As a little girl, I sat every morning at our red Formica kitchen table with my bowl of oatmeal porridge, my legs swinging. While music played on the radio, I waited excitedly for the children’s story to begin.

The voices from that small box filled our kitchen. I did more than listen. I became part of the story and felt the characters’ emotions. The fear of the lost bunny, the courage of the little boy, and the relief when things turned out right were real to me. Even before I had words for it, I knew: stories help us make sense of the world.

Many years later, this is still true for me. Stories help me understand my own life and pass on faith, values, and meaning. They help us step into someone else’s circumstances, culture, joy, and pain. Stories build bridges.

Sharing Life Stories

When my young adult sons were teenagers, my role as a mother often left me feeling uncertain, defensive, and quietly afraid. Parenting no longer felt instinctive. It felt fragile. One morning, stuck in Cape Town traffic on my way to work, with taxis darting between lanes and horns blaring in frustration, I called my sister. I had slept badly. My thoughts were tangled. I remember gripping the steering wheel tightly as I spoke, my voice heavy with emotion.

She did not offer solutions or lectures. She just listened. Slowly, as I spoke, the noise inside me quieted. I could hear myself think again. Her presence steadied me. That conversation did not solve my parenting questions, but it helped me understand my own heart better. That is the sustaining power of attentive listening.

In letters

Years later, after we moved to Switzerland, I felt the absence of empathetic listening acutely. I remember standing in our new kitchen, hearing the words of a language I was still learning on the radio. Anxiously, I wondered, “How will I live without the support of friends? Who will I talk to when I do not have the answers?”

I began to write. In my letters home, I did more than describe snow-covered mountains or cultural differences. I tried to interpret my life. I asked: “Who am I here? Where am I going? What is God doing in my life?” Writing became a way of conversing with someone on the other side of the globe.

When someone entrusts me with their story, it feels like holy ground. There is a quiet moment when a person decides to take the risk of being known. I feel it when I share something vulnerable with my husband, and he listens rather than rushing in with a solution. In that moment, trust grows. That is how we come to know one another better. Yet we never fully know each other. Every life carries hidden chapters and unwritten endings.

Digitally

Over the past few years, friends — either personally or alongside a family member — have walked a road with life-threatening illnesses and shared their stories. The first time I was added to a WhatsApp broadcast group for such news was when a dear friend’s teenage son was diagnosed with cancer. Her messages were raw and honest.

I opened them quietly, sometimes holding my breath. I wept when she posted a photo of him ringing the hospital bell after his final chemotherapy treatment — thin, smiling, triumphant. Even through a glowing screen, hope, faith, and love travelled. We carry one another’s stories, sometimes even digitally.

Story Companions

When someone entrusts us with their questions, grief, or confusion, they invite us to become what I call a story companion. The themes in our stories are universal: love and loss, hope and despair, life and death. The details of our stories are always unique and sacred.

Being a story companion is not about having answers. I often have to remind myself that it is not about wise advice or words meant to make someone feel better. It is about presence. It is standing beside someone as they make sense of betrayal, process a diagnosis, fall in love, or bury a dream. When we listen, we become witnesses to suffering, resilience, doubt, and faith. Sometimes, if we are finely attuned, we can notice the delicate threads of divine love quietly woven through confusion and pain.

Most people are not looking for an expert. They are looking for someone willing to step into the unknown with them. Someone who reminds them of their strength when they have forgotten it. Someone who says, without words, “You are not alone in this chapter.”

Empathy

We cannot be faithful story companions without empathy. Empathy is feeling with someone while remaining ourselves. We sometimes fail at this when, because of our own discomfort, we change the subject too quickly, or when we take on another person’s anxiety as if it were our own.

True empathy holds two truths simultaneously: I am with you, but your experience is not mine. It does not require agreement; rather, understanding. It creates a connection without collapse. Sympathy pities from a distance. Empathy comes closer but does not take over.

Healthy Boundaries

Boundaries make empathy sustainable. A boundary marks where I end, and you begin. Without it, we become entangled and lose ourselves in another person’s story. With walls that are too high, we withdraw and protect ourselves from discomfort. Healthy boundaries are flexible and allow closeness without control. They create space for compassion without possession.

Culture, faith, and politics influence where those lines feel natural for an individual. What feels deeply intimate to one person may feel entirely ordinary to another. Awareness of this helps us remain both responsible and gentle. Making distinctions does not mean we are cold. It is what allows love to endure.

Listening as Art and Gift

When we fail to listen, we forfeit the right to speak. Deep listening requires both mind and heart. It requires the kind of silence that resists filling every pause. Too often, we speak to ease our own discomfort or to sound wise, rather than to comfort. No one is an expert in another person’s life.

People tell stories to survive, to process, and to heal. When someone truly listens, something settles. The story takes shape. Trauma loosens its grip. Meaning begins to form. Listening with compassion is one of the quietest and most powerful acts of love we can offer.

Gratitude

From the red Formica table of my childhood to the voice message with news on my phone, stories have always carried me. They have steadied me in traffic. Crossed oceans with me. Sat beside hospital beds. Filled kitchens with laughter and held tears in safe spaces.

I am deeply grateful for the story companions in my life — those who have listened patiently, laughed freely, prayed faithfully, and sometimes only stood beside me when words were not enough.

They have helped me live my own story with greater courage and hope. I pray that I will do the same for others.

Kind regards

Emsia