The image of “holding” is an evocative one that has given rise to the idea of “holding space” for another, where we’re attuned to what they’re feeling and how they’re making sense of their experience.
Through empathic resonance, they feel felt and understood.
While I’m sympathetic to this view, it’s not completely accurate for me in lived experience.
When with another who is spiraling outside their window of tolerance, it’s not me who is “doing” the holding. There is “holding” occurring, but in no way is it “mine.”
I can recognize and participate in this holding and practice devotion toward it, but it doesn’t originate in me. It originates in the stars and in the soil.
My role is to move into reverie, to set aside any fantasy that I know what healing is, and to listen. To move into awe. To wonder. To pray.
Even the agenda to "hold space" can interfere with that unfolding, contaminating the vessel.
Space cannot be held…
… but entered into and loved.
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