Life is a journey.  Most of us say it, and nearly all of us believe it!  So why then are we so darned focused the next big step that we don’t honour where we actually are along the path?

As women, we experience many emotional and physical changes during the course of our lives. These are our rites of passage.  They’re huge, important, and very often – ignored or trivialized. (Ever been to a bridal shower where the bride-to-be walked around wearing a paper-plate hat with streamers on it?)  Someone explain to me how that prepares a woman to figure out what ‘wife’ means!

We talk about intention a lot, don’t we?  We have intention to make things happen in our businesses and to bring happiness into our lives.
Read More→

As children, our mothers and fathers held space for us when we cried. The way we simply hold a baby in our arms to comfort it, is much like how we hold space for adults we care about. You probably have experienced a look of kindness so gentle that it freed the tears stopped up within you. That person was holding space for you in their heart.

So how do we do it? How do we go about holding space?

Sometimes holding space involves physically holding, but more often that not, it is to hold our friend with our heart and our mind… in person, on the phone, or in our thoughts. To hold space is to make room in our heart to witness their pain, and not to problem solve or change it. To let it be just as it is so they can work through it themselves, with the comfort of knowing we are there for them in body or in spirit.

I really learned to hold space as a spiritual care volunteer in palliative care. I came to accept that no matter how hard I wished, I couldn’t take away the physical or emotional suffering of another. Nor could I remove the anguish of family members as they prepared for life without their loved one. To think I could was to feel more powerful than I actually was, and also didn’t make room for them to go through things in their own way.

Read More→