The kindness of strangers: I needed a place to take my burnout and my dog, then a woman I’d never met sent me an invitation
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A woman related to my memoir so much, she offered to lend me her holiday shack. When we met in person, we couldn’t stop talking. The email landed in my inbox late one Friday night in the middle of winter, 2023. I was not cheerful. For weeks, I’d been wrestling with a difficult article I should long ago have submitted to an editor. As a freelancer, the longer I spent on it, the longer it would be before another cent would hit my bank account. I’d been to the dentist that morning. I’d booked a vet appointment for my dog that afternoon; I feared she might have yet another ear infection.
I opened the email. “This would be the first time I have ever written to a person in a personal context, without knowing that person,” the email started. “In your newsletter this week you said you were looking for a place to crash on the coast.”.
That was true. In the weekly newsletter I send out (reflections about this and that, links to cool and interesting stuff I’ve read) I’d asked readers if they could suggest a budget-friendly, dog-friendly place near the ocean where I might take my burnout and my dog and, literally, crash.
The email was from a woman, I’ll call her Alex. She went on to say: “I’m about to get the keys for a shack I’ve bought on the South Coast. It is extremely basic, just a one-bedroom 55sqm Fibro Majestic, about 150 metres from the beach. I’m having it cleaned and painted but after that you would be welcome to stay there for a few days/week for a headspace break, gratis. I live elsewhere so you’d have the place to yourself.”.
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