by Heather Plett | May 8, 2018 | holding space
I cut off someone in traffic recently. It was completely my fault. I wasn’t paying enough attention and drifted into the other lane when mine was suddenly blocked off for construction. The moment I realized what I’d done, though, shame-brain quickly tried to find someone else to blame. “Maybe the other driver was going too fast. Maybe it was the way the construction pylons were placed on the road that made it difficult to know where the lanes were.”
Shame-brain isn’t very good at holding space for mistakes. In fact, shame-brain turns all of those mistakes – even the ones that are very human, relatively harmless, and completely accidental – into monsters that have to be banished from the kingdom. Because those monsters are threats that might topple the foundation that the kingdom was built on.
From shame-brain’s perspective, mistakes are dangerous.
A mistake makes me question my own value, safety, and belonging. If I MAKE a mistake, perhaps it means that I AM a mistake. And if I’m a mistake, people will stop loving me. I will be abandoned. I’ll be lonely and unprotected. I’ll be a failure. I’l lose my place in society and I won’t be able to get a job or find love. Yes, shame-brain can take even the simplest mistakes to extreme consequences in an instant.
Mistakes are human. In fact, they’re important pieces of information that help us learn and grow. Consider a child who’s learning to ride a bike – when she falls a couple of times, she’ll realize that the action that resulted in the fall shouldn’t be replicated and she’ll adjust accordingly and probably do better the next time. The same is true in school. When a student makes a mistake on a spelling quiz, he will (hopefully) spell that word correctly the next time.
I think, though, that it’s actually in the school system that we begin to be taught that mistakes aren’t just valuable pieces of information that help us learn, they are punishable offences that brand us. When we make a mistake on a test, we rarely get a chance to try again. Instead, that test mark goes into our final grade and we live with the mark of those mistakes forever. Tests don’t teach us how to learn and grow – they teach us that the person who makes the least mistakes wins. (It was a great source of frustration for me, when I taught in a university setting, that so much emphasis was placed on how to get good grades rather than how to learn.)
This is accentuated by our legal system. Mistakes are rarely treated as opportunities for growth – they are offences punishable by law that often go onto your permanent record. Instead of offering opportunities for repair, restitution, and restoration, we pass out judgements and lock people behind bars. Three of my friends have recently navigated (or are currently navigating) the legal system with their sons whose offences occurred in their formative teen years. These young men (some of whose actions did, admittedly, harm other people) are not being taught repair and restitution. They are learning shame. They’re learning just how much they can be “banished from the kingdom” for making mistakes. The same is true for one my friends who has been living under the shadow of an unfair legal conviction that makes it difficult for her to sign a lease or get a job. She has told few people of this part of her story because of what she risks losing as a result. Some mistakes (or appearances of mistakes) are costly.
Shame, the way we in western, colonized cultures, experience and express it, is deeply rooted in a culture of dominance (ie. patriarchy, white supremacy, colonization, etc.). In a culture of dominance, the person who’s seen to be the least flawed (NOT the person who IS the least flawed, but who can rig the system to ensure that they are SEEN TO BE the least flawed), dominates. The person with the greatest amount of shame is oppressed. Shame is heaped on the people on the lower levels of the system – BIPOC, women, LGBTQ+, etc., so that they can be dominated. They’re locked up for minor offences, they’re shamed for wearing the wrong clothes or having sex with the wrong person, they’re blamed for their own poverty, they’re ostracized for contracting AIDS, etc.
“Perhaps the act of ‘psychological colonisation’ is simply the process of shaming another culture.” from this article
In a culture of shame, mistake monsters are easily created. In fact, nobody needs to create them for us. After a lifetime of social conditioning, we can be counted on to create those monsters all by ourselves. Nobody was in the car with me when I cut off the other driver – and yet, the mistake monster showed up quickly to haunt me.
In the Maori culture (according to this article by Anahera Gildea), shame is treated differently. “The root word for shame in English means ‘to cover oneself’. Like with blankets, maybe. Or mud. Or hatred. To be camouflaged in a thicket, on a bank, or in the darkness of the night. Māori do not hide their shame. Nor their grief. It is visible to themselves and others because it means they have become dislodged, disconnected, from their ‘whakapapa’ (loosely translated as ‘lineage’).”
Shame, then, in the Maori understanding, is not associated with punishable offences you can’t recover from, but a reminder of how your actions have disconnected you and how you now have an opportunity to be restored.
I am left wondering, when I consider the damage shame-brain and mistake monsters are doing to all of us in non-Indigenous, colonized cultures… how do we create a mistake culture – where mistakes aren’t monsters but friends? How do we shift attitudes away from “mistake as punishable offence” to “mistake as valuable information for growth”? How do we focus not on the danger of the mistake, but on the possibility for reconnecting ourselves?
What if we treated mistakes as “miss-takes”, the way we do when we’re taking photos?
Over the weekend, I went with my sister to visit the town where we grew up. Because they are such fleeting flowers and are so connected to our youth, we took dozens of photos of crocuses. Some of those photos were miss-takes – they came out blurry, the angle was wrong, or they were over-exposed. Those photos could later be deleted from our cameras. But they weren’t just miss-takes – they provided us with valuable information about how to change the angle, the light, or the focus. Those miss-takes helped us eventually take a few photos we were proud of. 
They helped us find greater connection with the crocuses and with the land on which we’ve wandered since we first learned to walk
In the Stó:lō Nation (Indigenous to Canada), their restorative justice practices are built on an understanding of mistakes as “miss-takes”. As in the Maori culture, they see the mistakes as signposts that indicate disconnection, and that point toward an opportunity for restoration and reconnection. They don’t, in fact, have a word for justice. Instead, Stó:lō Elders created the word Qwi:qwelstóm kwelam t’ ey (qwi:qwelstóm) – roughly translated as, “they are teaching you, moving you toward the good”. “It is a concept of ‘justice’ centered upon the family and reflects a way of life that focuses on relationships and the interconnectedness of all life. It has four key elements: ‘the role of Elders; the role of family, family ties, and community connections; teachings; and spirituality.’” Justice, in a culture like this, is not a system of punishment, it is a way of re-connecting those in conflict with their higher selves and their spiritual guides. (Source: Indigenous Centered Conflict Resolution Processes in Canada, by Nisha Sikka, George Wong, and Catherine Bell)
What if we decolonized our culture and we let the Stó:lō Nation and the Maori Nation teach us about justice systems that restore right relationships and bring people back to themselves? What if we recognized the flaws in the colonial system of “justice”, humbled ourselves, and became learners instead of colonizers? And what if we extended that learning beyond justice to our education systems? How would it change the learning environment if we changed our testing practices and treated mistakes as valuable pieces of information that helped a student come into the fullness of who they are and what they are capable of? What if we removed the sting of shame and accepted, instead, a collective responsibility for restoring the community?
Recently, I have witnessed some mistakes made by white spiritual/self-help teachers who lack an awareness of their social conditioning and unconscious bias. They are causing harm to people of colour (by images and words that they use and actions that they take), and when they do so, their first instinct is often to defend themselves and/or to hide their shame. They don’t yet understand that the impact of their mis-steps is more important than the intent, so they try to convince their followers that they are good people, worthy of continued admiration. They are afraid the mistakes will destroy them – banish them from the kingdom and leave them penniless.
I get it, I’ve been there too. I made a mistake once, while doing race relations work, and my shame reared up (just as it did when I cut off that person in traffic) and made me want to use every means possible to protect myself from the mistake monster. Luckily, I was working with people who were less interested in my mistake than in my continued efforts to seek reconciliation and restitution. The mistake did not kill me or banish me from the kingdom – it taught me and further shaped my work. Now, three years later, I am grateful for that mistake and the opportunities for growth it presented.
One of the most important things I learned (or re-learned) from that experience, is that mistakes are most valuable when they are brought into the light, discussed, apologized for, and learned from. A mistake that’s hidden turns into shame. A mistake that’s owned and repaired and/or apologized for turns into learning.
We are going to make mistakes. Accept that as a given. Especially if you’re doing work that challenges you, holding space for people in places where there may be power imbalances, deep wounds, trauma, racial injustice, grief, fear, etc., occasionally you’ll offend people, you’ll let your own triggered wounds take over your rational mind, and you’ll be blind to your social conditioning. Even when your best intentions are to be kind, your impact may be very different.
Go into this work expecting mistakes to happen. And sometimes those mistakes will mean that you have to bear someone’s anger or face rejection. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news – that’s simply part of this work. That’s why we all need lots of self-care and community-care – so that we won’t be destroyed when the winds threaten to blow us over.
Those mistakes don’t need to destroy us. They can become our teachable moments.
Instead of battling the mistake monster, we need to befriend him – take him under our wing and hold space for him until he’s brave enough to take off his monster mask and reveal that, underneath, he is “miss-take”, not monster. Once we do that, we can learn from the mistake, make reparations where we need to, and keep trying until we get it right. Eventually, the picture will emerge in focus and with the right amount of light.
The next time a mistake monster shows up, take a lesson from art therapy and draw a picture of him. Make him as ugly as you need him to be, but then give him soft eyes. Talk to that monster and let him know you’re willing to learn the lessons he has brought you. You will likely find that he will soften in the space that you hold for him.
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If you want to learn more about how to hold space for your own mistakes and for others, consider signing up for Holding Space Coach/Facilitator Program, or join me in B.C. or the Netherlands.
by Heather Plett | Apr 3, 2018 | holding space
Up until a dozen years ago, I’d only encountered the word “sovereign” in reference to God and I assumed it had something to do with being all-powerful, all-knowing, in control, and holy. I later encountered it in relation to nations, but, because I’d been raised with a highly tuned blasphemy-detector, I wondered whether that meant those nations were trying to be as powerful as God and whether governments had become “false idols”.
A dozen years ago, I came across the word again when I worked in international development and my colleagues were talking about “food sovereignty”. That’s when I became curious about what I’d missed in my earlier understanding of the word.
There are three categories often used for food-related support: food aid, food security, and food sovereignty. If you give a man a fish (food aid), he’ll eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish (food security), he’ll have food for a lifetime. But what if you put a fence around the pond and only allow him to fish on certain days and he has to go hungry in between? Ensuring he has agency over his food choices and accessibility to the sources of that food is food sovereignty. (In the non-profit world, we supported food sovereignty by funding projects where people were advocating for their right to adequate food and agricultural resources.)
According to Wikipedia, sovereignty is “the full right and power of a governing body over itself, without any interference from outside sources or bodies”. With full sovereignty, the man can fish at the pond when/if he wants, make decisions about that pond, and choose whether or not to share the pond with his neighbours.
Largely, the term is associated with nations and their governments, but what if we bring that definition down to land in our own lives? How does it change your relationship with yourself and with others if you consider yourself to be sovereign and you consider those you’re in relationship with to also be sovereign?
To claim sovereignty means that I get to decide what happens to my body, heart, and mind. It means that I have agency and autonomy and am not controlled or manipulated by anyone. I get to make my own decisions and live with the consequences. I get to choose who I am in relationship with and how much space to give them in my life. I can choose to end relationships that cause me harm and walk away from situations and communities that don’t honour my sovereignty.
If I treat you as someone who has your own sovereignty, it means that I assume you have the same right to self-govern your life as I do. You get to tell me how you want to be treated and I can choose to accept those boundaries or walk away. It’s what I teach in my work around holding space – that we offer love to each other without attachment, manipulation, control, or boundary-crossing.
For me, and I suspect for many others, it feels quite foreign to think of myself as sovereign. I’ve got all kinds of old scripts running in my head telling me that it’s selfish to claim the “full right and power” of my own “governing body” without “any interference from outside sources or bodies”. Shouldn’t I be more agreeable than that? Should I be nicer? Shouldn’t I accommodate other people’s needs before my own? Shouldn’t I extend grace to those who interfere? Shouldn’t I overlook the boundary-crossers if they are offering me safety, protection, resources, or employment? Aren’t they entitled to certain rights if I need what they have to offer?
Recently, I had an opportunity to claim my sovereignty in a relationship with someone who hasn’t always respected it in the past. This person was going to be in my house and I was nervous about it because of past experiences when they would fix things without being asked to do so, judge my choices about how my house is arranged and maintained, etc. As the time approached for the visit, I realized that I could make a choice – say nothing and risk further violations, or claim my sovereignty and communicate what kind of behaviour I found unacceptable in my space. I chose the latter. With a simple text, I let the person know what the ground rules would be for the visit. If they wished to comply, they were welcome, but if they didn’t, they could choose not to come. (They chose to comply.)
In essence, what I did was establish a “treaty” with this person – claiming my sovereignty in the relationship and laying out the expectations for what was acceptable. “A treaty is an agreement under international law entered into by actors in international law, namely sovereign states and international organizations.” (Wikipedia) If we can bring the definition of sovereignty down to our own lives, perhaps we can also consider how that sovereignty is negotiated via treaty between sovereign individuals in a relationship?
The problem, as I see it, is that few of us have an embodied understanding of sovereignty because we have been socially conditioned by colonial systems. “Colonization is a process by which a central system of power dominates the surrounding land and its components.” (Wikipedia)
Colonizers are not respecters of treaties. They may create them, but they either use their power to manipulate what the treaties contain, or they bull-doze over them to take the resources they want.
In a colonial system, everyone is impacted. Both the colonizers and the colonized become shaped by the imbalance of power and the lack of respect for boundaries and sovereignty. Some learn to take what’s not theirs and others learn that their rights are easily violated and their resources easily taken. Most of us find ourselves somewhere at the intersections – having power in some relationships and no power in others.
In a colonial system, nobody walks away unscathed. Nobody ends up with a well-balanced understanding of what it means to hold sovereignty as a core value in a relationship.
As a result, we have a lot of people the world over who’ve grown up with a warped sense of how to be in relationships with each other, both on a small scale and a large scale, both in one-on-one relationships and in country-to-country or community-to-community relationships. We cross boundaries, we downplay our own rights to boundaries, we fail to communicate our expectations of how we want to be treated, we emotionally colonize, we manipulate, we are victimized, and we run away from conflict because we haven’t been adequately prepared for it. We wound each other and we suffer from the wounds inflicted on us.
Consequently, we face the kind of actions being challenged by the #metoo movement, Idle No More, and Black Lives Matter. And we face the resulting backlash. When colonized people rise up to claim their sovereignty, it makes those in power nervous.
How do we change this? How do we decolonize ourselves and reclaim and honour sovereignty in our relationships and communities?
Well, it is both a small-scale and a large scale problem (and every scale in between), so there is no one-size-fits all solution. We have to do the hard work of claiming our own sovereignty (and that needs to be accompanied with a lot of self-care and community care) and we have to do the hard work of dismantling our imbalanced systems of power. We have to practice negotiating and communicating better treaties/agreements in our personal relationships and we have to address the ways in which the colonizers in our countries have ignored and/or failed to negotiate or ratify treaties with other sovereign nations or people groups. We have to learn how to enter into conflict in more generative ways that help all parties emerge with their sovereignty intact. We have to practice having harder conversations and not running away whenever we feel attacked for violating another person’s sovereignty. We have to learn how to communicate expectations and boundaries and not be offended when other people communicate theirs. And we have to evolve the way we raise our children so that they will grow up with a better sense of their own sovereignty.
I’ve begun the slow (and sometimes painful) work of decolonizing my relationships and I know that I still have a long way to go. Sometimes I feel the way I did when I first started dancing (after being raised in a no-dancing-allowed Mennonite home) – like I’m stumbling across the room stomping on people’s toes while I try to find a rhythm that fits with the person I’m dancing with. Just like dancing isn’t a natural act for someone raised with Mennonite roots, claiming sovereignty doesn’t feel like a natural act for someone raised with colonial roots.
But when we learn to dance together well – like a highly-skilled pair of tango dancers – we learn to respect each other’s space, honour each other’s bodies, and not get in the way of each other’s brilliance. We find intimacy not by violating each other’s space, but by spending many hours in practice, learning to negotiate the space between us. We might step on each other’s toes now and then, but we commit to staying on the dance floor and trying again. When one person violates the agreements we’ve made, they take responsibility and we figure out how to move on.
The better we become at dancing together, the closer we are to being truly free.
by Heather Plett | Mar 13, 2018 | holding space
When my husband and I separated and he moved out of the house, my youngest daughter was 13, and she was, understandably, angry about a situation in which she had no agency to control the outcome. I tried to be present for her in as kind and compassionate a way as I knew how, while still wrestling with the healing work I also needed to do for myself. It was hard – for both of us. I made mistakes.
Finally, after weeks of very little communication between us, I said to her “I know you’re angry. You have every right to be. AND I want you to know that I am prepared to hold your anger. Go ahead – scream at me if you must. Do what you need to do, and know that I WILL NOT LEAVE. And I will not throw the anger back at you. I will just hold it for you.”
In that situation, I had to recognize that, as the person with more agency and power, who had contributed to a situation that impacted her, I had to be prepared to receive what would come my way, even if I didn’t entirely deserve it. Even if it hurt. Even if it scared me.
I had to be prepared to hold it and NOT WALK AWAY.
This, too, is what it means to hold space – to create a container that is strong enough to hold rage, grief, fear, pain, etc. We receive what’s ours, heal it, make reparations, and let the rest go. And we don’t walk away. (We take care of ourselves, but we don’t walk away.)
Let’s extrapolate that situation to other situations where there is an imbalance of power and agency. Take, for example, some of the conversations I’ve seen and been part of, both online and off, where there is understandable anger on the part of disenfranchised/marginalized people whose lives are being irrevocably altered by people with more power and agency. Online, I’ve seen it in response to a spiritual teacher who failed to listen when people challenged her to see her blindspots. Offline, I’ve heard it in response to the Colton Boushie and Tina Fontaine murder trials.
For those of us with more power and agency (whether given to us as a “birthright” because of our skin colour, gender, etc., or because we’ve found ourselves in a hierarchically elevated position) can we hold this outrage and pain without walking away? Can we be strong enough to stay in the conversations even if it hurts, even if it scares us, even if we don’t entirely deserve it? Can we receive what’s ours, heal it, and let the rest go?
This, to me, is what reconciliation looks like. Holding space, owning what’s ours, listening deeply, making reparations, and not walking away.
(The good news is that my daughter and I weathered that storm and have a deeper relationship now because of it.)
by Heather Plett | Mar 11, 2018 | holding space
On this day, three years ago, I did something entirely ordinary. I wrote a blog post. I’d been writing blog posts a few times a week for more than a dozen years by then, so it was nothing special.
Only this time… it WAS special.
Little did I know that millions of people would soon see that blog post (upwards of 4 million, but I really have no idea, since it appears in multiple places, online and off), that it would be translated into more than 10 languages, that it would be reprinted in a couple of magazines in different parts of the world, that the high number of visitors would crash my website, that it would be quoted in Harvard Business Review and several other lofty publications, and that it would be included in the curriculum for nurses in New Zealand and hospice workers in Canada (and others). Little did I know that it would open doors I’d never even imagined walking through, and would allow me to travel to and teach in countries I’d only dreamed of visiting.
It is not hyperbole to say that that blog post changed my life. It catapulted my business and my reach far beyond what I’d imagined possible. It brought amazing people into my life from all over the world. It allowed me to lead the kind of retreats and workshops I’d been dreaming of. It was the catalyst that eventually saw me launching my Holding Space Coach/Facilitator Program (and also working on a book).
It wasn’t all easy, of course. The sudden increase in demand on my time and energy meant that I got burnt out a few months later and had to see a therapist. I had to work through impostor syndrome, and lots of issues around whether I could meet people’s expectations of me. I had to learn new ways of working, had to work on establishing stronger boundaries, and eventually had to admit I couldn’t do it all alone and hire an assistant.
I’ve often said about that blog post that “I gave birth to it, but then it went and lived its own life in the world completely separate from me.” Nearly every day, I hear a new story of where it’s popping up, where it’s being quoted, and what language it’s been translated into. Like a proud mother, I smile and nod and send it good wishes in its travels.
What I hear, again and again, is not that I taught readers something new, but that I gave language to what they intuitively sensed was needed.
I was not an inventor when I wrote that blog post, or even an originator. I was a catalyst – a transmitter, a channel. I was transforming the ideas that I’d gathered over the years and the lessons I’d learned at my mother’s deathbed, wrapping them in language, and offering them as gift to the world.
I am deeply grateful that I was chosen to do this work, and humbled that I was chosen to be the transmitter of this gift. I am deeply grateful that I accepted the invitation when it came.
Just as any child will serve as a parent’s teacher, that blog post has offered me many lessons and gifts over these three years. Here are a few of them.
1.) It’s my duty to open myself to the gift and to allow it to flow through me. Every one of us has gifts and ideas and words to offer the world, but sometimes we withhold them because we’re not good enough or smart enough or we’re afraid people won’t like them or that they’ll stop respecting us. I’ve had every kind of self-doubt anyone else faces, and yet I am grateful that I found the courage and faith to keep offering my gifts to the world anyway. None of this would have been possible for me if I’d stood in the way of the flow of what wanted to show up in the world. (Whoever’s reading this – please do the same – your gifts are needed!)
2.) The outcome is not my responsibility. This has been my mantra since the early days of my business and it’s been even more important to me since my post went viral. I cannot impact how many people will read my blog or show up at my retreats, but I can be faithful to the work that I’ve been called to do and keep showing up and giving my heart whether there are 2 people or 2 million. I cannot determine whether people will love my work or hate my work, but I’m still responsible for DOING the work because it’s what I’ve been called to do.
3.) When I kept following the thread, eventually I discovered I had a whole tapestry. For the first several years of developing my business, I was unclear about my focus and unclear about what I should put my energy into. I had lots of ideas and tried lots of different offerings, but it often felt like I was fumbling in the dark. When this blog post came out, suddenly everyone wanted to talk to me about holding space, and there was part of me that resisted. “But… I have lots of other things to talk about! This isn’t ALL of my work!” And yet… once I surrendered to what was unfolding, I suddenly discovered that there was a thread weaving through all of my work and it WAS holding space. When I finally created the Holding Space Coach/Facilitator Program, I realized that all of my life, I had been preparing for this body of work and that it was ALL connected. Before I knew it, I had 418 pages worth of content, multiple videos, and enough ideas to start dreaming about the second level of the program.
4.) The only way I know how to talk about this work is to weave in social justice. At first, I thought perhaps I was taking a slight departure from my passions around social justice, but then I realized that if the space I hold has any value at all it HAS to be a space guided by a deep commitment to justice. If it’s not a just space than it is a shallow space, and I’m only interested in swimming in the deep end of this pool. For that reason, I will never apologize if my social media feed is full of stories and ideas around intersectional feminism, dismantling the patriarchy, bringing justice to the marginalized, etc. It’s all intertwined with how we hold space.
5.) Brave space has more value than safe space. For years, I focused on creating safe spaces for people – spaces where they could be vulnerable and authentic and where they could heal and not be judged. Gradually, though, I realized that safety for one might not be safety for another, and that for many, safety had become equated with comfort. If, for example, a person feels safe enough in a circle to reveal their deeply held racist views, then suddenly a person of colour in the same circle does not feel safe. When I learned the language of “brave space”, I made that my intention instead and made a personal commitment to work harder at ensuring safety for marginalized people in my circles than those from the dominant culture. When we hold space for each other, it means that we commit to even the difficult conversations. While safe space make keep us stuck, brave space helps us move forward.
6.) Good boundaries help me do a better job of holding space. Burning out a few months after the post went viral taught me an important lesson about boundaries. I had to cut back on how available I was to people, become less responsive to the thousands of emails in my inbox, and prioritize who I was holding space for. I was also going through a divorce at the time, so my priorities were my daughters and myself as we built a new life without their father living in the home. There may have been people I offended when my boundaries became more clear, but my family and mental health were worth more than what others thought of me.
7.) Radical self-care is critical for anyone who’s giving their energy away on a daily basis. My therapist helped me see how I was giving away little bits of my energy with every social media interaction, every coaching session, every deep conversation, every course offering, and every blog post. To sustain this suddenly more public platform, I had to invest in better self-care, and so I set out on a journey to find the best ways to support myself. I’m much better at it than I once was, but I’m still learning.
8.) The space we hold offers us endless depth and opportunities for learning. I am in awe of how much I’ve learned since I committed myself to this work and how much I still have to learn. Every week, I hold conversations with people from all over the world (six continents are currently represented in my Holding Space Coach/Facilitator Program) and in every one of those conversations, I feel like I’m being offered another clue to this endless puzzle about what it means to hold space and to be in deep relationships with people. I am convinced that I’ll never get to the bottom of this deep space, and that’s alright with me.
9.) Many of the clues to this endless puzzle come from cultures that are not my own and teachers that I’ll never meet. I remember, for example, how the Maori people in New Zealand introduced me to concepts from their culture and language that were closely aligned with what I teach but that offer nuances I hadn’t considered. I’m also learning things from the Indigenous people in my own country and from people in places like Zimbabwe and India. When I move away from the ethnocentric (and/or appropriative) tendencies that are common among white North Americans, I discover depth and possibility that delight and invigorate me. I will continue the quest and honour the teachers who offer me gifts.
10.) My work is only as good as the people I surround myself with. I have been blessed with incredible relationships and many of them have deepened over the past three years, since I committed myself to this work. There are my assistant and the team that supports me in my Holding Space Coach/Facilitator Program, for starters, but then there are also the people who invite me to teach and/or speak at their conferences and workshops, the people who host me and help me create beautiful retreats, the people who dare to dive into deep conversations and relationships with me in my courses and retreats, the people who share their beautiful stories with me, the people who challenge me to go deeper, and the people who cheer me on as i grow my work. I have endless gratitude for all of you.
I thank you, my readers, for being among those people. I thank you for sharing your stories with me and for being willing to show up with courage and vulnerability. I thank you for your commitment to holding space for other people in deep, intentional, and just ways.
I welcome you to share your own holding space stories on social media. Share what the article has meant to you, or share your own learnings from your life. Use the hashtag #holdingspacestories and you’ll be entered to win free registration (at a Basic+ level) for my July 2018 offering of my Holding Space Coach/Facilitator Program.
Share your stories before March 21st. The draw will be held March 22nd.
Also, if you have interest in reading some of the other things I’ve written about holding space in the last three years, here are some places to start:
How to hold space for yourself first
What’s the opposite of holding space?
Sometimes holding space feels like doing nothing
Sometimes you have to write on the walls: Some thoughts on holding space for other people’s personal growth
On holding space when there is an imbalance of power and privilege
Leave space for others to fill your needs
What the circle holds
Holding liminal space (moving beyond the cliché into deeper space)
Holding space for the unspeakable
Meet me in the space of “I don’t know”
Sometimes holding space means that you have to break the rules
Your discomfort won’t kill you
What I’ve learned after many hours of writing about holding space
If you want to be notified as soon as I open registration for the Holding Space Coach Facilitator Program, send contact us and Krista (my assistant) will put you on the list. (It has sold out both times I’ve offered it.)
by Heather Plett | Feb 16, 2018 | holding space
In May of 2017, I stood in front of a large group of therapists, school counsellors, and youth workers in Broward County, Florida, teaching a full day workshop on how to hold space for grief and trauma. The next day, I taught many of the same people in two smaller groups how to hold meaningful conversations using The Circle Way.
I almost didn’t make it to Florida. The border guard didn’t understand my work and considered turning me away for not having applied for the appropriate visa. “You’re teaching GREEK?” he asked. “No,” I said, “I’ll be talking about GRIEF.” He looked at me incredulously. Would someone really fly thousands of kilometres to talk about something so depressing? Before he finally approved my entry, he spent an hour deliberating with his supervisor in a back room.
This week, just a twenty minute drive from the auditorium where I taught, seventeen people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Those very people I spent those two days with will be the ones called on to support youth, families, and community members through it. Some of them might have even been directly or indirectly impacted by the shooting. Either way, they will face what may be the hardest challenge of their lives – holding space for unspeakable tragedy in a community that no longer takes their children’s lives for granted.
workshop participants in Florida
As I sat with that thought, and remembered my time with those beautiful, good-hearted people who spend their lives doing the kind of work that baffles border guards, I wrestled with what kind of support I could offer from so far away. I can’t reasonably stand by their sides or gather them into circles to hold space for their tears and anger. I can’t sit with them when they listen to the anguish of heartbroken high school students, or help them while they support the teachers who will have to carry on after so much loss.
About the only things I can offer them are my love, my encouragement, and my words, hoping against hope that something of meaning will land when they need it most.
This then, is my encouragement for them and for anyone else who finds themselves holding space for unspeakable tragedy. These are not meant to be “thou shalt” words of wisdom, but rather they are gentle whispers to remind you of what you likely intuitively already know.
- Unless they’re doing harm to themselves, don’t get in the way of the emotional release. Those impacted by such horrible tragedy, will need to weep, scream, and rage at the injustice of it all. Let them. None of those emotions are “bad” or “too much”. They need to be released rather than bottled up inside. A person who doesn’t have a healthy release – who’s made to feel guilty for feeling too much – will shut up those big feelings inside and find less healthy ways to release them later. Offer them a safe space to express what they need to.
- Remember that trauma is a physical thing as much as it is emotional. When we block the release of that trauma – by stopping the emotions or shutting down the physical shaking that may occur – it can get stuck in the body and the person may find themselves, years from now, struggling with the debilitating impact of PTSD, addiction, etc.. Help them find healthy somatic (body-centred) ways to release and process the trauma. That may be somatic therapy, and/or it may be more simply engaging youth in physical activities that get them out of their brains and into their bodies. It may also be engaging with alternative therapy programs like equine assisted therapy or art therapy. (Some suggestions: TRE, In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, by Peter A. Levine, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, by Bessel Van Der Kolk, When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection, by Dr. Gabor Mate, EAGALA)
- Don’t expect them to make too many decisions. A person’s decision making capacity is impaired in the middle of grief and trauma, and even the simplest decisions (what groceries to buy in order to feed their families) can quickly overwhelm them. If you can, simplify things by giving them fewer options (ie. “I’m picking up supper for your family. Unless I hear otherwise from you, I’ll get pizza.”).
- Hold onto your advice or guidance until they ask for it or until you see clear evidence that they’ll be harmed if you don’t step in. When a person is completely overwhelmed by the situation, you may need to step in to give gentle guidance, but otherwise, this is not a time for much advice or guidance. Advice might even contribute to them feeling worse than they did before, because they’ll suddenly feel like they’re not “doing grief right”.
- Don’t try to make sense of it for them. Eventually, their resilience may be built up by meaning-making (ie. finding a purpose in their deceased loved one’s life), but that’s their journey and it will take a lot of time for them to get there. You can be a sounding board for them while they search for the meaning, but offering them that before they’re ready for it may sound like a callous dismissal of their huge loss. Grief first, meaning later. Once they’re ready for it, ask gentle questions that will help them find their own way through to meaning. Don’t prescribe your own meaning to it. (Recommended reading: Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl)
- Remember to care for the caregivers (teachers, principals, custodial staff, parents, community members, etc.) as well as those most directly impacted. While they may not have been directly impacted by the trauma, they might suffer vicarious trauma from having to support those who were. Show them your support in big and little ways (ie. hosting sharing circles, bringing food to their families, giving them days off for self-care, checking in with them weeks after the tragedy, etc.).
- “Comfort in, dump out.” As this wise article suggests, consider who is closest to the centre of the tragedy and make them the priority for care and comfort. Then extend outward, considering who is the next closest to the tragedy, and so on. Wherever you find yourself in the concentric circles, extend comfort inward (to those closer to the tragedy than you) and do your dumping (complaining, crying, raging, etc.) outward to those less affected than you.
- Be prepared for the long-term impacts of the tragedy. A year from now – two, three, ten years from now – this will still reverberate in the community and especially in the school. The children in that high school may still be suffering the effects in adulthood. Be patient and extend grace to people even long after others think they “should” be over it. Check in regularly and offer them a safe space to continue to process and heal. Don’t shame them for taking longer than other people have.
- Help them find rituals for healing and release. There’s a good reason why it is so common for us to gather at funerals after a person’s passing and to lay flowers on a grave years after the death. These are rituals that allow us to honour a person’s memory and express our love for them. Little by little, they heal us. Be creative and supportive in helping those affected to find the rituals that work best for them. It might be to frame their soccer jersey, to memorialize them with a park bench, to plant a tree for them in the backyard, or to throw a party for their closest friends. There is no “right” way to do this.
- Engage in radical self-care for yourself. The emotional labour required for holding space in such intense situations is much more taxing than we often realize. Be radical in how much compassion and care you extend to yourself. In the middle of the crisis, the best you might have time for is eating healthy food and drinking lots of water, but don’t forget to do more once there is more spaciousness. Set clear boundaries to protect the time you need for replenishment and healing. Take a day off work and go to the beach. Go for reiki or a massage. Hire a housecleaner to do the tasks you haven’t had time for. Do not feel guilt for the care you extend to yourself – it is essential. And forgive yourself whenever your imperfection shows.
This may be the hardest time in your life, and there are few words that will make it any easier. But remember that you are not alone. There is love and compassion being extended to you from thousands of miles away. Ask for the help you need and don’t try to do it all alone.
With love from Canada, your friend Heather Plett
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Looking for more resources on holding space? I’ve gathered a collection here.
