I sat down to write this month’s newsletter article and… nothing.

At first, I told myself the idea will come. Then I told myself I’d do it tomorrow. Then I realised I was stuck. No ideas, no spark — just the kind of blank screen that seems to quietly hum with judgement.

That word — stuck — started to feel familiar. It’s something Local Area Coordinators discuss a lot and regularly explore with the people they walk alongside. People often describe feeling stuck when they don’t know what they want their life to look like anymore, when ambitions feel impossibly far away, or when the hardships people experience feel too big, too complicated, or too daunting to overcome.

When Local Area Coordinators are alongside someone in that space, their role is not about removing obstacles or supplying a ready-made answer of what to do next. It’s about helping someone to gently explore what sits beneath that feeling of stuckness — the fears, hopes, and ideas that might emerge.

Just like in life, in trying to write this article, me feeling stuck was an opportunity for discovery. When I stopped trying to force words onto the page and instead reflected on why I was struggling, this article began to form. The stuckness itself became the story. That’s similar to what happens in Local Area Coordination too.

When a person shares with their Local Area Coordinator “I feel lost; I just don’t know what to do next”, and when that is met with curiosity rather than a quick fix, it can open up opportunities for lasting growth, as well as helping people to find practical ways of moving forwards:

• Could this moment of feeling stuck actually be a time for collecting ideas and planning where to go from here?
• Have you ever been in similar situations to this in the past? What did you do then?
• What is the smallest thing you could do to help unlock some answers?
• Who do you normally talk things through with when things are tough?

Local Area Coordination is about walking alongside people at their own pace: not dragging people or pushing but navigating uncertainty as equal partners; resisting the natural urge to want to solve people’s problems and, instead, seeing people as capable; exploring options together; and valuing the choices that people make. Being stuck can be an important moment to discover what needs to happen next.