She walked into my room and burst into tears.
“I’m going to be alone forever,” she said. “There are no men in Singapore for me.”

She was 25.

A few months earlier, I had cried about the exact same thing. I had been alone on my sofa, in my pajamas, eating Doritos at midnight. I am 41. Same crisis! Different skincare routine.

The age gap made me laugh silently to myself. Does the fear of being unlovable ever expire? Alas! Do we all carry the same heartache, just wrapped in different life chapters?

When someone cries, it’s hard for me not to jump in and try to fix everything. But tears often say what words can’t, and holding space sometimes does more than any advice ever could.

I wanted to reassure her, to offer logic, but what mattered more was also letting her sit with the discomfort, to start learning – as I have – how to live with uncertainty and still keep moving forward.

It still takes tonnes of discipline to practise this myself.

The universality of our struggles is something I’ve noticed as a therapist. Maybe sometimes, healing begins with a quiet revelation:

Hey, maybe it’s not just me.