The scheduled
accompaniment.

We keep the Spanish word la acompañante on purpose. She is the woman who accompanies the one presenting — in a private hour before the session, or live in front of the circle — she is not a coach: she does not advise, does not solve and does not share her own story. English has no word for that, and every word it does have brings back the idea this method spent years removing.

The accompaniment booklet (13 pages, both accompaniments with all the questions) exists in Spanish for now.

To accompany

To accompany is to help another woman reach what really weighs on her. You do not need to know more than she does or to have answers: you need to listen in a particular way, and that way has four parts.

The four skills of the woman accompanying

Other forums among women call this coaching. Money in Her Voice calls it accompaniment, and it is not a change of label: coach carries the idea of someone who knows more and takes you to a result. Here nobody knows more. There is one woman walking beside another while she finds what is hers.

What accompaniment is not

What shows and what weighs

What she tells first is almost always the story: what happened, when, with whom, what each person said. That is easy to tell and fills all the time if you let it. Underneath there is something else, and that is what the circle can work with.

Two layers, and only one tells itself

The work of the woman accompanying is the move from one layer to the other. If it stays in the first, the case reaches the circle as an anecdote and the block does not deliver.

How to listen

Four things the woman accompanying does

And four she does not do

Before · the meeting

The two of them sit down one or two weeks ahead, somewhere private, one uninterrupted hour. She arrives with her two sheets filled in; la acompañante arrives with nothing written and no opinion formed.

Two roles, one hour

The questions of the woman presenting

They are two sheets, alone and by hand, and they are in the booklet. The first comes out without effort; the second is the hard one, and it is the one that works.

The sheet of the woman bringing the case · the facts and what hurts

1. 01
   In one sentence

   What do I want to bring to the circle?

2. 02
   The facts, without interpretation

   What happened, when, with whom?

3. 03
   The hardest part

   What is hardest about this for me?

4. 04
   Where I am stuck

   Where am I stuck?

What I have to look at

1. 01
   My own part

   How might my own decisions be holding this situation in place?

2. 02
   What I feel

   With the emotions wheel beside you, to land on the exact word.

3. 03
   What I fear

   What do I fear will happen if nothing changes?

4. 04
   What it would be for this to go well

   Said concretely, not as a wish.

5. 05
   What I need from the group today

   To be heard, or to be told other women's experience. Those are two different things and it is worth asking for one.

If finishing the second sheet does not make you slightly uncomfortable, you have not reached the bottom yet.

And before filling them in, check that it is a case

The woman presenting · during the meeting

• You do not need to arrive in order. If you knew what the difficulty underneath was, you would not need the meeting.
• You can say no. If there is somewhere you do not want to go, you say so and nobody insists. Nothing that comes up here has to be taken into the room.
• What is said in the meeting is confidential, just like the session.
• At the end, look at your sheets again. Often the first sentence has to be rewritten, because the case turned out to be a different one.
• You decide what gets told. La acompañante reads you the introduction before the session, and if something exposes you more than you want, it is changed right there.

The questions of the woman accompanying

You do not have to ask them all, or in order. They are a repertoire for when the conversation stays in the story. They are all open: none of them can be answered yes or no.

To start

1. 01
   «What are you thinking?»

   The most neutral of all, and that is why it comes first. If you start by asking what she feels, she often closes up: it is still too early. This one asks nothing of her.

2. 02
   «What weighs on you most about this?»

   It is usually the first one that goes down from the story to what lies underneath.

3. 03
   «Tell me more about that.»

   It is not a question and it is one of the most productive. Say it and stay quiet.

4. 04
   «Help me understand.»

   Useful when something does not add up, without pointing out that it does not.

To reach the feeling

1. 01
   «What do you feel as you tell it?»

   Ask it more than once, at different moments. The answer changes.

2. 02
   «Where do you feel it?»

   Sometimes the body answers before the words do.

3. 03
   «Which part of all this keeps you up at night?»

   It makes her choose, and choosing is what focuses.

4. 04
   «If this were an image, what would it be?»

   A metaphor, without explaining or justifying it. It is the one that pulls her out of the facts fastest.

To find the difficulty underneath

1. 01
   «What is the real difficulty here?»

   Direct. Often she already knows and nobody had asked her.

2. 02
   «What question are you hoping to answer for yourself?»

   It turns the case into a question, which is what the circle needs.

3. 03
   «Of everything you have told me, what worries you most?»

   Asked at the end, when everything is on the table.

4. 04
   «Which part of this depends on you?»

   The most uncomfortable one, and the one that changes the case most.

To look ahead

1. 01
   «What do you want?»

   Four words. Hard to answer, and that is why it works.

2. 02
   «If this went well, what would it look like?»

   Concretely: what would look different on an ordinary Tuesday.

3. 03
   «And what would it mean if it went badly?»

   The opposite, and it goes down faster. «What I fear» stays in the feeling; this one makes her name the concrete consequence.

4. 04
   «And for the people around you?»

   Added to the two before. It almost always uncovers who she is protecting — and with money that is usually half the case.

5. 05
   «What belief would you have to let go of to get there?»

   Something she takes as true about money. It is almost always a sentence learned at home.

6. 06
   «If the circle could help you with only one thing, what would it be?»

   To close. It focuses what she needs from the group, and connects with the last question on her sheet.

And one that is not asked: a bare «why?». It is the most tempting and the one that lands worst — among women it sounds like asking her to account for herself, and she goes from telling to defending. «Tell me more» gets the same and does not move her from where she is.

The introduction, in four parts

At the end of the hour, la acompañante writes the introduction. It is the piece that decides what the circle is going to talk about, and it is read out loud when the case opens, before she tells it. It is in the booklet, on the sheet of la acompañante.

What gets written

1. 01
   The core, in a single sentence

   What she came to explore. In her words, not in those of la acompañante.

2. 02
   The difficulty heard underneath

   The one she named at the end, not the one she had written when she arrived.

3. 03
   The feelings heard

   All of them, not the most comfortable one. There are usually two or three that contradict each other.

4. 04
   The sentence that opens the group

   The one that makes the others search their own lives.

The format of the sentence is fixed: «Think of a time when you felt [her strongest feeling] because [a general description of the situation, without her details].»

The sentence, well and badly written

The test: strip out of the sentence everything that identifies the case. If it still stands, it is well written. And before reading it in the session, read it to her: it is her case.

In the session · seven steps, one hour

The guide opens each step with a short sentence, and the keeper of time says when it is over.

The seven steps

1. 01
   Entry into the case · 2 min

   Each woman says one word she comes in with, without explaining it. It has the same name as the Entry of the session because it is the same thing, but it opens only the case.

2. 02
   The introduction · 4 min

   La acompañante reads what she wrote: the core, the difficulty she heard underneath, the feelings and the sentence that opens the group. It comes before she speaks, so the others listen already knowing what to look for.

3. 03
   She tells it · 10 to 15 min

   Nobody interrupts her. Nobody asks, nobody agrees out loud, nobody finishes her sentences.

4. 04
   The silence · 5 min

   Nobody speaks. Each woman searches her own life for a moment that matches in the feeling.

5. 05
   Experience, not advice · 25 min

   Each woman tells her own, and first what resonates. Never what she should do.

6. 06
   What I take with me · 7 min

   Each woman says in one sentence what she takes with her; she goes last. It is not an action plan, and nobody asks her what she is going to do: not that day and not the following month.

7. 07
   Exit from the case · 2 min

   Each woman says one word she leaves with.

Nobody in the room asks questions, and that is on purpose. The work of finding the difficulty was done in the meeting, and the introduction already says what weighs. If the circle asked, it would repeat that work with eight voices instead of one, and she would go from telling to defending herself.

And nobody asking her what she is going to do is not politeness either: it is what makes it possible to bring an unresolved case at all. If the end of it were having to commit to something, next time nobody would bring what actually weighs on them.

During the case la acompañante has no special role once she has read the introduction: she has done her part. She takes part like everyone else.

The silence

Between the end of her telling and the first woman who speaks there are five minutes in which nobody says anything. The guide announces it — «five minutes of silence» — and the keeper of time counts them. Without that silence, the woman who speaks first is not the one with the best experience: she is the one who thinks fastest, and what she says sets the tone for everyone after her.

What the others do while they listen

Experience, not advice

When you share, yours can be useful in two ways. Look first for the one that resonates.

The two ways

The test, and it works for both: if removing the last sentence makes the whole thing pointless, that last sentence was the advice.

The four failures

What breaks the block

And while the women share, it helps if the guide notices who has not been heard. Not to expose her: in a circle of nine, two women take half the time and nobody notices until the third month.