Part III: Words Can Hurt.

My dog looks at me. Then he tilts his head. I’ve been talking to myself for what feels like ages. About words. Grammar. Language. He doesn’t understand a single thing I’m saying. Or perhaps he understands exactly what matters. My voice. My mood. The fact that I’m thinking. Then he yawns. I take that as a polite suggestion to get to the point.

People often describe me as a language nerd. They’re probably right. I’ve always loved languages. While other people read crime novels, I browsed dictionaries. At interpreting school, I could happily spend hours conjugating French verbs—in every possible, and quite a few impossible, tense. And I genuinely enjoyed it. I know. Slightly eccentric.

What has always fascinated me is the way language shapes thought. Before we can understand something, we often need a word for it. Perhaps we can only think as deeply as our language allows us to think. But that’s a story for another day. Sorry. My inner language nerd occasionally gets the better of me.

A few days ago, I found myself dwelling on a single word. Ausgesteuert. There is no real English equivalent. It’s one of those wonderfully awkward German words that carries an entire system inside it. The verb steuern means to steer. To guide. To navigate. To control. You can steer a ship. Steer a conversation. Steer an economy. Steer your life. And then, somehow… you become ausgesteuert.

Almost as if someone has quietly taken my hands off the wheel. No longer steering. No longer setting the course. Someone else is now in control.

My dog, meanwhile, has discovered a beetle. Clearly a far more interesting subject. Perhaps he’s right. Because the dictionary definition isn’t really the point. What matters is what this word does to me.

Legally, becoming ausgesteuert simply means that you’ve exhausted your entitlement to unemployment benefits. A bureaucratic term. A status. A checkbox.

For me, it means something very different. It means that, after almost forty years of uninterrupted working life, I suddenly have no income—while mortgage, health insurance premiums, and everyday bills seem remarkably unimpressed by my new official status. It also means that I’ve written what feels like countless job applications. To companies. To organisations. To anyone who might possibly be listening.

It wasn’t entirely hopeless. I spent four months working for a start-up before everybody realised that there was definitely no money. I worked for seven months as maternity cover for a non-profit organisation. I found hope. And I lost it again.

But none of that is the real tragedy. The real loss isn’t the income. It’s the belonging. No team. No colleagues. No meetings. No strategy sessions. No ideas growing around a table. No spontaneous “Got a minute?” No shared successes. No role. No longer being part of something bigger than myself.

Of course, that’s not entirely true. I’m still a partner. A daughter. A sister. A friend. And, apparently, I also hold the rather demanding positions of dog mum, dog walker, dog cuddler, dog chef, and part-time dog entertainer. When I look at my dog now, his tail starts wagging as though I’ve just been awarded the Nobel Prize.

He has no idea what my CV looks like. He doesn’t know how many applications I’ve written. He has never heard the word ausgesteuert. To him, I’m simply… me. Perhaps that’s the most important meaning of all. Not the one you’ll find in a legal dictionary. But the quiet reminder that no word in any language gets to decide who I am. Not even this one.