When Everything Fell Apart, Love Held On

During COVID, everything in SA started collapsing around me.  I was working as a relationship coach in Durban North and was also a successful real estate agent and a minor shareholder in my agency.
Cash flow dried up, and despite my business partner trying everything he knew to keep going, we had to close down our property agency and look for other business opportunities.
Together with my business partner, I invested my inheritance in his successful turnaround of a chicken farm in Stutterheim in the Eastern Cape. When it came time to renew our Health and Safety licence, the Government official wanted a bribe, and we said no.
In trying to start a legal process against the Department, my business partner received three death threats. He stopped legal proceedings, and the farm went into business rescue.
Other corrupt people stopped the business rescue, and my business partner and I and two other investors lost everything.
During this time, my second seven-year-long marriage ended in the aftermath of my trying to heal from a severe lower back injury.
With no assets and no money, I experienced a 3-month-long dark night of the soul.
As I processed all the losses, I felt a pull to move to Zurich as a part-time carer. I had a summer job offer as a carer in an email from a person in Zurich who I thought was a friend. On arrival in Zurich with 2 suitcases and my laptop, and 350€, I discovered that it was impossible to even begin with the line of work she had offered me.
After eight days of being in fight, flight and freeze mode, the incident at the Uni Klinik happened, and the next morning, I discovered that I had to leave her apartment within one hour. By a miracle, I found myself in Nußdorf in Überlingen twenty-four hours later. A very kind family offered me accommodation in their 2m by 2m garden hut (I have submitted a piccy of the garden hut) and doing household chores in exchange for staying for free. I announced my arrival the next morning to Landratsamt, and I am very thankful for my German passport, courtesy of my German Dad.
In all these crazy and often overwhelming experiences, I prayed like never before, kept my sunny SA heart open and trusted like I have never trusted in my life. I did everything I knew how to help my nervous system start to feel safe in this foreign culture. On Saturday, 24th June 2023, while helping some women make haystacks in a meadow above the Bodensee, another woman arrived to help. I felt an immediate connection with her. Four days later, we had a picnic at the Bodensee, and she said something to me that touched me deeply. She said she will “never shame me or judge me”. With my nervous system still in disarray, I told her I have nothing to offer you except my huge heart, and she hugged me and said, “Your huge heart is exactly what I need in my life”. Two weeks later she visited me in my tiny garden hut and said “There is no ways you can live here. I have a cellar in my home, would you like to move in there?” I immediately said “Yes! and we had some really deep conversations with none of the usual dating as one might expect. Fast forward to today.
I am part of a restructured family who are all Highly Sensitive like me, and the five of us keep making daily progress in making our home work for all of us.
We live in a delightful village, and the energy here is warm and openhearted.
I am so grateful for my beloved woman and my new home. What is interesting is that every single one of my SA friends has stopped contact with me, so that has been very difficult. I have replaced those friendships with some deep friendships with other Highly Sensitive German people I have introduced myself to.