heavy, comforting robe she had laid neatly on the pool’s edge was now spinning in the water like a squid being sucked toward the filtration intake. She lunged for it. She missed. People turned. A few applauded. The lifeguard—wearing a Santa hat over his regulation cap—sighed, retrieved a long pole, and began fishing for it with resigned professionalism. When he finally hauled it out, limp, dripping and drowned, the receptionist materialised at her side with another, working hard to keep her face straight.
Her friends were laughing so hard they could barely stay afloat, which made Claire laugh too—big, helpless, ridiculous laughter that made her cheeks hurt. The kind she hadn’t felt in far too long.
They eventually staggered their way to the hammam, decorated with a small garland of eucalyptus and holly above the entrance. Inside, the steam was so thick Claire couldn’t see the bench in front of her, the walls around her, or the limits of her own personal space. Voices echoed strangely in the fog, disembodied. Someone murmured “over here,” and Claire, imagining she was moving toward Marianne, took a confident step forward, reached out, and sat down.
On a stranger.
A very startled, very unclothed stranger.
His shocked gasp cut through the steam like a foghorn. A moment later, the steam parted enough for Claire to see his horrified eyes, wide as poached eggs. Claire yelped, jumped up, slipped on condensation, and skidded across the tile floor with the helpless momentum of a baby deer encountering ice for the first time. Somewhere behind her, her friends dissolved again into uncontrollable laughter—the sort that suggested they might need medical attention.
The man coughed. “Is okay,” he wheezed. “I think… you break no bones?”
“My dignity,” Claire said, “is in traction.”
After the hammam debacle, they attempted lunch. The spa café smelled promising: roasted chestnuts, mulled wine, something buttery and cinnamon-spiced. A small Christmas tree stood in the corner, its lights twinkling hopefully. But their soup—described enthusiastically by the waitress as “rustic, warming, a heritage recipe from the mountains”—arrived as a beige, flavourless puddle that somehow managed to be the exact opposite of every comforting winter meal promised by the season. They seasoned it. They stirred it. They attempted to coax character out of it. Nothing helped. Sophie said, “It tastes like my last relationship: bland, lukewarm, and profoundly disappointing.” Finally, Elodie announced, “It tastes like beige had a personality and lost it halfway through therapy. Beyond redemption.”
At sunset, they finally made their way to the rooftop hot tub. Steam curled into the cold winter sky. The Pyrenean peaks blushed pink and peach as daylight faded, their snow-covered slopes glowing like they’d been dusted with silver. In the distance, church bells chimed. Claire felt herself melt into the warm water, into the moment, in the presence of the three women who had held her up through the darkest season of her life.
“I thought today was supposed to be calming,” she smiled.
“Oh, it was never going to be calm,” Sophie replied. “We don’t do calm. We do… memorable.”
“Thank you,” Claire said. “For today. For all of it. A Christmas gift I’ll never forget. For making sure I didn’t spend Christmas week crying while binging on not-yet-discounted chocolate.”
“Even though everything went wrong?” Sophie asked.
“Because everything went wrong. My marriage was about everything going right. Perfect plans, perfect image, perfect relationship. Perfect Christmases with matching sweaters and colour-coordinated gift wrap. And it was hell.” She paused, watching a snowflake land on her finger and melt. “This was about everything going wrong. And it was perfect.”
They clinked plastic spa cups of spicy herbal tea together.
Today, be the friend who shows up when needed. Don’t wait for the perfect moment or the perfect Christmas gift. Just show up—and create the messy, imperfect memory. Worst case scenario: Nothing goes to plan, someone sits on a stranger in a hammam, and you all eat terrible soup while questioning your life choices. Best case scenario: Years later, when your friend thinks about that difficult Christmas, they won’t remember the pain as much as they remember you—showing up with ridiculous robes and refusing to let them face it alone, turning the worst spa day ever into the moment they realised that love looks like friends who stay through no matter what goes wrong.
The Making Friends and Maintaining Friendships Masterplan
Christmas reminds us of the joy of giving, but sometimes, we hesitate. In our friendships, we often hold back. We hesitate before reaching out, before offering help, before being the first to say “I’m thinking of you.” We worry about seeming needy, or too much, or like we care more than they do.
True generosity in friendship isn’t transactional. It’s not a ledger that needs balancing by year-end. It’s the quiet decision to reach out simply because you want to—because someone matters to you, because connection itself is the reward, because giving from genuine affection needs no return on investment.
Forget the perfect Christmas gift. A small act of kindness—a thoughtful message at 11 PM because something reminded you of them, a shared memory that says “remember when we laughed until we couldn’t breathe?”, a surprise gesture that requires no occasion beyond “I saw this and thought of you”—these moments carry more weight than we realise. They brighten someone’s day in ways you might never witness.
This Christmas season, be the friend who reaches out first.
Sometimes the greatest gift we give is letting someone know they’re worth the effort.
What questions can you ask to get to know a new friend? How do you know if you and a new friend are really compatible? I have created a set of light-hearted quizzes, quotes and questions to help you do just that. Just fill in the form below and you’ll get immediate access to them all. I’ll also add you to my newsletter list, though you can unsubscribe from this list effortlessly and at any time. Included:
– How well do you know your Friends? Quiz
– What is Your Friendship Style? and Are your Friendship Styles compatible? Quiz
– 20 of the Most Inspiring Friends and Friendship Quotes and
– 20 lighthearted Questions you can ask to get to know a new Friend
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Friends and Friendships
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Murphy’s law can help you through a difficult time, certainly when surrounded by friends in this sort of situation and the laughter can’t be held back.
Endlessly renewable. “We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women’s voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored.” Sheryl Sandberg
Designed for those navigating a life transition, the Radical Renaissance Protocol guides you through an identity reset, helping you reconnect with your purpose, realign your values, and reclaim the clarity you thought you’d lost. This isn’t about fixing what’s broken: through reflection, strategic reinvention, and soul-anchored mentoring, you’ll transform uncertainty into direction and dormant potential into meaningful impact.
If your soul is craving fresh air, meaningful movement, and a chance to reconnect with nature, join us on a Camino de Santiago Crossroads Retreatin the southwest of France. This isn’t just a scenic hike – it’s a powerful, natural reboot for your body, mind, and spirit. Imagine quiet paths, rolling hills, cozy evenings, and slow conversations. No fitness requirements. No forced bonding. No pressure to have a breakthrough. Just one foot in front of the other, and a journey that meets you exactly where you are.
Author Bio: Dr Margaretha Montagu – described as a “game changer”, “gifted healer”, “guiding light” and “life-enriching author” – is an experienced medical doctor, a certified NLP practitioner, a medical hypnotherapist, an equine-assisted psychotherapist (EAGALAcertified) and a transformational retreat leader who guides her clients through life transitions – virtually, or with the assistance of her Friesian and Falabella horses, at their home in the southwest of France.
The moment Priya stepped into the “3ème Soirée Annuelle de Networking & Canapés de Noël”—an event title that sounded like a hostile takeover of her free time, now with added French pretension—she knew she’d made a mistake.
The Marais loft glowed with fairy lights strung between exposed wooden beams, and smelled of mulled wine and those expensive beeswax candles that people light when they are trying too hard. Through the tall windows, she could see the December drizzle turning the cobblestones below into dark mirrors. People were already clustering in tight conversational pods, their laughter too loud, their talk bouncing between English and French as they discussed Q4 projections and something called “strategic disruptions pendant les fêtes.”
A man in a blazer, the exact shade of a bruised plum, wearing a tiny Santa hat at a jaunty angle, materialised beside her. He looked like a Christmas ornament that had achieved sentience and a six-figure salary at a consulting firm.
“Champagne, ou peut-être un ‘Mistletini’—it’s 90% gin and 10% potential indigestion!” he chirped in that particular Franco-English accent that suggested international business school and expensive ski holidays.
She took a glass. Bubbles hit her nose, making her sneeze. Velvet Plum Blazer took a quick step back. “Santé,” he said, then vanished faster than he appeared.
Priya wished she could vanish too—maybe dissolve into the mist outside and reform somewhere less aggressively festive.
Don’t overthink it, she told herself. You’re a grown woman. You’ve survived corporate take-overs and layoffs, three terrible bosses, and that time you accidentally replied-all to a company-wide email about your cat’s digestive issues. You can survive two hours of forced merriment in a foreign city where you’re still not entirely sure which bises situations require two cheek-kisses or three.Or four?
She executed a tactical retreat to the groaning food table—her natural habitat at any social event—and formed a strategic alliance with a platter of mini-quiches shaped like tiny wreaths and some suspiciously fancy foie gras on toast points that probably cost more than her monthly rent.
She was chewing thoughtfully (or buying time—hard to say) when she heard it. The question. The social landmine. The six words that could instantly turn a festive gathering into an existential dread-fest.
“So, what do you do?”
Her jaw froze mid-chew. She turned to find a smiling woman wearing a sweater featuring a reindeer in an Eiffel Tower scarf—the kind of knitwear that announced “I’m whimsical but also serious about networking.” She had the festive confidence of someone who owned a separate set of Christmas napkins and knew exactly which arrondissement had the best Christmas markets.
Priya tried to stall, pointing at the quiche in her mouth. The woman waited, her smile unwavering with that particularly French patience that feels both generous and vaguely judgmental.
Arrrgh.
This was where she usually deployed one of her practised evasions: “It’s complicated,” or “I’m between things,” or the magical word “Consulting”—a word that meant absolutely nothing but usually impressed people into silence, especially when said in Paris, where everyone claimed to be consulting about something, at any given time.
But tonight, with the rain softly tapping against the windows and the distant bells of Notre-Dame chiming the hour, she was tired. Tired of pretending, tired of dodging, tired of shaping herself into something acceptable for strangers who probably wouldn’t remember her name by the time the accordion version of “Douce Nuit” ended.
She gulped down the quiche.
“I am currently a professional consumer of artisanal holiday snacks,” Priya deadpanned.
The woman blinked.
Priya considered spontaneously combusting on the spot, or possibly throwing herself into the Seine, whichever would be quicker.
Then the woman laughed—a real, booming, un-corporate laugh that made three people stop discussing their stock options and smoothly move on to the best boulangeries in the 16th.
She lifted her glass. “Welcome to the club. I quit my job as a ‘Chief Optimisation Strategist’ to become a ‘Senior Executive of Existential Dread.’ Relocated to Paris, thinking the wine and cheese would fix me. Jury’s still out.”
Priya exhaled so sharply her bangs fluttered. “You did?”
“Yup,” Reindeer-sweater Woman said. “After fourteen years of pretending I loved optimising regional workflow systems. My soul escaped by faking its own death and mailing me a postcard from Provence. It said ‘Bisous‘ and nothing else.”
Priya snorted. “Félicitations to that.”
They clinked glasses and migrated toward a quieter corner near a potted plant and a window overlooking the rain-slicked street below, where the Christmas lights reflected in puddles like scattered stars. A man in a beret walked past with a baguette under his arm—so stereotypically Parisian that Priya wondered if he was performance art.
“I’m Maya, by the way.”
“Priya.”
“So,” Maya said, sliding into a vintage velvet armchair with the elegance of someone abandoning all pretence, “how’s your quarter-life, mid-life, two-thirds-life crisis going? Mine is currently focused by the terrifying realisation that I don’t know how to do anything but make pivot tables. Turns out that’s not a transferable skill for Parisian dinner parties.”
Priya laughed, startled. “Honestly? I think I’m in the renegotiation period of the ceasefire between Me and My Expectations. I’m demanding better terms. Possibly in French, for dramatic effect.”
Maya raised her glass. “To demanding better terms. À nos projets flous et terrifiants.”
Priya settled beside her. The chair sighed under the weight of her honesty. Outside, the city twinkled—the Eiffel Tower doing its hourly sparkle show in the distance, because even infrastructure here was dramatic. She took a breath. “I thought leaving my job would make things clearer. Like the universe would hand me a neatly labelled folder: ‘Priya’s New Purpose—Action Items Inside.’ Instead, I’m… here. In Paris. At a party. Eating expensive quiche and pretending I understand when people switch mid-sentence to French.”
“I get it,” Maya said. “I spent ten years working toward a corner office. Then I finally got it, sat in the leather chair, looked out over the city and thought, ‘Ah. I think I might have made a horrible, irreversible mistake.’ So I moved to Paris, thinking geographical relocation would solve existential problems. Spoiler: it doesn’t. But the bread is better.”
“Ten years for one uncomfortable chair?”
Maya nodded solemnly. “It was ergonomic, which is corporate code for ‘will slowly destroy your spine in a very expensive way.’ The Paris version has better stuffing but the same soul-crushing vibe.”
Something warm started expanding in Priya’s chest, competing with the mulled wine. “It’s just… everyone else seems so certain. I tell people I left my job, and they congratulate me like I just climbed Everest. But then they ask what’s next, and when I say ‘I don’t know,’ they stare at me like I’ve confessed to burning down the Galeries Lafayette Christmas display.”
Maya tilted her head, her reindeer-Eiffel earrings swaying. “Priya, look around. This entire place is filled with people pretending they have A PLAN. Some do. But a lot of them are one minor inconvenience—like running out of champagne or discovering their Navigo pass expired—away from Googling ‘What’s my real purpose in life?‘ just like the rest of us.”
Priya followed her gaze. The confidently networking people looked a little different now—less intimidating. Slightly panicked, even, beneath the curated glow of ambition and the blinking Santa hats perched atop perfectly styled French haircuts.
“Huh,” Priya said. “Maybe none of us really knows what we’re doing. We’re just doing it in nicer cities.”
They fell into the kind of conversation that feels like slipping on warm, well-worn slippers—cozy, unpretentious, safe. They talked about old dreams, lost passions, the terrifying thrill of blank calendars, and the existential dread of absent LinkedIn notifications. Maya confessed she’d been in Paris for three months and still couldn’t figure out which day her building’s concierge speaks to people. Priya admitted she’d cried in a boulangerie last week because she couldn’t remember the word for croissant(?!) and just pointed desperately while the baker looked confused and slightly concerned.
They shared their fears, too.
“What if I never figure it out?” Priya whispered.
Maya shrugged softly. “Figuring it out might be a tad… overrated. The French have been philosophically unsure about everything for centuries, and they seem fine. Well, fine-ish. They have 300 varieties of cheese to help them cope.”
That landed somewhere deep. Priya swallowed.
“I watch a lot of TED Talks,” Maya said dryly. “Two and a half, and suddenly I’m Yoda. Un Yoda parisien avec un béret rouge.”
They sat in companionable silence, two strangers who’d become something more—companions in the strange, brave wilderness between endings and beginnings, sitting in a Marais loft while the city glittered outside and accordion music drifted up from somewhere below.
Later, as Priya stepped out into the cold December night, her breath made soft clouds in the air. The street glimmered with rain and reflected Christmas lights. A couple hurried past sharing an umbrella, laughing. The smell of roasting chestnuts drifted from a corner stand. Somewhere, church bells chimed.
Priya didn’t have all the answers, but she had one honest conversation under her belt and the phone number of someone who understood what it felt like to be spectacularly uncertain in a beautiful city.
For tonight, that felt like enough.
The Make Friends and Maintain Friendships Masterplan
We often under-rate relocation as a life transition. I have had to relocate several times. I know what it takes to survive: friends you can depend on.
Making new friends after a relocation isn’t about replacing the people you left behind—it’s about building the infrastructure you need to survive and thrive in your new reality. Your best friend from your old location knows your history, your inside jokes, the person you were before everything changed, and that connection is irreplaceable—nurture it fiercely through regular calls, visits, and the kind of texts that pick up mid-conversation like no time has passed. They can’t, however, bring you soup when you’re sick at 2 AM, can’t meet you for an impromptu coffee when you’re spiralling, can’t introduce you to their dentist or help you figure out which grocery store has the best bread.
New friends become your on-the-ground support system—the people who help you build a life where you actually live, not just where you used to live. You need both: the deep roots of old friendship that remind you who you are, and the new connections that help you figure out who you’re becoming. One gives you continuity; the other gives you community.
Christmas events, community gatherings, or even online spaces are filled with opportunities to connect. Every friendship starts with a simple introduction. The barista you see every morning, the neighbour you exchange nods with, or someone in your extended social circle could become a meaningful connection if you’re open to the possibility.
New friendships are a reminder that life always offers fresh beginnings, even during times of change. You don’t have to navigate transitions alone—there are people out there ready to walk alongside you. Making friends and maintaining friendships is one of the subjects we’ll address during my 3-6 month mentoring program, the Radical Renaissance Protocol.
Today, say yes to one social event that feels uncomfortable or outside your comfort zone—especially if you’re new somewhere or going through a transition. Show up even when you’d rather stay home. Go to the networking thing, the expat meetup, the random invitation from an acquaintance. Join local and regional Facebook groups. Worst case scenario: You waste a couple of hours. Best case scenario: You meet someone else who also feels out of place, you bond over your mutual discomfort and inability to remember how many bises are appropriate, and six months later they’re the person you text when you need someone to sit with you in your uncertainty—the friend who gets it because they were there too, pretending to have their life together while everything felt impossibly hard and terrifyingly uncertain all at once.
It’s not easy to make friends, especially in a country where you may not speak the language, but it is essential. As Helen Keller said, “I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.” Would you like to figure out what type of friend YOU are and maybe adjust your approach to fit your new circumstances? Are you and a new friend really are compatible? To help my clients make friends, have created a set of light-hearted quizzes, quotes and questions to help you do just that. Just fill in the form below and you’ll get immediate access to them all. I’ll also add you to my newsletter list, though you can unsubscribe from this list effortlessly and at any time.
Included:
– How well do you know your Friends? Quiz
– What is Your Friendship Style? and Are your Friendship Styles compatible? Quiz
– 20 of the Most Inspiring Friends and Friendship Quotes and
– 20 lighthearted Questions you can ask to get to know a new Friend
Friends and Friendships
Discover how to build meaningful, lasting friendships and create a support system that truly has your back—delivered straight to your inbox! (newsletter subscription included)
Thank you so much!
More information about making friends and maintaining friendships (including the quizzes I mentioned) is on its way to you. You have also successfully subscribed to my newsletter.
Designed for those navigating a life transition, the Radical Renaissance Protocol guides you through an identity reset, helping you reconnect with your purpose, realign your values, and reclaim the clarity you thought you’d lost. This isn’t about fixing what’s broken: through reflection, strategic reinvention, and soul-anchored mentoring, you’ll transform uncertainty into direction and dormant potential into meaningful impact.
If your soul is craving fresh air, meaningful movement, and a chance to reconnect with nature, join us on a Camino de Santiago Crossroads Retreatin the southwest of France. This isn’t just a scenic hike – it’s a powerful, natural reboot for your body, mind, and spirit. Imagine quiet paths, rolling hills, cozy evenings, and slow conversations. No fitness requirements. No forced bonding. No pressure to have a breakthrough. Just one foot in front of the other, and a journey that meets you exactly where you are.
I put the essence of who I am, and everything I have experienced that makes me who I am, with great enthusiasm, into my retreats, courses and books. – Dr Margaretha Montagu (MBChB, MRCGP, NLP master pract (cert,) Transformational Life Coach (dip,) Life Story Coach (cert) Counselling (cert,) Med Hypnotherapy (dip) and EAGALA (cert)
Comment
Just wanted to say how wonderful I think your stories are and today in particular made me think back to when I came to live in France, although my husband was here everything was new including taking on the headship of the International School; And then within a year my husband of 30+ years had suddenly passed away and without the support of my close colleagues I would not have survived and some of those very special people have become my firm friends and still though I dont see them very often are so very special to me. S. B.
Château de la Garde had rough-hewn limestone walls that rose from the damp earth like a sleeping giant. Elsie pulled her wool scarf higher, the fabric scratching her chin. Her instincts, which usually guided her safely to the nearest quiet corner with a book and a cup of tea, had screamed No, stay at home! ‘Christmas Carols at the Chateau’ is not your thing! But her neighbour, Madame Dubois, insisted with such determined, festive goodwill that Elsie had capitulated.
She followed a small stream of people—mostly couples in expensive, sensible outerwear—across the courtyard. The air smelled of cold stone, damp leaves, and woodsmoke. Above the heavy oak door hung a single, enormous wreath decorated with pinecones the size of her fist.
The Great Hall was a cavern of soaring ceilings and shadows. Gilded frames held portraits of long-dead dukes who looked perpetually annoyed, now flanked by towering, twinkling fir trees. The cold air of the entrance gave way to a dense warmth, thick with the scent of beeswax candles and the cloying sweetness of vin chaud.
Elsie found a seat near the back, against a wall that felt genuinely medieval, radiating a bone-deep chill that no amount of central heating could disperse. She was safe here, a lone island in a sea of rustling velvet and murmured French. She pulled out her phone, intending to check the weather, but the signal had clearly been sacrificed to preserve the chateau’s authentic atmosphere.
The choir filed in, a group of twenty-odd people in deep blue robes, their faces serious. The conductor, a man with a wild shock of white hair and a bow tie that seemed to vibrate with enthusiasm, raised his hands.
The first note of the carol—a low, powerful bass—hit the stone walls and rebounded, vibrating through the floor and up into Elsie’s chest. It wasn’t just music; it was a physical experience, a heavy blanket woven from sound.
It was during the third verse of a particularly complex French carol that Elsie felt a sharp, unexpected jab in her ribs.
“I’m ever so sorry,” a voice whispered, heavily accented, right next to her ear. “I think my elbow just committed a felony against your person.”
Elsie turned her head slowly. The woman next to her was small, with a riot of dark, curly hair that seemed to defy gravity and a pair of glasses perched precariously on her nose. She was holding a plastic cup of mulled wine with the intensity of someone guarding a national treasure.
“It’s fine,” Elsie whispered back, rubbing her side. “I think the chateau’s acoustics must have amplified the impact.”
The woman grinned, a quick, bright flash. “Ah, yes. The medieval echo chamber. Designed to make you feel spiritually uplifted. I’m Clara.”
“Elsie.”
“I’m here under duress,” Clara confided, leaning in slightly. “My husband is in the tenor section. He sings with the passion of a man who believes he is personally responsible for the salvation of the entire audience. It’s exhausting to watch.”
Elsie let out a small, involuntary puff of laughter. “Mine was a neighbour. Madame Dubois. She operates on a level of festive coercion I’ve never before encountered.”
“Ah, French women of a certain age. Forces of nature.” Clara took a careful sip of her wine. “Do you think this vin chaud is actually just port with a cinnamon stick? Because it’s suspiciously strong.”
“I suspect it’s a secret regional recipe,” Elsie replied, feeling a lightness she hadn’t anticipated. She hadn’t spoken more than three sentences to a stranger in a week, and here she was, dissecting the alcohol content of the local Christmas tipple.
The choir launched into a rousing, slightly off-key rendition of “Deck the Halls.”
“Fa la la la la,” Clara mouthed, rolling her eyes with theatrical flair. “I love the carols, I really do, but I swear my other half just went rogue on the ‘la’s.”
“He’s expressing his artistic freedom,” Elsie murmured, watching the husband in question, whose face was indeed a mask of intense, slightly pained devotion.
During the brief intermission, the crowd surged towards the refreshments table. Elsie and Clara, having established a comfortable proximity, moved together.
“So, you’re not from around here,” Clara stated, not as a question, but as a shared observation.
“Is it the way I flinch when someone speaks French too quickly?” Elsie asked, accepting a tiny, star-shaped mince pie.
“No, it’s the coat,” Clara said, tapping Elsie’s sleeve. “It’s too practical. Too sensible. Everyone here wears something that looks like it was woven from a rare alpaca and a thousand euros. In rebellion, I’m wearing a coat I bought in a panic at a motorway service station.”
They fell into an easy, meandering conversation that drifted far from the chateau and the carols. Clara was a graphic designer who had followed her historian husband to this corner of the world and was now trying to launch a business selling online journals to people who still used paper diaries. Elsie confessed her current state of professional drift—a quiet, post-burnout sabbatical she hadn’t yet told anyone about.
The conductor, now back on the stage, clapped his hands sharply, signaling the end of the intermission.
“We should probably go back,” Elsie said, feeling a pang of genuine disappointment.
“Wait,” Clara whispered. She reached into her small, impractical handbag and pulled out a slightly crumpled business card.
Elsie took the card as they returned to their seats. The choir began a slow, soaring piece, the voices weaving together like threads of silver and gold. This time, Elsie didn’t lean against the cold wall. She sat upright, her attention split between the music and the small, warm presence beside her.
The music was beautiful, undeniably so, but it was the quiet, shared moment after the final note—the collective sigh of the audience, the scrape of chairs, the sudden rush of cold air as the doors opened—that felt most significant.
Outside, the frost had thickened, turning the courtyard into a sheet of silver. Clara’s husband appeared, scarf wound haphazardly around his neck, still flushed with post-performance adrenaline.
“Ah, ma chérie, you survived!” he said, kissing Clara on both cheeks. “Did you hear the exquisite harmonies in the second piece, Noel Nouvelet? Magnifique, non?”
“Magnificent,” Clara agreed, with such sincere affection that Elsie felt a small pang of something she couldn’t quite name. Clara turned to introduce them, but her husband was already being pulled away by another choir member, deep into a passionate debate about the tempo of “Minuit Chétiens.”
“He’ll be another twenty minutes at least,” Clara said, pulling her ridiculous, fluffy hat down over her ears. “I’m going to need a proper coffee after this. A coffee that tastes like actual coffee, not a medieval spice rack.”
“I know a place,” Elsie heard herself say. “It’s tiny, but the coffee is excellent.”
Clara stopped, turning to face her. The chateau lights cast long shadows across the courtyard, but her expression was clear. “When?”
The directness of it caught Elsie off guard. Not maybe or we should, but when.
“Tomorrow?” The word came out tentative, as if testing whether it was real.
“Tomorrow,” Clara confirmed. “Text me the address. I’ll be the one who looks desperately grateful to be somewhere that isn’t a medieval monument to seasonal obligation.”
They stood there for a moment longer, breath clouding in the frozen air, as the last of the crowd dispersed around them. The chateau loomed behind them, its windows golden, the wreath above the door catching the light. Somewhere, a door closed with a heavy, final thud.
“I should let you find your husband,” Elsie said.
“He’ll find me eventually. He always does.” Clara smiled, then reached out and squeezed Elsie’s arm. “Thank you for making this bearable. Better than bearable, actually.”
Elsie walked to her car alone, her footsteps crunching on the gravel. She unlocked the door and sat for a moment in the cold interior, looking at the business card in her hand.
As she pulled out of the car park, she caught sight of Clara (aka Penny) in her rearview mirror, standing in a pool of light, waving with both hands above her head like someone signalling a rescue plane.
Elsie lifted one hand from the steering wheel and waved back.
The road home was dark and winding, but she knew the way. And tomorrow, she would know the way to somewhere else entirely—a small café, a proper cup of coffee, and a conversation that doesn’t have to end when the carols did.
Maybe Madame Dubois had been right after all.
The Make Friends and Maintain Friendships Masterplan
The invitations you’re most tempted to decline are often the ones you need most. Not because every event will be amazing (some will be terrible), but because isolating during life transitions feels safe until it becomes suffocating.
You don’t have to say yes to everything. You don’t have to become a social butterfly. You just have to say yes to one thing you’d normally decline.
Maybe it’ll be awkward. Maybe you’ll leave early. Maybe you’ll spend the whole time thinking about your couch.
Or maybe—justmaybe—you’ll meet your person. The one who also wanted to leave early. The one who also felt awkward. The one who becomes your Tuesday dinner friend, your emergency contact, your “I need to complain about life” text thread.
You won’t know until you say yes.
Today, say yes to one Christmas invitation you’d normally decline. The community Christmas carols sing-along, even though you don’t know the words past the first verse. The tree lighting ceremony in the town square when it’s definitely going to rain. That annual Christmas concert your overly enthusiastic neighbour won’t stop mentioning. What you’re risking: Frozen fingers and frozen toes. Making small talk with strangers about fruitcake. Pretending to enjoy mulled wine that tastes like liquid potpourri. One slightly embarrassing evening you would have forgotten all about by January. What you might gain: A moment when someone’s elbow digs into your ribs, and they apologise with the kind of quirky humour that makes you forget you actually want to be anywhere else. A conversation that starts with “I’m only here under duress” and ends with a business card in your pocket. The discovery that the person sitting next to you also thinks this is ridiculous, and suddenly, ridiculous not only becomes bearable, but the highlight of your season.
Would you like to find out what type of friend YOU are? How well do you know your friends? If you and a new friend are really compatible? I have created a set of light-hearted quizzes, quotes and questions to help you do just that. Just fill in the form below and you’ll get immediate access to them all. I’ll also add you to my newsletter list, though you can unsubscribe from this list effortlessly and at any time.
Included:
– How well do you know your Friends? Quiz
– What is your Friendship Style? and Are your Friendship Styles compatible? Quiz
– 20 of the Most Inspiring Friends and Friendship Quotes and
– 20 lighthearted Questions you can ask to get to know a new Friend
Friends and Friendships
Discover how to build meaningful, lasting friendships and create a support system that truly has your back—delivered straight to your inbox! (newsletter subscription included)
Thank you so much!
More information about making friends and maintaining friendships (including the quizzes I mentioned) is on its way to you. You have also successfully subscribed to my newsletter.
Author Bio: Dr Margaretha Montagu – described as a “game changer”, “gifted healer”, “guiding light” and “life-enriching author” – is an experienced medical doctor, a certified NLP practitioner, a medical hypnotherapist, an equine-assisted psychotherapist (EAGALAcertified) and a transformational retreat leader who guides her clients through life transitions – virtually, or with the assistance of her Friesian and Falabella horses, at their home in the southwest of France.
Hard-won lessons, honest surprises, and why this ancient path might be exactly what your overwrought nervous system needs right now What this is: A candid, warm, and occasionally hair-raising guide to what really happens when you walk your first Camino de Santiago — the blisters, the breakthroughs, the beauty, and the bits the guidebooks politely …
My “After the Reinvention” article first appeared on my Substack, Margaretha Montagu’s Stories. Reinventing yourself, reconstructing your life, against all odds, succeeding, sailing over all the hurdles, is such a deeply satisfying thing to do. A couple of years later, on a timid spring morning, a pale sun just cresting the hill, turning an unexpected …
Exploring Embodied Cognition and Constructive Self-reflection 5 Key Takeaways What this is: A heartfelt, practical, occasionally cheeky deep-dive into why journalling on the Camino de Santiago is one of the most powerful things a person can do for their mental and emotional health — especially right now, in a world that seems to have lost …
A guide for the quietly exhausted person who has been “fine” for far too long What this is: A thoughtful, research-informed guide to journaling in natural settings as a practical tool for nervous system regulation, emotional honesty, and self-reconnection during or after major life upheaval. It includes a storytelling section, science, common mistakes, book recommendations, …
Or: Taking a good look at everything you’ve been meaning to deal with that is rusting or rotting in the rafters of your mind. This article first appeared on my Substack, Margaretha Montagu’s Stories. There is a particular kind of horror that only reveals itself in an attic. Not the horror of spiders, though they …
The text arrives at 6:47 AM on December 10th: Chemo brain strikes again. Forgot to buy eggs. Also forgot what eggs are for. Send help.
By 7:15, there are four dozen eggs in Marie’s kitchen. Also: three different types of bread, two quiches (one still warm), a rotisserie chicken, and Lisa standing at the stove making scrambled eggs.
“You didn’t have to come,” Marie says from the doorway, her own head wrapped in the soft green scarf that Jen brought last week because it “matched her eyes and also her face when she’s nauseous.”
“I was already up,” Lisa lies. She wasn’t. Her hair is in a messy bun and she’s wearing inside-out leggings. “Besides, someone has to make sure you eat some real food.”
Marie shuffles to the table. Her slippers make a soft shushing sound against the hardwood. Everything feels both sharper these days—colours too bright, sounds too loud, but her own body somewhere far away, like she’s operating it by remote control.
Lisa slides eggs onto a plate. They’re perfect—soft, buttery, the way Marie’s mom used to make them. Marie’s throat tightens.
“Don’t you dare cry over eggs,” Lisa warns. “I have a reputation to maintain as someone who can’t cook.”
“These are really good.”
“I Googled it in your driveway. ‘Scrambled eggs for your friend who’s going through hell.'” Lisa sits down across from her.
Marie takes a bite. Her stomach, which has spent three days staging a revolution, cautiously accepts the offering.
“The group chat is losing it, by the way,” Lisa says, pulling out her phone. “Jen wants to know if we’re doing Christmas at your place or hers. Rachel sent seventeen ideas for ‘chemo-friendly holiday crafts,’ which is apparently a category that exists. And Sarah—” She pauses, scrolling. “Sarah wants to know if you’d rather talk about it or never mention it and just aggressively focus on normal things.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That you’d let us know when you knew.” Lisa looks up. “Will you? Let us know?”
Marie pushes eggs around her plate. Outside, someone’s car alarm is going off. The morning light coming through the window is thin and pale, the kind of winter light that makes everything look temporary.
“I don’t know what I need,” she admits. “Some days I want everyone here. Other days I want to crawl into a corner.”
“Okay. So we’ll figure it out as we go.” Lisa says it like it’s simple. Like Marie isn’t a burden with a rotating schedule of bad days and worse days. Like showing up at 7 AM to make scrambled eggs is just what you do.
By December 15th, there’s a system.
Monday, Wednesday, Friday: Lisa brings breakfast and sits with Marie during the morning nausea. They don’t talk much. Sometimes Lisa reads the news out loud. Sometimes they just sit.
Tuesday and Thursday: Jen comes after work with dinner and terrible reality TV. They watch home renovation shows and make fun of people’s design choices. Jen does a running commentary in different accents. Marie laughs until her ribs hurt, and it’s the first time hurting has felt good in weeks.
Saturday: Rachel arrives with craft supplies and chaos. Last week, they made ornaments out of salt dough. This week, she’s brought supplies for decorating gingerbread houses, except she forgot the gingerbread, and they end up building houses out of TUC crackers and icing. Marie’s collapses. Rachel declares it “architecturally honest.”
Sunday: Sarah takes Marie to appointments. Holds her hand as the needle goes in. Doesn’t flinch at the blood draws. Asks the doctors questions Marie’s too tired to ask. Takes notes in a little spiral notebook with a ginger cat on the front.
It’s not perfect. Some days, Marie cancels everythin,g and they let her be. Some days, someone says the wrong thing and Marie cries in the bathroom. Some days, the group chat goes quiet because nobody knows what to say.
But they keep showing up.
On December 23rd, Marie wakes up, and her pillow is covered in hair—the last of it finally letting go. She knew it was coming. The oncologist warned her. But knowing and seeing are different countries.
She texts the group chat: Houston, we have a situation.
Twenty minutes later, all four of them are in her bathroom. Rachel brought clippers. Jen brought champagne (sparkling cider for Marie). Lisa brought the wig collection—all five of them, lined up on the counter like a strange police lineup.
“We could do a ceremonial shaving,” Rachel suggests. “Very Britney Spears 2007.”
“Or we could just buzz it quick and move on,” Sarah offers, ever practical.
Marie looks at herself in the mirror. At her friends crowded into her tiny bathroom, still in their coats because they came so fast. At the wigs—blond, auburn, black, silver, and one truly unfortunate pink one they bought as a joke, but Marie secretly loves.
“Ceremonial,” she decides. “But skip the breakdown. I’m too tired for a full Britney moment.”
Lisa plugs in the clippers. The buzz fills the small space—mechanical, final, and somehow less scary than Marie imagined.
Rachel goes first, shaving one strip down the middle. “Mohawk phase!” she announces. Jen takes the next section. Then Sarah. Then Lisa. They’re laughing, and Marie’s crying, but it’s not sad crying. It’s something else—something that feels like a mix of surrender and relief.
When it’s done, Marie runs her hand over her bare scalp. It’s smooth. Strange. Hers.
“You look badass,” Jen says.
“You look like you could join a punk band,” Rachel adds.
“You look like you,” Sarah says quietly, and somehow that’s the one that lands.
Lisa picks up the pink wig and places it on Marie’s head with the solemnity of a coronation. “Your Majesty.”
They take seventeen selfies. Marie looks exhausted, ridiculous, surrounded by her support team. She posts one to Instagram with the caption: “Like my new hair”? The comments flood in within minutes.
That night, they eat Chinese takeout in Marie’s living room. Her tiny Christmas tree—decorated entirely with the salt dough ornaments they made—twinkles in the corner. Someone’s fortune cookie says “Better things are coming.” Marie doesn’t believe in fortune cookies, but she keeps the slip of paper anyway.
“Next year,” Jen says, sprawled on the floor, “we’re doing Christmas somewhere warm. Beach. Mimosas. No cancer.”
“Legally binding,” Rachel agrees.
Marie pulls the pink wig down lower. It’s itchy but perfect. Her friends are arguing now about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie. The same argument they’ve had every December for six years.
Everything is different. Everything is the same.
She’s going to be okay. Not because the treatment is working—though it is. Not because she’s so brave—but because she has friends she can trust.
The Make Friends and Maintain Friendships Masterplan
In a season often marked by busy schedules and loud celebrations, there’s something beautifully grounding about quiet moments shared with friends. Sometimes, the best connections don’t need words.
Friends aren’t just the people we laugh with during the good times—they’re the ones who show up with scrambled eggs at dawn when we’ve forgotten what eggs are for, who sit in silence when words fail, who hold our hands through the unbearable and somehow make it bearable. During life’s hardest transitions—illness, loss, divorce, upheaval—friends become our infrastructure, the scaffolding that holds us upright when we can’t stand on our own. Those friendships don’t suddenly materialise in crisis; they’re built in the ordinary moments that come before, in the small, consistent acts of showing up, checking in, and staying connected even when life gets busy.
Nurturing friendships isn’t just about enriching our lives—it’s about building a network of love sturdy enough to catch us when we fall, and being strong enough to catch others when they do. We invest in friendships not because we expect catastrophe, but because we’re human, and being human means we’ll all face hard seasons eventually. When we do, we’ll need someone who knows us well enough to bring the right wig, ask the right questions, or simply sit beside us and say nothing at all. The friends we cultivate today become the lifeline we’ll need tomorrow, and the lifeline we can offer when someone else’s world falls apart.
Today, show up consistently for someone going through a hard time—not just once, but again and again, even when it’s inconvenient. Worst case scenario: Your schedule gets complicated and you have to wake up early sometimes. Best case scenario: You become the person someone thinks of when they remember who helped them survive the hardest season of their life, and you learn that love isn’t just the big gestures—it’s scrambled eggs at 7 AM and sitting quietly through the bad days and showing up with clippers when life falls apart.
As my mission in life is to help people through difficult times, this Christmas Countdown Calendar is about making friends and maintaining friendships, because we all need our friends in times of trouble. I have created a set of light-hearted quizzes, quotes and questions to help you “Be the friend you’d like to have.” Would you like to find out what type of friend you are? How well do you know your friends? If you and a new friend are really compatible? Just fill in the form below, and you’ll get immediate access. I’ll also add you to my newsletter list, though you can unsubscribe from this list effortlessly and at any time. Included:
How well do you know your Friends? Quiz
What is Your Friendship Style? and Are your Friendship Styles compatible? Quiz
20 of the Most Inspiring Friends and Friendship Quotes and
20 lighthearted Questions you can ask to get to know a new Friend
Friends and Friendships
Discover how to build meaningful, lasting friendships and create a support system that truly has your back—delivered straight to your inbox! (newsletter subscription included)
Thank you so much!
More information about making friends and maintaining friendships (including the quizzes I mentioned) is on its way to you. You have also successfully subscribed to my newsletter.
Designed for those navigating a life transition, the Radical Renaissance Protocol guides you through an identity reset, helping you reconnect with your purpose, realign your values, and reclaim the clarity you thought you’d lost. This isn’t about fixing what’s broken: through reflection, strategic reinvention, and soul-anchored mentoring, you’ll transform uncertainty into direction and dormant potential into meaningful impact.
If your soul is craving fresh air, meaningful movement, and a chance to reconnect with nature, join us on a Camino de Santiago Crossroads Retreatin the southwest of France. This isn’t just a scenic hike – it’s a powerful, natural reboot for your body, mind, and spirit. Imagine quiet paths, rolling hills, cozy evenings, and slow conversations. No fitness requirements. No forced bonding. No pressure to have a breakthrough. Just one foot in front of the other, and a journey that meets you exactly where you are.
I put the essence of who I am, and everything I have experienced that makes me who I am, with great enthusiasm, into my retreats, courses and books. – Dr Margaretha Montagu (MBChB, MRCGP, NLP master pract (cert,) Transformational Life Coach (dip,) Life Story Coach (cert) Counselling (cert,) Med Hypnotherapy (dip) and EAGALA (cert)
What this is: A practical exploration of how your brain responds to life’s curveballs, and why understanding the difference between reactive and responsive thinking is the single most important skill for anyone ready to write their next chapter (especially when your previous chapter ended in a way you didn’t choose).
What this isn’t: Another “just think positive” pep talk, a neuroscience lecture that requires a medical degree to understand, or a suggestion that you should suppress your very legitimate feelings about whatever storm you’ve just weathered.
Read this if: You’re tired of feeling hijacked by your own emotions, you want to make decisions you’ll still respect six months from now, or you’re simply done with the exhausting cycle of reacting to life instead of responding to it with intention.
5 Key Takeaways
Your reactive brain kept you alive during the crisis, but it will sabotage your next chapter if you let it stay in charge. The same neural pathways that protected you when everything fell apart will keep you stuck in survival mode long after the danger has passed.
The gap between stimulus and response is where your power lives. That pause, even if it’s just three seconds, is the difference between a life you’re proud of and a life that happens to you.
Responsive thinking isn’t about being calm or zen, it’s about being choiceful. You can still feel all the feelings and choose what you do with them.
Your brain’s default setting after trauma is hypervigilance, not wisdom. Understanding this removes the self-judgement when you find yourself overreacting to small things.
Christmas (and other emotionally loaded occasions) is your annual training ground for building a responsive brain. Master the holidays, master your life transitions.
Introduction: The Chapter You Didn’t Choose
Here’s something nobody mentions in those “embrace change” Instagram posts: most of us don’t get to choose when our old life ends. Death doesn’t check your calendar. Illness doesn’t wait for a convenient moment. Redundancy letters arrive on Tuesday mornings. Relationships implode spectacularly, often just when you thought you’d finally got things sorted.
And then, after the initial shock wears off and the casseroles from well-meaning neighbours stop arriving, you’re left with this enormous question: Now what?
This article is for you if you’re over 40/50/60, you’ve been through something that fundamentally changed your life’s trajectory, and you’re ready (or at least ready-ish) to start your next chapter. Not because you’ve “moved on” or “got over it” or any of those other phrases people use when they’re uncomfortable with grief, but because staying stuck in the wreckage isn’t serving you anymore.
What you’re feeling, by the way, is completely normal. The confusion, the second-guessing, the 3am anxiety spirals, the days when you feel ridiculously hopeful followed by the days when you can barely get out of bed. Your brain is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do after massive disruption. The problem is, what kept you safe during the crisis will keep you small during your comeback.
Here’s what you’ll gain from the next 2,000 words: you’ll understand why your brilliant, capable brain keeps betraying you at crucial moments, you’ll learn the neurological difference between reacting and responding (and why it matters more than any other skill you’ll develop), and you’ll discover how to catch yourself mid-spiral and choose differently. Not perfectly. Just differently enough to matter.
The Story of Claire Hartwell: When Loss Rewires Everything
Claire Hartwell was 53 when her husband died. Not dramatically, not after a long illness that gave everyone time to prepare, but suddenly, on a Thursday, from a massive heart attack in the cereal aisle at Tesco. One moment he was debating between bran flakes and granola (bran flakes always won; he was that sort of man), and the next moment he was gone.
The first six months were a blur of paperwork and platitudes. Claire moved through the necessary rituals with impressive competence. She organised the funeral, sorted the life insurance, fielded the endless “how are you holding up?” questions with appropriate responses. Her adult children marvelled at how well she was coping.
But Claire wasn’t coping. Claire was reacting. Her brain had shifted into pure survival mode, and every decision, every interaction, every thought was filtered through her amygdala’s primitive binary: threat or safety? The problem with this mode is that it’s exhausting to maintain, and it results in terrible decisions about your future.
Eight months after David died, Claire’s daughter Emma announced her engagement. The wedding would be in June, eighteen months away. Plenty of time. Emma was glowing, talking about venues and flowers and guest lists, and Claire heard herself say, “I don’t think I can come.”
The silence in the room was spectacular.
“Mum,” Emma said carefully, “it’s not for another year and a half.”
“I know. But I can’t. I just can’t.” Claire’s chest was tight, her hands were trembling, and she could feel the tears coming. “How can I go to a wedding without your father? How can I watch you walk down an aisle he’ll never see? I can’t do it. Don’t make me do it.”
Emma left shortly after, confused and hurt. Claire sat in her kitchen, the same kitchen where she and David had shared thirty years of breakfasts, and felt something crack open inside her chest. Not grief this time. Something else. A terrible clarity.
This was the moment Claire realised her brain had been hijacked. For eight months, she’d been operating from her reactive brain, the part that perceives everything through the lens of threat and loss. The wedding wasn’t happening for eighteen months, but her amygdala was treating it like an immediate danger, flooding her system with cortisol and adrenaline as if she were being chased by a predator.
She could smell the coffee going cold in her mug, bitter and metallic. She could hear the clock ticking in the hallway, each second marking another moment David wasn’t there to hear. She could feel the worn wooden edge of the kitchen chair pressing into her thighs, the same chair where David used to sit and do the crossword every Sunday. The house felt too quiet and too loud simultaneously.
Claire picked up her phone and called her sister, Ruth, who’d been gently suggesting therapy for months.
“I need help,” Claire said. “I nearly missed my own daughter’s wedding because my brain is broken.”
“Your brain isn’t broken,” Ruth said. “It’s just stuck. There’s a difference.”
That phone call led Claire to a life transition coach (not immediately; first she tried three therapists who were lovely but wrong, which often happens). The coach introduced her to the concept of reactive versus responsive thinking. The reactive brain, Claire learned, is your body’s emergency broadcast system. It’s brilliant in actual emergencies. It makes you jump out of the way of speeding cars and grab children before they touch hot stoves. It kept Claire functioning during those first impossible weeks after David died.
But the reactive brain has no nuance. It treats Emma’s wedding announcement the same way it treats a smoke alarm. Everything is urgent, everything is dangerous, everything requires an immediate, protective response. It’s why Claire, who was normally thoughtful and measured, found herself saying “I can’t come” before her conscious mind even caught up.
The responsive brain, by contrast, creates space. It says, “I’m feeling triggered right now. That’s information. What do I actually want to do with this information?” It allows for complexity, for holding multiple truths simultaneously: I miss David desperately AND I want to celebrate Emma’s joy. This moment is painful AND it’s also an opportunity to show up for my daughter. I’m grieving AND I’m still living.
Claire started practising the pause. Three seconds. Just three seconds between stimulus and response. When Emma mentioned wedding details, instead of immediately reacting from her fear brain, Claire would breathe, count to three, and then choose her response. It felt mechanical at first, almost stupid. But gradually, incrementally, it changed everything.
By the time June arrived, Claire walked Emma down the aisle. She cried through the entire ceremony, yes. She had David’s photo in her bouquet, yes. She needed to step outside twice to breathe through panic attacks, yes. But she was there. Present. Responsive. Choosing her life instead of being steered by her fear.
Understanding the Reactive vs Responsive Brain: The Neuroscience of Next Chapters
Here’s what’s actually happening in your skull when life implodes: your brain’s threat detection system, the amygdala, goes into overdrive. This almond-shaped cluster of neurons is remarkably efficient at keeping you alive, but it’s catastrophically bad at helping you build a meaningful life after crisis.
The reactive brain operates from your limbic system, the ancient part of your brain that predates language and logic. When it perceives a threat (and after major life disruption, everything feels threatening), it triggers the sympathetic nervous system’s fight, flight, or freeze response. Your heart rate increases, your pupils dilate, your digestion shuts down, and your prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for rational decision-making, essentially goes offline. You’re operating on instinct, not insight.
This is magnificent if you’re escaping a burning building. It’s disastrous if you’re trying to decide whether to sell your house, change careers, or repair a damaged relationship.
The responsive brain, by contrast, engages your prefrontal cortex, the newest part of your brain in evolutionary terms. This is where executive function lives: planning, impulse control, emotional regulation, and the ability to consider long-term consequences. The responsive brain can hold paradox. It can acknowledge fear without being controlled by it. It can feel grief and still choose joy.
As a Life Transition Coach and NLP Master Practitioner with 15 years’ experience hosting transformational retreats on the Camino de Santiago, I have witnessed dozens of people make this crucial shift from reactive to responsive thinking. The pattern is consistent: those who learn to pause between stimulus and response, even for mere seconds, consistently make choices they’re proud of six months later. Those who remain stuck in reactive mode often report feeling like their life is happening to them, rather than being shaped by them.
This isn’t about positive thinking or suppressing legitimate emotions. The responsive brain doesn’t deny reality; it chooses how to engage with reality. It’s the difference between “this is terrible and I can’t cope” (reactive) and “this is terrible and I’m struggling, so what support do I need?” (responsive). Both acknowledge the difficulty. Only one opens a door.
The implications extend far beyond individual wellbeing. When you shift from reactive to responsive, you stop unconsciously spreading your stress to everyone around you. Your children, your colleagues, your friends, they all benefit from your increased emotional regulation. You become a stabilising presence rather than an amplifying one. In communities recovering from collective trauma, the presence of even a few responsive individuals can shift the entire group’s trajectory. Your personal healing becomes a form of service.
This matters because life transitions don’t happen in isolation. Your divorce affects your children’s sense of security. Your career crisis influences your partner’s stress levels. Your grief ripples out through your entire social network. When you develop a responsive brain, you’re not just changing your own life; you’re changing the emotional ecosystem of everyone who depends on you.
Why the Holidays Demand a Responsive Brain (And Why Christmas Is Your Annual Stress Test)
If you want to understand the difference between reactive and responsive thinking, spend Christmas with your family of origin. Nothing reveals your default neural pathways quite like navigating the emotional minefield of festive family gatherings, especially during your first major holiday season after a significant loss or life change.
Christmas triggers our reactive brain for several neurological reasons. First, it’s saturated with memory cues: specific songs, smells (cinnamon, pine, roasting chestnuts), visual triggers (twinkling lights, familiar decorations), and rituals that have been encoded in your neural pathways since childhood. When you’ve experienced a major loss, every single one of these triggers can activate your amygdala before your conscious mind even registers what’s happening.
Second, the holidays carry enormous social expectations. You’re “supposed” to feel joyful, grateful, and connected. When you’re actually feeling bereaved, anxious, or resentful, the gap between expectation and reality creates cognitive dissonance that your reactive brain interprets as threat. Your stress response activates not because anything is objectively dangerous, but because you’re failing to meet an imagined standard.
Third, family gatherings often involve people who knew you before your life changed, which means they’re relating to a version of you that no longer exists. Your reactive brain perceives this as invalidation, even when no harm is intended. Aunt Margaret asks about your husband at the Christmas dinner table, forgetting (or not knowing) that he left you six months ago. Your reactive brain wants to flip the table. Your responsive brain recognises this as an opportunity to gently update her and then redirect the conversation.
How Does a Responsive Brain Navigate Family Dynamics During Christmas?
A responsive brain practices what I call “strategic withdrawal.” You recognise that you have limited emotional bandwidth during this vulnerable season, and you budget it accordingly. You don’t attend every party. You don’t stay for every course of Christmas dinner. You create exit strategies before you arrive.
The responsive approach involves:
Acknowledging your triggers beforehand. You know that carol service will be difficult because you attended it with your late partner for 25 years. You prepare for this. You bring a trusted friend. You allow yourself to leave early. You don’t shame yourself for finding it hard.
Setting boundaries clearly and kindly. “I’m only staying until 3pm this year” is a responsive statement. “I suppose I should stay longer because it’s Christmas” is reactive thinking disguised as obligation.
Choosing your responses instead of defaulting to patterns. When your sister makes that comment she always makes about your life choices, your reactive brain wants to engage in the familiar argument. Your responsive brain thinks, “I’ve had this fight 47 times. It never goes well. What if I just smiled and changed the subject?”
Building in recovery time. The responsive brain knows that difficult interactions deplete your resources, so you schedule empty days after intense family gatherings. You don’t fill every moment of the holiday season with obligations.
What Happens When You Stay Reactive During the Holidays?
You snap at people you love. You drink too much to numb the discomfort. You commit to things you don’t want to do and then resent everyone for “making” you do them (even though nobody actually forced you). You end up creating the very drama you were trying to avoid. You start January exhausted and disappointed in yourself.
The Christmas season becomes a magnified version of whatever neural pattern you’re running. If you’re stuck in reactive mode, the holidays will amplify your stress, your grief, and your sense of being overwhelmed. If you’ve cultivated a responsive brain, the holidays become practice for the harder moments ahead. You learn that you can feel difficult emotions and still make wise choices. You discover that you’re more resilient than you thought.
5 Critical Mistakes That Keep You Stuck in Reactive Mode
1. Mistaking Intensity for Urgency
The mistake: Your reactive brain treats every uncomfortable emotion as an emergency requiring immediate action. You feel anxious about your financial future at 2am, so you start googling “sell house fast” and making major decisions from panic mode.
Why it sabotages you: Intensity and urgency are not the same thing. Most life transition decisions don’t require immediate action, even when the feelings about them are overwhelming. The responsive brain asks: “Is this actually urgent, or does it just feel urgent because I’m triggered?”
The fix: Implement a 48-hour rule for any major decision that isn’t genuinely time-sensitive. If it still feels right after two days, proceed. If it doesn’t, you’ve saved yourself from a reactive mistake.
2. Avoiding All Discomfort Because You’ve Already Survived Enough
The mistake: After a major crisis, your brain becomes hypervigilant about protecting you from any additional pain. So you start declining invitations, avoiding difficult conversations, and shrinking your life to only what feels completely safe. This seems like self-care, but it’s actually self-imprisonment.
Why it sabotages you: Growth lives just beyond comfort. The responsive brain distinguishes between unnecessary pain (which should be avoided) and necessary discomfort (which builds capacity). Your next chapter requires you to tolerate some discomfort, whether it’s the awkwardness of dating again, the vulnerability of starting a new career, or the grief that comes in waves at unexpected moments.
The fix: Practice distinguishing between danger (which requires protection) and discomfort (which requires courage). Ask yourself: “Is this situation actually unsafe, or does it just feel uncomfortable because it’s unfamiliar?”
3. Believing You Should Be “Over It” By Now
The mistake: You set arbitrary timelines for your healing based on what you think you “should” feel. Six months after the divorce, a year after the redundancy, two years after the death. When you’re still struggling past these imaginary deadlines, you add shame to your already heavy load.
Why it sabotages you: The reactive brain loves binary thinking: healed or broken, coping or failing, moving forward or stuck. Real life is messier. You can be healing and still have terrible days. You can be moving forward and still miss what you’ve lost. The responsive brain allows for complexity.
The fix: Eliminate the word “should” from your vocabulary about grief and healing. Replace it with “am”: I am where I am. This is where I am today. What do I need right now, from this place, not from where I think I should be?
4. Isolating Because Nobody Understands
The mistake: After major life disruption, many people retreat from their social connections because “nobody understands what I’m going through.” This feels protective but actually increases your brain’s threat response. Isolation signals danger to your nervous system, which keeps you stuck in reactive mode.
Why it sabotages you: You don’t need people who understand everything you’re experiencing. You need people who are willing to sit with you while you experience it. The responsive brain recognizes that connection, even imperfect connection, is regulating. Your nervous system literally calms down in the presence of safe others.
The fix: Lower your bar for connection. You don’t need deep understanding; you need consistent presence. A friend who shows up with coffee and doesn’t need you to perform “fine” is worth more than a dozen people offering advice.
5. Trying to Think Your Way Through a Body Problem
The mistake: Your reactive brain is a physiological state, not just a mental one. Yet most people try to manage it purely through cognitive strategies, reading books and setting intentions while their nervous system remains dysregulated. You can’t think your way into a responsive brain when your body is stuck in threat mode.
Why it sabotages you: As I observed over two decades of clinical practice, stress and trauma are stored in the body. Your racing thoughts are often a symptom of your activated nervous system, not the cause. Trying to calm your mind without addressing your body’s stress response is like trying to drain a bathtub without turning off the tap.
The fix: Engage your vagus nerve through embodied practices: walking in nature, deep breathing, cold water on your face, humming, gentle movement. Your body needs to feel safe before your brain can access responsive thinking.
Intention-Setting Exercise: Building Your Pause Practice
This exercise takes five minutes and can shift your entire day. Do it before situations you know will trigger your reactive brain (difficult phone calls, family gatherings, important decisions).
Step 1: Ground yourself physically. Place both feet flat on the floor. Feel the pressure of your feet against the ground. Notice the temperature of the air on your skin. This signals safety to your nervous system.
Step 2: Acknowledge what you’re feeling without judgment. “I’m noticing anxiety in my chest.” “I’m aware of anger in my shoulders.” “I’m feeling grief in my throat.” Name it, don’t fight it.
Step 3: State your intention. Not what you hope will happen, but who you want to be in this situation. “I intend to stay present even when this gets uncomfortable.” “I intend to respond rather than react.” “I intend to honour my boundaries without apologising for them.”
Step 4: Identify your pause trigger. Choose a physical anchor that will remind you to pause before responding. It might be pressing your thumb and forefinger together, taking one deep breath, or silently counting to three. This becomes your circuit breaker between stimulus and response.
Step 5: Grant yourself permission to be imperfect. Say this out loud: “I will probably get this wrong at some point today, and that’s part of the practice.” This removes the pressure of perfection, which is often what triggers the reactive brain in the first place.
Further Reading: Books That Actually Help
1. “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel van der Kolk
Why this one: Van der Kolk explains brilliantly why trauma lives in your body, not just your mind. If you’re wondering why you’re still reacting intensely months or years after an event, this book provides the neuroscience behind it without being overwhelming. Essential reading for understanding why thinking differently isn’t enough.
2. “Rising Strong” by Brené Brown
Why this one: Brown’s work on emotional resilience focuses on the “in-between” space after you fall and before you rise. This is exactly where most people get stuck after major life transitions. She provides a framework for processing difficult emotions without either suppressing them or being consumed by them.
3. “When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chödrön
Why this one: This Buddhist nun writes about groundlessness, the terrifying sensation that nothing is stable anymore. Her approach is practical, not preachy, and she genuinely understands what it feels like when your entire life structure collapses. Particularly helpful for those who want depth without religious dogma.
Why this one: After crisis, many people become perfectionistic about their healing, which creates a reactive cycle of shame and striving. Brown’s work on embracing imperfection is liberating for those who are exhausted from trying to “do recovery right.”
5. “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl
Why this one: Frankl survived Nazi concentration camps and went on to develop logotherapy, a psychological approach based on finding meaning even in suffering. This isn’t light reading, but if you’re someone who needs to find purpose in your pain, Frankl provides a framework for doing exactly that.
P.S. If you want a practical, daily approach to navigating change, my book “Embracing Change, in 10 Minutes a Day“ provides short, accessible exercises designed specifically for people who are overwhelmed and time-poor but committed to moving forward. It distils 20 years of clinical experience into manageable daily practices. Available at
A Voice from the Circle
“I joined Dr Montagu’s storytelling circle as part of her Purpose Pivot Protocol course thinking I’d learn some narrative techniques for my business. What I actually learned was how to stop telling myself the story that I was broken. Each week, as we shared our experiences and witnessed each other’s struggles and victories, I realised my reactive brain had been narrating my life as a tragedy. The circle taught me to pause that narrative and choose a different story, one where I was the protagonist, not the victim. The combination of Dr Montagu’s gentle guidance and the collective wisdom of women who truly understood the terrain of loss changed not just how I tell stories, but how I live my life. Six months after finishing the course, I’ve started the business I’d been afraid to launch for three years.” — Jennifer M., Purpose Pivot Protocol participant
5 Frequently Asked Questions About Reactive vs Responsive Thinking
How Long Does It Take to Shift from Reactive to Responsive Thinking?
There’s no fixed timeline, and anyone who promises one is selling you something. However, most people notice a difference within 2,3 weeks of consistent practice. The shift isn’t binary; you don’t suddenly “become” responsive. Instead, you gradually catch yourself reacting and choose differently. Early wins are small: you pause before sending an angry text, you take three breaths before responding to a triggering comment, you notice your body’s stress response before it hijacks your decision-making. These micro-shifts accumulate into macro-changes. After about three months of practice, the responsive approach starts feeling more natural than the reactive default. But expect setbacks. Stress, exhaustion, and triggers will still activate your reactive brain. The difference is that you recover faster and with less collateral damage.
Can You Ever Really Stop Being Reactive After Major Trauma?
The goal isn’t to eliminate reactivity; it’s to reduce how long you stay in that state and how much control it has over your choices. Your reactive brain served a crucial protective function during your crisis. The neural pathways it created aren’t erased just because the immediate threat has passed. However, neuroscience tells us that brains are remarkably plastic, meaning new neural pathways can form throughout your life. Every time you pause and choose a response instead of defaulting to a reaction, you strengthen the responsive pathway. You don’t “get over” major life disruption, but you can build new capacity around it. Think of it less like curing a condition and more like building a muscle. The reactive tendency will always be there in extreme stress, but the responsive muscle gets stronger with use.
What If My Reactive Brain Is Protecting Me from Real Danger?
This is the crucial question. Sometimes your reactive brain is absolutely correct, and the responsive pause would be dangerous. If someone is behaving in genuinely threatening ways, your amygdala’s alarm bells deserve attention. The key is discernment: is this situation actually dangerous, or does it just feel dangerous because it’s activating old trauma? Ask yourself: “If I explained this situation to a trusted, objective friend, would they agree this requires an emergency response?” If you’re uncertain, err on the side of safety. The responsive brain isn’t about ignoring red flags; it’s about distinguishing between red flags and old triggers. A helpful rule: physical danger requires reactive speed. Emotional discomfort benefits from a responsive approach.
How Do You Develop a Responsive Brain When You’re Completely Alone in Your Crisis?
This is genuinely one of the hardest aspects of life transitions: developing regulation capacity when you have no external support. First, acknowledge that this is harder, not impossible. Your nervous system naturally regulates through connection, so doing this work in isolation requires more intentional effort. Start with very small practices: five minutes of walking outside daily (nature regulates your nervous system), writing three pages of uncensored thoughts each morning (externalising reduces rumination), or listening to guided meditations designed for trauma recovery. Consider online communities of people navigating similar transitions; they’re not substitutes for in-person connection, but they reduce the sense of being the only person who’s ever felt this way. If finances allow, even occasional sessions with a therapist or coach create an anchor of support. My Radical Renaissance Protocol exist precisely because isolation compounds crisis. You don’t need a large support network; you need one or two people (or even one online community) that feels safe enough to be honest with.
Designed for those navigating a life transition, the Radical Renaissance Protocol guides you through an identity reset, helping you reconnect with your purpose, realign your values, and reclaim the clarity you thought you’d lost. This isn’t about fixing what’s broken: through reflection, strategic reinvention, and soul-anchored mentoring, you’ll transform uncertainty into direction and dormant potential into meaningful impact.
Is There a Difference Between Being Responsive and Just Suppressing Your Emotions?
Yes, and it’s an enormous difference. Suppression is “I shouldn’t feel this way, so I’ll push it down and pretend it’s not happening.” Response is “I do feel this way, and I’m going to feel it fully, and then I’m going to choose what I do about it.” The responsive brain makes space for emotion without being controlled by it. You can acknowledge rage and not send the email. You can feel grief and still show up for your responsibilities. You can experience fear and still take the next step. Suppression creates pressure; eventually, the lid blows off and you react explosively. Response creates flow; emotions move through you rather than getting stuck or erupting. A helpful test: After an interaction, do you feel relieved (suppression often brings temporary relief followed by later eruption) or do you feel integrated (responsive choices often feel hard in the moment but aligned afterwards)? Your body knows the difference.
Conclusion: The Space Between
Here’s the truth that nobody tells you about life transitions: the hardest part isn’t the crisis itself. It’s the long, uncertain stretch afterwards when everyone else has moved on but you’re still figuring out who you are without the life you used to have. That’s where most people get stuck, caught between a past that no longer exists and a future they can’t yet imagine.
The difference between reactive and responsive thinking isn’t just a clever cognitive trick. It’s the skill that determines whether this chapter break becomes a breakdown or a breakthrough. Your reactive brain will keep you safe, but small. Your responsive brain will require courage, but it opens every door.
As Maya Angelou wrote: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” The story of your next chapter is waiting to be told, not by your circumstances, but by the choices you make in the space between what happens to you and how you respond to it. That space, however narrow, is where your power lives.
What would become possible in your life if you paused for just three seconds before your next difficult decision?
Your Invitation
If you’re reading this and recognising yourself in these patterns, you’re already halfway to transformation. The other half requires more than reading; it requires experience, embodiment, and the kind of deep work that only happens when you step away from your daily triggers and into a space designed for emergence.
My 7-day Camino de Santiago Crossroads hiking retreats in the southwest of France exist precisely for people at your juncture: those who’ve survived the crisis and are ready to move from reactive survival to responsive living. These retreats combine the ancient transformative practice of walking the Camino with daily storytelling circles alongside my Friesian horses, whose presence alone regulates nervous systems in ways I’ve witnessed hundreds of times but still find quietly miraculous.
You walk the Camino, both literally and metaphorically. The physical movement releases what talk therapy alone cannot touch. The rhythm of daily hiking builds exactly the pause between stimulus and response that this article describes. The storytelling circles create the safe container where you practice crafting a responsive narrative about your life, supported by others who understand the geography of loss. And the horses, with their extraordinary capacity for presence, mirror back your emotional state without judgment, teaching you to recognise reactive patterns before they fully activate.
This isn’t a holiday. It’s a recalibration, a chance to reset your nervous system and rebuild your responsive capacity in an environment where every element, from the landscape to the horses to the group process, supports your emergence.
Your next chapter is waiting. But first, you need to learn how to direct it instead of letting it direct you.
Stress destroys Lives. To find out what you can do to safeguard your sanity by taking my insight-giving quiz, subscribe to my mailing list.
“I am an experienced medical doctor – MBChB, MRCGP, NLP master pract cert, Transformational Life Coach (dip.) Life Story Coach (cert.) Stress Counselling (cert.) Med Hypnotherapy (dip.) and EAGALA (cert.) I may have an impressive number of letters after my name, and more than three decades of professional experience, but what qualifies me to excel at what I do is my intuitive understanding of my clients’ difficulties and my extensive personal experience of managing major life changes using strategies I developed over many years.” Dr M Montagu
Research
Goldin PR, Manber T, Hakimi S, Canli T, Gross JJ. Neural Bases of Social Anxiety Disorder: Emotional Reactivity and Cognitive Regulation During Social and Physical Threat. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2009;66(2):170–180.
Goldin PR, McRae K, Ramel W, Gross JJ. The neural bases of emotion regulation: reappraisal and suppression of negative emotion. Biol Psychiatry. 2008 Mar 15;63(6):577-86. Epub 2007 Sep 21. PMID: 17888411; PMCID: PMC2483789.
Ironside M, Browning M, Ansari TL, Harvey CJ, Sekyi-Djan MN, Bishop SJ, Harmer CJ, O’Shea J. Effect of Prefrontal Cortex Stimulation on Regulation of Amygdala Response to Threat in Individuals With Trait Anxiety: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Psychiatry. 2019 Jan 1;76(1):71-78. PMID: 30347011; PMCID: PMC6583758.
Alexandra Kredlow, M., Fenster, R. J., Laurent, E. S., Ressler, K. J., & Phelps, E. A. (2021). Prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and threat processing: Implications for PTSD. Neuropsychopharmacology, 47(1), 247-259.
Life transitionscan be isolating, especially during the holiday season when everything seems to revolve around togetherness. But even in the darkest times, we don’t have to face challenges alone. Our friends want to support us; they just need to know we’re open to receiving their help.
Christmas Eve has arrived. Frozen to the bone, Rebecca is standing on the slippery steps outside Diana’s house, holding a box of Christmas decorations. Snow falls.
“What am I doing here?” she whispers, looking towards the inflatable Santa on the lawn for an answer. Her eyes fill with tears. She spins dramatically, marches back to her car, and is two seconds from peeling out of the driveway like a woman fleeing a crime scene when—
Her phone buzzes: I can see you retreating. Ring the doorbell or I’m coming out there in my elf slippers. – Diana
Rebecca, fearing a confrontation with a certifiable elf, promptly rings the doorbell.
Diana whips open the door, carrying a gigantic wreath that appears to weigh more than she does, drenched in pine-scented room freshener. She’s wearing huge red-and-green elf slippers, with tiny tinkling bells, and clutching a wooden spoon like she’s about to beat off intruders. A crooked Christmas tree behind her sparkles feebly under its burden of ornaments chosen entirely at random by what appears to be eight different committees with conflicting aesthetic agendas.”You came! Everyone, Rebecca-from-the-Frozen-Aisle is here!”
“Please don’t call me that,” Rebecca says, but she’s laughing as Diana drags her inside.
There are eight people crammed in Diana’s living room, which looks as if it has been decorated by a small army of sticky-fingered toddlers on sugar highs. A man in his forties, wearing a Christmas jumper inside-out, is engaged in a surprisingly heated debate with a woman whose t-shirt reads “Came Out As An Introvert At 50—Merry Christmas To Me” about whether boxing is an effective coping strategy. On the coffee table sits a shop-bought cake that originally wished Jennifer a happy birthday, but someone has added “and Happy Christmas” in icing that suggests either debatable artistic vision or motor skill issues.
A woman about Rebecca’s age appears at her elbow wearing reindeer antlers. “First timer? I’m Ashley. Moved here for a job that got eliminated before I finished unpacking. That was four months ago. I’m still living out of boxes out of spite. Also, I’m spending Christmas alone tomorrow, and I’m fine with it.” She doesn’t sound fine with it at all.
“I’m Rebecca. Divorced eight months. Also living out of boxes, but more out of fear that unpacking makes it real. Also spending Christmas alone tomorrow.” She pauses. “Also NOT fine with it.”
“Oh, you’re gonna fit right in.” Ashley hands her a paper plate with tiny candy canes printed on it. “Warning: Martin’s emotional support chicken is here. Her name is Beyoncé. She’s wearing a Santa hat. She will try to steal food off your plate. We put up with her because Martin’s going through something serious and honestly, although Beyoncé has extremely bad taste, she does have lots of festive spirit.”
Rebecca scans the room. There is indeed a chicken in a sweater AND a tiny Santa hat pecking joyfully at the Jennifer cake.
Diana appears with mulled wine. “What’d I tell you? Functional chaos. Also, you brought decorations, which means you’re automatically invited to Christmas 2025 dinner tomorrow.”
“Wait, what?”
“Christmas dinner. Here. One PM. I’ve got a ham the size of a small camel and Martin’s bringing Beyoncé. You’re coming.”
“I can’t just—”
“Too late, I’m adding you to the group chat.” Diana’s already typing.
By 10 PM, Rebecca has:
Helped workshop someone’s Hinge profile (they deleted the fish photo AND the one with him and his mom wearing matching Christmas jumpers)
Reluctantly eaten a piece of rock-hard Jennifer cake
Been attacked three times by Beyoncé (the Santa hat never budged)
Received a label maker from Greg (“Unpacking is less soul-crushing when you can passive-aggressively label your ex’s stuff before donating it. I’ve marked seventeen boxes ‘RICHARD’S REGRETS'”)
Participated in a Secret Santa where everyone wrapped random items from their houses (she got a potato masher and a travel guide to Peru)
Been added to a group chat called “Frozen Aisle Survivors – Christmas Edition”
As she’s leaving, Diana walks her out into the cold night. Someone’s started an ear-splitting rendition of “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” inside.
“So, Christmas dinner tomorrow. One PM?” Diana asks.
“I don’t have anything to bring.”
“Bring yourself. I have a confession. I had finished shopping that day. My cart was already full. I just saw you crying and did another lap.”
Rebecca feels her throat tighten. “Why?”
“Because six months ago, I was you. Christmas Eve, crying in the frozen aisle. A lady with a full trolley told me I looked like I needed friends and tricked me into joining her book club. We haven’t read a book in four months but we meet every week anyway. She’s coming tomorrow, by the way. You’ll love her.”
Diana shrugs. “Frozen aisle criers look out for each other. Especially at Christmas.”
Rebecca’s phone buzzes. The group chat is already active:
Martin: Beyoncé wants to know if Rebecca is coming tomorrow Greg: Beyoncé can’t type Martin: She’s more literate than half this group Ashley: If I have to hear about fantasy football again, I’m bringing my own chicken Diana: Rebecca, you have 30 seconds to say yes before this becomes a wellness check
Rebecca looks at Diana, then at her phone, then back at Diana.
“I’ll bring more decorations,” she says.
“Perfect. Merry Christmas, frozen aisle girl.”
“Merry Christmas, random grocery store stranger.”
The Make Friends and Maintain Friendships Masterplan
Reaching out can feel daunting. What if they don’t understand? What if they think you’re being too much? These fears are normal, but they’re often unfounded. Vulnerability is a bridge that connects hearts. By opening up, you not only lighten your own burden but also give your friends permission to do the same.
Take a moment to reflect on who you trust. Then, take the first step, however small it feels. A simple “I’m having a tough time” can lead to deeper conversations and a stronger bond.
Today, say yes to one social invitation you’d normally decline—the after-work drinks, the neighbour’s cookie exchange, the hiking group that meets at an ungodly hour, or the plus-one situation where you won’t know anyone. In the worst-case scenario, you spend an hour feeling awkward, eat some mediocre appetisers, and concoct a perfectly valid excuse to leave early and never go again. Or, best-case scenario, you meet someone who also hates small talk, you bond over your mutual desire to be home in your pyjamas, and six months later, you’re in their wedding party, wondering how you went from “virtual strangers” to “I trust you with my life” because you both said yes when you wanted to say no.
Discover how to build meaningful, lasting friendships and create a support system that truly has your back – especially during major life changes or lifequakes – just fill in the form below. I’ll also add you to my newsletter list, though you can unsubscribe from this list effortlessly and at any time. You’ll get immediate access to the:
How well do you know your Friends? Quiz
What is your Friendship Style? and Are your Friendship Styles compatible? Quiz
20 of the Most Inspiring Friends and Friendship Quotes and
20 lighthearted Questions you can ask to get to know a new Friend
Friends and Friendships
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Author Bio: Dr Margaretha Montagu – described as a “game changer”, “gifted healer”, “guiding light” and “life-enriching author” – is an experienced medical doctor, a certified NLP practitioner, a medical hypnotherapist, an equine-assisted psychotherapist (EAGALAcertified) and a transformational retreat leader who guides her clients through life transitions – virtually, or with the assistance of her Friesian and Falabella horses, at their home in the southwest of France.
4 responses to “Countdown to Christmas Day 6”
Murphy’s law can help you through a difficult time, certainly when surrounded by friends in this sort of situation and the laughter can’t be held back.
I’m so glad the comment section finally works!!! Indeed,as far as I can make out, Murphy was an optimist. 😉
“Women’s friendships are like a renewable source of power.” Jane Fonda and she is right and shows it.
Endlessly renewable. “We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women’s voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored.” Sheryl Sandberg