For almost two years, I’ve been trying to help a former neighbour. For the sake of this story, I’ll call her M. Someone I had once vowed never to have anything to do with again.
Years earlier, at one of the lowest points in my life, this woman had almost destroyed me emotionally. So much so that I eventually sold my home & moved away to escape the situation. She subsequently moved as well. And I genuinely believed that chapter of my life was closed.
But in early 2025, I heard that her beloved dog had died. He was a beautiful boy, & I knew she would be devastated. So I picked up the phone. And that phone call reopened a door I had once firmly closed.
I discovered she was seriously unwell. We began talking regularly as she continued to spend much of the year in hospital, some three hours away from me, with only very brief periods at home. She had no visitors, & her only daughter lived in the UK with her own young family.
Then, in August 2025, following another serious fall, M ended up permanently in hospital. A friend & I visited, & we were shocked to see a frail, broken woman, almost unrecognisable from the person we’d known only a couple of years earlier. M had been told she was being transferred into residential aged care. She was just 71. Far too young to be facing the prospect of spending the rest of her life in an aged care facility.
Together with her daughter, we arranged to move her back to my area, where my friend & I could at least provide some familiar faces & regular companionship.
There was a plan. A period of respite care, physiotherapy, rebuilding some mobility &, ultimately, a move into independent living with appropriate support. It was a goal worth pursuing.
And for the past year, I’ve done virtually everything I could to help her achieve it. So have the professionals responsible for her care. But M has fought us almost every step of the way.
Refusing physiotherapy. Refusing to get out of bed. Refusing medication, meals, showers & even psychological support.
I’ve spent countless hours sitting beside her, often on the receiving end of hostility & aggression. I’ve cooked meals that went uneaten. Bought gifts that were barely acknowledged. Made endless enquiries about rehabilitation facilities, alternative accommodation & support services. And repeatedly tried to encourage her to participate in her own recovery.
It has been exhausting. Not physically, but emotionally. And throughout it all, I’ve repeatedly asked myself a rather uncomfortable question.
Why am I doing this?
Because the truth is, I don’t particularly like this woman. I’ve referred to her as a friend, but if I’m being truthful with myself, she isn’t. Friendship requires some degree of mutual care, consideration & respect. And those things have been largely absent.
Yet I continued.
Perhaps because I can imagine what loneliness feels like. Perhaps because I couldn’t bear the thought of someone being abandoned when they were vulnerable. Perhaps because I believed that, given enough encouragement & support, she might find the determination to change her circumstances. Or perhaps because I have a tendency to take responsibility for people whose lives I cannot possibly fix.
I’m still working that one out.
I certainly couldn’t have continued without my wonderful friend, who accompanied me every Sunday to visit the woman we affectionately, & sometimes rather despairingly, called our recalcitrant child. And I know M’s daughter is enormously grateful for everything we’ve tried to do.
This week, M finally achieved something she’d been asking for over many months. Admission to a private rehabilitation facility for a two-week assessment, in one last attempt to regain some mobility. She moved on Wednesday.
Sadly, the early reports from her daughter suggest the same pattern is already emerging. Very limited participation in physiotherapy, refusal of occupational therapy & resistance to assistance from nursing staff.
I genuinely hope things change. But after everything I’ve witnessed, I fear they won’t.
And if they don’t, the likely outcome is a return to residential aged care, perhaps permanently. Now aged 72, that is an incredibly sad prospect. Particularly when so many people have worked so hard to help her find another way.
But somewhere along this journey, I’ve had to confront another uncomfortable truth.
You cannot want something for another person more than they are prepared to want it for themselves.
You can encourage them. Support them. Advocate for them. Open doors for them. But you cannot make them walk through those doors. And you cannot sacrifice your own wellbeing indefinitely in the hope that one day they might.
This week, after considerable soul-searching, I finally made the decision to walk away. Not because I regret helping her. I don’t. And not because I lack compassion for her circumstances. I don’t. But because I have come to recognise that the emotional cost of continuing has become too high.
What I hadn’t fully appreciated until I began stepping away was just how much this experience had affected me. Not to the devastating extent it did years ago, but far more than I had allowed myself to acknowledge.
Sometimes we don’t recognise the impact of a situation until we remove ourselves from it.
I will still quietly hope for a better outcome. I will still care what happens to her. And I will occasionally check on her wellbeing through her daughter. But I will no longer be there in person.
There is a difference between abandoning someone & accepting that you cannot save them. And perhaps that is the lesson I have been so reluctant to learn.
Compassion does not require us to surrender our boundaries. Kindness does not create an obligation to endure mistreatment. And caring about someone does not make us responsible for the choices they make.
We can walk beside people. We can offer them a hand when they stumble. We can even help them find another path.
But ultimately, we cannot walk that path for them.
And sometimes, the person we finally need to save is ourselves.
