A FRIEND IN NEED IS A FIEND INDEED!
I was on holiday in Spain recently, and the moment I arrived I was reminded of the year before. Back then, almost as soon as I landed, I got a phone call from someone I cared about deeply. She was in the middle of a breakdown. I spent the whole weekend on the phone with her, trying to calm her, support her, even urging her to come to France to be with me. My partner was furious that the holiday was derailed, but at the time I didn’t see it that way. I felt she needed me, and I gave her everything I could.
This year, walking into the same place, the memory came rushing back. And with it, anger. I thought: after everything I gave, after how much I carried for her — how could she treat me the way she did? The betrayal, the lies, the silence all came flooding in. It felt like when you fold everything neatly away, believing the job is done, only to realise you folded it the wrong way. And suddenly, you’re forced to unpack it all again, reliving what you thought was behind you.
That’s the thing about betrayal. It isn’t just the moment of loss; it’s the silence that follows. What we long for when we’ve been wronged is recognition. We want acknowledgement that we were treated unfairly — as if the perpetrator would suddenly come to their senses, stop being a sociopath, and become decent. Not even a high benchmark.
Ironically, this person is now considering priesthood as a career change. I shake my head in disbelief. Honestly, you couldn’t write this — it would be considered delusional. So, you can make your own mind up. I’ve made this observation before: these holier-than-thou types — there’s no way they truly believe in God. Because if they did, they’d know they were damned for their actions.
It scares me because I think this person is evil — and I don’t use that word lightly. And then I remind myself: I don’t believe in evil. I don’t believe in God. But I do believe there are broken people in the world. And brokenness tends to go in two directions. It can lead to empathy — the kind born of pain and understanding — or it can lead to projection, turning that pain outward, looking down on others to feel “less broken” yourself.
Then there’s a third category: the ones who suddenly “find God” and join the priesthood. And for what? Perhaps a combination of both empathy and projection, with a soupçon of redemption, all twisted into something darker. She hasn’t acknowledged what she did, and I suspect she never will. Until that day comes, part of me keeps replaying the story, circling the same wound.
Fast forward a few weeks and I was on a retreat in Tuscany. The founder, a wise and grounded man, shared something that struck me. He told us about being triggered the week before, and how he realised it wasn’t really his adult self reacting it was his inner child. The outburst, the overreaction, the emotions that felt disproportionate were his younger self coming out to play. He said the work was to sit with that child, to soothe them, to notice when they were the one in charge.
Afterwards, I asked him whether all irrational, over-emotional behaviours the bursts of anger, the petulance, the out-of-place reactions came from the inner child. His answer was simple: yes. That work never ends. And suddenly, my own outburst of anger in Spain made more sense. The fury I felt wasn’t my grounded adult self. It was the child inside me saying: How could she forget me, after all I gave? How could she treat me like I didn’t matter?
On another retreat, I once heard the phrase: “Bad things don’t happen to you; they happen for you.” At first, that felt impossible. How could betrayal be for me? But through the lens of the inner child, the gift became clearer the gift of discovering how much I am capable of giving; the gift of recognising where my boundaries must be stronger; and the gift of learning to notice when the voice speaking is my wounded child, so I can soothe it instead of letting it run the show.
I may never get the apology I want. I may never hear the words that would, in theory, make it right. So closure has to come from me. Sometimes that means writing a letter I’ll never send, or simply saying to myself: I know what I gave. I know what is true. Her denial doesn’t erase that.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean naivety, and compassion doesn’t mean allowing someone back into my life to cause more harm. It means releasing myself from the grip of anger, choosing not to let betrayal take up more space than it already has.
Betrayal will always tempt us to look backwards waiting for justice, waiting for recognition. But peace doesn’t come from them. It comes from us, from deciding that we know who we were in that story. And maybe, when the inner child flares up again, it’s not a sign of weakness but an invitation: to sit with them, to soothe them, and to remind them that the adult in me has already survived this, and is free.
And maybe it’s like folding the laundry again but this time with intention. Not endlessly unpacking and refolding what was done wrong, but accepting a new way of putting things away. The grown-up way.
