Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] The Consumer and the steward September 16, 2026 this is number three in the stewardship series.
[00:00:14] I spent last weekend reading Strangers by Belle Burden, and I couldn't stop thinking about the pain she described. The rejection, the feeling of being discarded, the hollowness, the crying on the bathroom tile.
[00:00:28] Her descriptions brought me back to a time I had almost forgotten.
[00:00:32] Suddenly, I'm there again.
[00:00:34] It's February 2012 in Gstaad. More than 2ft of snow has accumulated and thick flakes continue to fall.
[00:00:42] Back in Rhode island, this would have been a blizzard. Here in the Swiss Alps, it's business as usual. I carry the duffel bags and my suitcase along the path. I shoveled my boots, sinking into a new 3 inch layer. I hoist them into the Subaru and check my phone for the hundredth time today.
[00:01:02] Nothing.
[00:01:04] I head back to the chalet, staring at the blank screen.
[00:01:08] Kids, time to go. I yell. I blow hot air into my hands.
[00:01:13] The two come running. George is 7 and Victoria 12. Did you pack your binky? Your toothbrush? Yes, mom, they say in unison.
[00:01:23] We all hug and pat Toto goodbye. As I close the door, he looks up at me through his thick Schnauzer eyebrows. Guilt grips my stomach. The cleaner has promised to feed and walk him while I'm at the Geneva Writers Conference.
[00:01:38] The car's engine starts and the wiper blades brush snow from the windshield but leave the glass streaked.
[00:01:44] I press the washer fluid button. Nothing.
[00:01:48] I glance at the rearview mirror. My eyes are still red and puffy from crying.
[00:01:52] I put the car in drive and head down the mountain. The announcer on the radio says in Swiss German that tonight will be the coldest night this winter so far, with temperatures dropping to minus 30.
[00:02:04] My mind goes straight to him.
[00:02:07] How is he going to keep his place warm in such temperatures?
[00:02:11] He has a ski race this weekend. He'll barely be home, and he's been working for a female client all day and night.
[00:02:19] My heart aches. My breathing is shallow. I pull in front of the school's dormitory. The kids jump out of the car and run into the building without saying goodbye.
[00:02:29] They certainly heard me cry in the bathroom. They must be thrilled to leave me. They didn't have dinner until late because I was so engrossed in writing him a long email.
[00:02:40] I glanced at my phone. Nothing.
[00:02:43] I carry their duffel bags into the boarding house and hand them to the young dorm parent. She barely looks up from our phone. We are all distracted, it seems. I can still see Toto's stern expression as I walk back to My car.
[00:02:58] Back in the driver's seat, I glance at my phone.
[00:03:01] Nothing.
[00:03:03] I can't resist. I press his name.
[00:03:05] It rings once, twice, three times.
[00:03:09] Hello?
[00:03:10] the sound of his familiar voice, my heart quickens.
[00:03:14] Fritz, it's so nice to hear your voice.
[00:03:17] Silence.
[00:03:19] What do you want?
[00:03:21] His tone is curt, nearly hostile.
[00:03:25] I was thinking, if it would help, you could stay at the chalet this weekend. You wouldn't have to keep the fire burning all the time. It might be more comfortable.
[00:03:35] Toto would love the company.
[00:03:37] No, I can't help you. I'm very busy right now, Diana. I can't talk. I'm working.
[00:03:42] But, but, but. Click.
[00:03:45] My heart hurts. I can't breathe.
[00:03:48] He had seen straight through me. I wasn't really offering to help him. I had been looking for an excuse to bring him back.
[00:03:55] I start the car. Night is falling. As I put the car into reverse. My phone rings and I answer.
[00:04:02] Yes? Hello? Hello? Diana? Oh, it's her. The female client.
[00:04:08] I know things are difficult. Diana.
[00:04:11] Yes, I managed to say, tears rolling down my cheek. My nose runs. I sniff.
[00:04:17] I'm not sleeping. I barely sleep at all.
[00:04:21] A pause.
[00:04:22] Get some sleep. Okay? I hang up. I can't breathe. My hands shake.
[00:04:27] I start the two hour drive through the Alps.
[00:04:30] This is odd timing. Is she with him now?
[00:04:34] Five years earlier, I had been his client. He had said terrible things about his then girlfriend and I encouraged him to leave her. Eventually he did.
[00:04:44] Now there's another female client. Since he began working with her, I have felt him withdrawing from me.
[00:04:50] I imagined him saying the same things about me that he once said about his then girlfriend.
[00:04:55] The parallel is impossible to miss. Is she encouraging him to leave me just as I once encouraged him to leave someone else?
[00:05:04] She'd cornered me earlier that week at drop off in the parking lot. In that falsely kind, condescending tone, she asked how I was. I was honest. I was also trying to make her feel guilty. I told her I was in agony, that I wanted him back. I watched her face harden and her eyes narrow.
[00:05:24] Now I regret telling her so much. Why had I made myself so vulnerable to a woman I already didn't trust?
[00:05:31] My mother's voice echoes in my mind.
[00:05:34] Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer.
[00:05:38] Come to think of it, the way she held that cigarette and suggested I go away, someplace, somewhere to get help felt telling.
[00:05:46] I don't want to leave. My children are hurting because he no longer comes over and they can see that I'm barely functioning. Just the other day, her friend said he had no obligation toward them. The same words he had used on the phone.
[00:06:01] Ice starts to build up on the windshield.
[00:06:03] It becomes hard to see.
[00:06:05] I can't tell if it's the tears or the ice.
[00:06:09] I numbed every breakup before this one. With alcohol and work.
[00:06:14] Six years sober, I have nothing.
[00:06:17] Thirty minutes pass and I can barely see where I'm driving. I need to buy windshield washer fluid.
[00:06:23] Then I see it. The road to the village of Lesoq, where he and I had our first date. Sitting in the Auberge, we had laughed and talked for hours. Closing the place down.
[00:06:34] We were drawn to each other. It had been electric.
[00:06:37] My stomach heaves and the tears come again. The road is barely visible.
[00:06:42] Driving by Albeuvre, where my friend Marianne lives, I remember crying with her when it was clear he wasn't coming back.
[00:06:50] At the next gas station, in Nerivu, where I used to stop to buy antiques, I pull up to the pumps, but all is dark.
[00:06:58] I glance at my phone again.
[00:07:00] Nothing.
[00:07:02] My chest hurts. I get out and scrape the ice off the windshield. I've forgotten my gloves and my fingers are frozen. Since losing those 20 pounds and not sleeping more than three hours a night, I feel cold all the time. I just want him to hold me tight and tell me he loves me.
[00:07:18] But no one has really loved me. Not even my own father. I've just learned from one of his friends that 36 years earlier he may have killed himself in that avalanche. He might have felt the same way I feel today.
[00:07:34] Why else would one of the best mountain guides in Switzerland risk his life for no good reason?
[00:07:40] Especially when he had a young daughter who needed him?
[00:07:43] He had said I have nothing to lose when he was told he should be careful.
[00:07:48] Ten minutes later, I pull into the first gas station in Beul, go inside and pay for the windshield washer fluid. I pop the hood. I'm proud of my ability to do this.
[00:07:59] She doesn't know how to do this. I think she she has a husband to do this for her.
[00:08:03] My fingers hurt from the cold. I feel the receptacle in the near darkness.
[00:08:08] I look at my phone again.
[00:08:10] Nothing.
[00:08:12] I start the car and push the windshield spray button. Nothing.
[00:08:17] I wonder whether I've burned out the motor by pressing the button so much or whether the line is frozen.
[00:08:24] Grabbing the half empty bottle of windshield wiper fluid, I step out of the car and splash fluid on the windshield. That does the trick for a little while. By the time I get to the highway, the windshield is streaked and ice starts to build up again.
[00:08:39] It's so hard to see. I've been clearing away snow and tears all day.
[00:08:43] A few minutes onto the highway, I notice a four car pileup in the other direction and cars on the side of the road facing the wrong way.
[00:08:51] If my car drives off the road right now, no one would care anyway.
[00:08:56] Pain had narrowed my world. Who loved me? Who had left me?
[00:09:01] What wasn't I getting?
[00:09:04] I dial Marianne. Hey, my friend. What's going on? She says, hi, Marianne. I'm shit.
[00:09:10] Oh, come on, sweetie. What are you saying?
[00:09:13] No one has truly loved me. They all leave me. My father, he killed himself. My mother left me in the hands of a pedophile. And my ex boyfriends. And now him.
[00:09:23] I'm shit now. Diana, stop that. You are not shit. Fritz is an ass.
[00:09:28] I just want the pain to go away. My poor children. What have I put them through? Their father left six years ago and now their surrogate father has left too. It's my fault. No wonder they jumped out of the car and ran into the boarding house without looking back.
[00:09:42] They were excited to see other kids. Marianne says, they need you, Diana.
[00:09:47] You're right, Marianne. I'm the only real parent they have.
[00:09:51] I need to stay alive for them.
[00:09:53] Yes, you do.
[00:09:55] When I think of Victoria and George, my heart fills with warmth. I love them so much. For now, being needed is a good enough reason to carry on.
[00:10:03] After hanging up, a calmness envelops me. The snow keeps falling, but I'm resolute with gratitude in my heart. I wish my father had had someone like Marianne to remind him he'd had me in his life.
[00:10:15] After pulling over, I another three or four times to splash windshield fluid on the windshield. I arrive at the Bland Conference Hotel in Geneva and pull into the underground garage.
[00:10:25] I've become used to living on the cheap to fit into his Swiss middle class world. A world that also belonged to my father.
[00:10:33] While checking in, I look at my phone.
[00:10:36] Nothing in my room. I run a hot bath. Just as I'm about to step into it, a text message arrives from one of his old friends.
[00:10:45] He asks how I am and says he hopes I made it safely to Geneva.
[00:10:50] His friend cares enough to ask, why couldn't he?
[00:10:54] I text back that I'm safe.
[00:10:56] Somehow I sleep for more than three hours that night.
[00:10:59] The next morning, I start my thawed car in the garage and press the button.
[00:11:04] Lo and behold, a steady stream of fluid spreads across the windshield. With one sweep of the wipers, everything is clear.
[00:11:13] If only healing were that easy.
[00:11:16] The writing I did at that conference began my journey back to myself.
[00:11:21] Like Bell Burden, I found healing in writing my story. Until now, most of it has remained private. Perhaps this piece is a beginning, a test.
[00:11:30] After all, who has sympathy for the pain of someone who seems privileged?
[00:11:35] Since finishing Strangers, I've watched interviews with Burden and read the comments.
[00:11:40] I've been struck by how little empathy some people have for her. Because she comes from wealth, they overlook that she used her legal skills pro bono to help immigrants flee violence in their home countries.
[00:11:51] That's stewardship.
[00:11:53] I've watched everyone litigate her balance sheet. They say she should have gotten more. Some say she omitted to mention that she had interests in other trusts. But without knowing how these trusts were structured, it would be foolhardy to speculate.
[00:12:07] I saw my own story, too.
[00:12:10] Money did not protect either of us from pain.
[00:12:13] I was with him for five years, not the 21 Belle had with her husband. He was not my children's father, but they saw him as a surrogate father. A year or two before that dark night of the soul, I had also suffered a miscarriage. I too had wanted an intact family, love and to feel valued. Like her, I had wanted a different childhood for my kids.
[00:12:35] Like her, my upbringing had been lonely. We both thought we could flip the script.
[00:12:41] The thing that I loved about the book was her transformation. She embodied the phrase in the St. Francis prayer, it is in giving that we receive.
[00:12:49] She endured the loneliness of single parenting, a husband who wanted more, and a judgmental community.
[00:12:56] She took the loneliness and refused to hand it to her kids. She turned her pain into contribution.
[00:13:03] In 2012, I was desperately trying to get something from him Reassurance, attention, love, validation. The intact family fantasy.
[00:13:12] My focus had collapsed around getting.
[00:13:15] I had been asking who was going to love me. I already had people to love. Maybe the better question was, who could I love?
[00:13:24] That's the difference between the consumer and the steward. The consumer asks, what am I going to get? And the steward asks, what can I do with what I have?
[00:13:35] I've been holding off on publishing the story.
[00:13:38] Today at the Oxford Transform Trauma Conference, someone in the audience asked doctors Dan Siegel and Tara Swart, how can you love yourself when no one loved you?
[00:13:50] They talked about journaling, gratitude, affirmations, therapy and a loving community.
[00:13:55] They also talked about our fear of uncertainty and how that fear can keep us clinging to the story that we are unlovable.
[00:14:04] You have to risk, they said. And then came the words that gave me the courage to publish this. You learn that you are love. You are in service of love and you become a vessel of love.
[00:14:17] If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or self harm, you're not alone. In the US, call or text 988 in the UK, call Samaritans free on 116123.
[00:14:35] If this episode landed for you, share it with someone who might need to hear it. And if you haven't already, subscribe so you don't miss what's coming. But here's the real thing. I want you to know if you're carrying something you can't talk about, if you have every resource except someone who actually understands what wealth costs. I work one on one with people like you navigating exactly that. You can reach me@diana oehrli.com thanks for listening.
