People Who Hold Space Will Heal the World

somebody that I used to know series

Friends,

I only have one more post left after this one for our Somebody That I Used to Know series. I’ve really enjoyed looking back at my past self and interacting with her alongside you! I hope that along the way you’ve been inspired to reach out to your past selves with care and compassion, to ask questions and hold space for who you’ve been becoming all along and who you are still becoming today.

Perhaps after this series is over, you sit down and write a few letters—some to your past self, and some to your future self—as a way to connect, as a way to practice care in a tangible way.

It is never too late to tend to the relationship we have with ourselves, and really, today’s post is about this, too.

For many years, I was hard on my past self. Why couldn’t she have cared more, known more, realized who she was? But I can’t change who I was, the trauma I was experiencing, and how much I could handle working through it. The truth is, she cared deeply, but she didn’t always know how to get back home to herself, or to get to others.

I simply was who I was back then, and now I know more to heal more.

But this piece is one of my favorite things I’ve ever written, because it’s about my partner Travis, and the ways he’s always been someone who holds space for others. In our marriage we’ve learned that partnership is about space-holding. It’s one of the greatest gifts we can give each other.

So, as you read this, think about those in your life who hold space. Who are they? How do they hold space for you and for others? Could you send them a note of thanks, maybe a bouquet of flowers to acknowledge the care they’ve given over the years?

photo by Amy Paulson

When I married my husband, he'd just cut off his dreads and was an avid rock climber. He married me-- a conservative christian girl from a small town, comfortable in everything that I knew, in everything that I'd been told I was going to be.

As Johnny Cash says, we got married in a fever, and before we knew exactly what we'd done, we were home from our honeymoon, beginning the long journey toward figuring out who we were--together.

When he married me, he loved who I was, but also saw who I could one day become, and he held that vision steady. And it wasn't a vision for what he thought I was supposed to be, but a vision still unknown to him, held by the mystery of God.

He took me climbing in one of his favorite spots not long after we married. I had a dislike of nature, but was idealistic about it, and there was abounding irony in the fact that I'd married someone like him. This isn’t necessarily true, of course. But I’d learned to cope in unhealthy ways, which severed my connection with Mother Earth, and part of my journey has been to find my way home to her again.

He took me to a place called Lincoln Lake, a climbing spot in Arkansas that had been home to him for a long time.

All that I remember thinking is that the lake water was really brown and there were a lot of bugs. I couldn't see then the way I see now.

Nine years later, close to our anniversary, we went back there. He took me to the top of the rocks to set up the climbing rope, and I sat and drank my coffee. There were large black ants crawling across my feet and the humidity in the air was rising little by little.

"It's beautiful here," I said.

"I didn't appreciate it before." I looked back with tears in my eyes.

"I know," he said.

There seems to be a difference between being with someone to change them and being with someone as you hold space for them to change.

My husband has always held space for me.

He's held space for me to grow up from the 19 year old who married him.

He's held space for me to learn motherhood.

He's held space for me to ask questions in my faith.

He's held space for me to walk into who I am without fear.

In holding space, he has loved me.

And he continues to hold space for who I'll become tomorrow.

And throughout the years, I’ve learned how to hold space, too.

I’ve held space through raising kids and struggling with what little money we had.

I’ve held space through grad school programs and the shifts in our faith.

I’ve held space with myself as I’ve learned what patience means.

I'm convinced that space holding people are the ones who will heal the church—and not just the church, but the world. It is what will get us past our disillusionments, it is what is held in the power of storytelling and story sharing. It is holy and sacred work to keep presence with someone else.

And keeping presence isn’t easy, especially when you’ve grown up in traumatic environments. My trauma responses often kept me from being present to others and, honestly, often myself. Through therapy and leaving abusive church institutions, I’ve finally begun the journey of healing, of naming those trauma responses and being honest about the work of healing.

I couldn’t have done it alone, but I also recognize that who I was at 19 was a young woman who desperately wanted to hold relationship and community, who wanted to seek out healing and care. She just had to find the tools to get there. Sound familiar to anyone else out there?

When I searched “hold space” on Getty images, so many of the results were people holding their phones. Isn’t this odd? But isn’t this the way that it is? The idea of holding space with someone else may not always be shared in that language, but it is the human experience to sit with someone else, to share our sacred human connection with each other.

These words are for those who go beyond the screen, even though our words matter everywhere. Our presence with one another matters, and those who hold space bring healing. They are the ones who bring justice and shalom, because they are patient people who hold onto a long-off vision. We need them in our churches and across all our institutional spaces, because they will not force change—well, that’s not quite true. I think I meant to say that they will not force change in others when they know they’re not ready for it. Sometimes it really does take time to turn something or someone around, especially when trauma and pain are involved in the ways we live and understand who we are.

They will not sit in pews and bear judgment over the people around them, but they will sit with those people and wait for God or Mystery or The Sacred or some other Big Holiness to show them the way.

The church has very publicly become a place that tries to manage others, and it often leaves people wounded. It wounds the church by distorting who the church should really be, and it wounds individuals in the church by making them feel like they aren't good enough for Jesus. I still believe this. The only difference is I have left institutional church spaces, and I am wondering where the church goes from here. I don’t have answers, so, in a way, I step back and hold space in the wondering.

We need to learn to hold space.

Like my husband saw in me (and yes, what I’ve also seen in him) we need to see what is good in each other, to hold onto the longer vision that God holds for each of us, and we need to wait.

I did not understand as a 19 year old who I was marrying or who I was. Is this true? I think at the core of myself, at the core of all of us, we are who we are throughout our life, and we are affected by the things that happen around and to us. So at the young age of 19, I didn’t fully understand the journey ahead, but I knew I wanted to embark on it nonetheless. And in the process of learning, I needed someone who could be gentle yet steady with me, just as God is gentle and steady.

People like my husband, who hold space, show the unique character of God in a way that we are all hungry for.

So let's practice holding space instead of holding one another hostage to our own ideals.

Let's remember that God or The Universe has an individual vision for each of us, and it's worth waiting for.

As I climbed up the rocks that summer morning, I felt like I was communing with a space of the world that I'd never known existed before. I felt drawn in by my inability to know exactly where to put my foot or my hands, but that unknowing gave me energy to try anyway, like I was trusting this thing that was calling me back to God.

And on the one climb when I reached the top, I turned around and scanned the treetops with my eyes. I looked down at the brown water and across the horizon of that Arkansas day and thought, "I am so glad I am alive."

It’s ironic that I’m sharing this piece with you in this stage of my life, because I’m climbing again with my family, with my partner Travis. We are pushing ourselves, trying to trust ourselves, trying to ask questions about our own limits and what it means to find our way home to ourselves and The Sacred both inside the gym and outside in kinship with Earth.

If we hold space for each other, we learn how to truly be alive with one another, as we cast off judgment and wait for the grace of God to journey with us into unknown and sacred places.

And my friends, it's absolutely worth the wait.

Friends,

Thank you for being here. The Liminality Journal is a space to explore our questions, to ask what it means to be human, and to journey toward wholeness together through poetry and prose.

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