Holding Space for it All
Sugar snow is falling. The kind that looks like someone is shaking powered sugar onto poundcake. It drifts straight down in a thick shower of tiny, ice flakes. Dusts the grass and trees and bushes into a concoction pretty enough for a patisserie window. White Christmas this year. In the mountains of New England. Right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. In fact, I live just a handful of miles from Main Street in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the subject of one of Rockwell’s most famous works. My son, his girlfriend and I strolled this darling street yesterday. It looks exactly like the painting.
Today, we are tucked in my cozy home. A healthy, happy son and his lovely (now flu-ish) girlfriend. The heat works. The refrigerator is full. There is gas in the car. We all have a car. And good, loving friends. And work. And each other. We have enough. As Ma Ingall’s said (mother to Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House books), “Enough is as good as a feast.” This year’s feast is even being frosted with sugar snow. Wonderful.
And.
As I sink into the warmth of the simple pleasures I am blessed to enjoy this year, I know that my holiday is also far from a Christmas stroll down Main Street. My youngest brother is in a California hospital, his second transplanted kidney failing. A good friend and colleague’s younger brother, who has special needs, is also in a hospital, his transplanted kidney and other organs failing. He is about to be moved to hospice. I imagine it doesn’t feel good to read that. It shatters the holiday world most of us would like to soak in with gift buying and giving and eating and drinking with friends and family, swooshing down mountains, and jingling belling in a sleigh. Who wouldn’t rather stay in the magic of a painted world of the perfect New England holiday all tied up with a bow? I sure would.
So which is it? A cozy holiday that’s a literal trip down Main Street in Stockbridge Mass or a time of grief over loved ones struggling in a hospital? The answer is that it’s both. There is never a time of year that the entire world is filled with human beings not hurting, not wanting, not struggling, not suffering. Holiday season or not. The challenge today and each day we travel through our lives is to find a way to hold space for everything that shows up. Without judgment, letting go of expectation and attachment to outcome.
It’s a tall order I know. I have spent decades honing a set of tools to practice the ability to do just that. It is the one gift I know I have offered myself out of an emotionally desolate, abusive and unpredictable upbringing. The ingredients for holding space for whatever arrives are breathing, moving and journaling and a few minutes of dedicated practice each day. Over time, your practice can evolve into a way of walking through the world, embracing joy and pain and everything in between.
Each of those tools (breathing, moving and journaling) can be as individual as you are. There is no right or wrong way to practice any of them. Maybe you like to walk a mile a day or maybe you run marathons. Maybe you like to write in notebook with a pen as your journaling practice, maybe you draw or paint or collage. Breathing is literally as simple as directing your breath in and out and noticing that you are doing it. Yes, my Breathe Move Journal books for kids and teens provide a fun and simple structure for youth to practice these tools and reap their benefits, and you can create your own structure:
First thing every day, take 3 rounds of breath on purpose.
Check in with your feelings. Notice a body sensation. No judgment.
As yourself, What’s happening for me right now? Spend 2 minutes writing, drawing or collaging your answer.
Take one more round of breath. On with your day.
During the day, take 3 more rounds of breath on purpose. Stretch. Walk around the block. Go to the gym. Take steps instead of an elevator.
Before bed, make a quick list of what you did that day. Keep it as simple as you like.
Life is not and never has been about the search for happiness and the pursuit of a non-truth that anything short of attainting constant happiness is a failure. Happiness is just information. Same as sadness. They are both essential. As is any other feeling you ever have. You only need to notice feelings, you don’t need to change them. The richness of living is about the ability to notice and embrace whatever feelings arise, from whatever circumstances, whenever they show up. The depth of joy and happiness you are able to feel is directly correlated to depth of grief and sadness you are able to feel. If you absorb one and ignore the other your are missing out on half of your life.
This year, my holiday is filled with gratitude and grief. Joy and worry. Concern and contentment. My gift to myself is holding space for it all—as I practice each day—by breathing, moving and journaling. I am going to take my grief for a walk in the sugar snow.
May you hold space for your holiday exactly as it is, Elizabeth
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