Chichester & West Sussex
The things you’d do...
If you didn’t have to do them alone.
Steady, in-person support for women through the chapters that change everything. Not therapy. Not looking after you. Just someone beside you.
You have people. That was never the problem.
You have friends. Good ones. Family nearby who love you. Something you're good at, and rooms where people are glad you walked in.You're capable, and you know it.
- Until the front door closes.
- Until Saturday morning arrives, and the weekend stretches out ahead of you.
- Until the invitation comes, and you make the excuse instead.
- Until something new turns up that you have to face on your own.
You can be surrounded by people who love you and still feel completely alone. Not because people aren't there, but because lives move.
The difficult thing isn’t doing it.
It’s having to do it alone.
WHAT THIS ISN'T, PLAINLY
It isn’t therapy.
No sessions, no analysis, no working through the past. If you want that, you should have it — this is something else.
It isn’t looking after you.
You don’t need care. You are entirely capable, and that was never the question.
It isn’t advice.
You already know what you want to do. You’ve known for a while. Nobody needs to tell you.
What it is: a trusted woman who gets it because she lives it — showing up beside you, for whatever today needs.
Why I built this
I’m the woman this is for.
I have friends. A family. A phone that rings. I am not short of people and I am not short of confidence — I spent fifteen years walking into strangers’ houses for a living. And I still know exactly what it is to want to try the gym class and not go, because going alone felt too hard. To get an invitation and decline it, because showing up solo felt too exposing.
Those fifteen years were in premium property, which sounds glossy and mostly wasn’t. I sat in living rooms with women during divorces, probates and downsizes — the sales that happen because something ended. They were competent, well-loved women, and they were doing the hardest week of their lives with nobody in the passenger seat.
I kept coming back to one question, for them and for myself: what if someone just showed up? Not to fix anything. Not for therapy or advice I already know. Just to be there. Beside me.
What this actually looks like
Ordinary days, made possible.
Mid-week pottery class
The one you looked up in January and never booked. Two places, both paid for, and someone sitting at the wheel next to you.
A dance class on a Thursday
Everyone there is a beginner, including me. We walk in together, stand at the back, and nobody is watching you.
A gallery, and lunch afterwards
Pallant House, then somewhere with a proper table. The lunch is usually the better half.
An appointment neither of us will pretend is nothing
I sit in the waiting room, or I come in with you. Afterwards there is a cup of tea and no rush to be brave.
A day somewhere neither of us has been
Arundel, Brighton, or the ferry across to the island. Out early, back when we're ready.
A walk when the house is too quiet
Up onto the Downs, or along West Wittering if the wind isn’t vicious. Talking optional.
The envelopes you’ve stopped opening
The pile by the kettle. We open it, sort it into three piles, and it stops being a monster by about eleven.
An event you’d have declined
The plus-one you couldn’t fill. We arrive together, and you leave whenever you’ve had enough.
Whatever today needs.
Ways to begin
Start wherever feels possible.
The Community
Free
A local group for women in and around Chichester.
The Circle
£25 / month
Membership, so there is always something in the diary.
An Afternoon
£150
Three hours, one-to-one, doing the thing you’ve been meaning to do.
Beside You
from £395 / month
Ongoing support from one consistent person.
What you can count on
The plain facts.
One person, every time.
Not an agency. Not a rota of strangers. Goreti — the same face, the same car, the same conversation continuing.
Fifteen years in people’s homes.
A career in premium property, much of it spent sitting with women on some of the hardest days of their lives.
Trained in counselling skills.
Levels 1 to 3 — enough to hold a difficult conversation properly, and to know exactly where the edges are.
A written agreement.
Times, costs, boundaries and notice, all set out plainly in writing before anything begins.
Grounded Beside You works exclusively with women. Every arrangement is set out in writing, and is entirely non-intimate.
Reading this for your mum?
You live an hour away, or four, and the calls have got shorter. You’ve looked at what’s available and none of it fits, because she is fifty-eight and would be insulted by half of it.
This is not a care service and it will not feel patronising to her. There is a page written for you.
Other women
Come and see who's there.
There is our free Facebook group for women in and around Chichester. It costs nothing, asks nothing, and you can read it quietly for a month before you say a word. Most people do exactly that.
Beyond it there are small gatherings — eight to ten women, a long lunch or a walk or an afternoon, £45 each. Everyone comes on their own. That is rather the point.
Let’s have a conversation.
No obligation and nothing to decide. Write a few lines about what’s going on, and Goreti will reply herself — usually within a day. If it isn’t right, she’ll say so and point you somewhere better.
hello@groundedbesideyou.co.ukChichester and about 25 minutes around it