Holding Space--Until You Can Take It Back
Holding space, recording days, and a window in the trees
I am sitting this morning, cross-legged in a chair with my keyboard in my lap. My iPad and coffee are on the coffee table in front of me. We rotated the table yesterday, trying to trick ourselves into believing we can change the lines of time and space.
There are lots of little changes and lots of standing still.
I was watching a bit of fog drift past the window, a white mist you can see as it floats against the background of green. Last week, I watched the mist blow across a small lake. There is something mesmerizing in the near translucence.
Watching the windblown fog out the back window, I suddenly notice the reflection of the kitchen window. In terms of walls, the kitchen window is on a wall perpendicular to the living room window. The living room curtains are mostly drawn at the edges. I can’t work out how I can see the reflection of the kitchen window at all. I wish I could diagram for you why this seems impossible, but yes, yes, angle of incidence and all that. I don’t need to solve for x.
I simply know, empirically, there is a floating window nestled in the trees outside.
If it weren’t that we are on an upper floor and that it is a window, and not a door, it might look as if it is a secret entrance, a portal to somewhere magical.
There were lots of calls this week. There was a bit of good news. I feel the clock running out on my mom’s visit. The paperwork is proliferating. There was a pistachio raspberry croissant. Today would have been a birthday.
The post below is about holding space. It may take a minute to get there, like blowing air into a blow-up mattress and waiting for it to first uncurl from the edges, and then waiting for it to fully expand. Or, you can skip ahead. There are photos, too, for those who scroll.
Thank you for reading.
Amy
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Defining Space
One of the things Illustrate Your Week has given me is a way of counting, a way of organizing time and the passage of time on the page.
This little box was a day.
This page or group of pages was a week.
Any form of daily journaling can do this if you are diligent about keeping up with daily notes that are at least somewhat orderly in their allegiance to individual days.
Without writing something down, making some kind of note each day, the days free-float.
The attempt to capture something of the spinning of time is at the root of my illustrated journaling process.
It is slow to letter things this way. It isn’t fast the way a longform journal might be. It isn’t prolific in that way either. Instead, the illustrated journal is an indulgence in process, in slowing down, a giving over to the mindfulness of the act of filling space. It is not a race. There are no other participants, no other runners, no timer, and no scoreboard. It is simply a delineation of time and space, of the uncurling and unfurling, of slivers of being and memory.
What Made You Smile
The weekly illustrated journal prompts encourage you to find footholds on the page.
The prompts provide inroads and reminders. The prompts say, implicitly, write this down. Remember this. Pay attention to this. Scavenge the day and the week. Create a box in time and fill it on the page with words and notes so that there are edges, contours, and connections, so that time (the week) doesn’t just disappear, a pool of lived but lost hours.
If I don’t deliberately stop and write something down, I can’t tell you later something that made me smile in the day, something I heard or saw or pondered. I might not be able to backtrack and tell you what we ate for dinner the day before. I probably can’t tell you what I wore, beyond that it was most likely one of a pile of similar black T-shirts, black leggings, and one of a few fleece jackets, identical except for their color.
But when I stop each night and make a note, I write the number of the day. Maybe I put it in a box. Maybe I fill in the number or the space around it. I write the number and then a note.
The few words I record don’t come even close to capturing the real events of the day. The note, something that might fit on a Jeopardy clue, doesn’t pretend to be a journal entry. It’s just a note, one typically cryptic enough for me to not worry too much about it being seen. (I do control what is shown, and I encourage you to do that, too.)
The daily note is an anchor. It is a tiny anchor that confirms, when I look back at pages, that individual days happened, that the week was not the amorphous blank thing it sometimes seems when I sit at the end of the week and wonder how it is, again, Saturday.
The notes are not all in order.
They are often fit in all over the place.
Some are upside down.
If I could write backwards, I might.
Some notes get repeated.
There is no linear story someone picking up my journal could read.
I am not constructing a narrative beyond the juxtaposition of weeks.
The journal is not a substitute for typed notes.
It is filtered. It is encoded. It is holistic.
Don’t look at the details.
Squint and look at the pastiche.
Right now, certain things strike me as odd about my process, about my postage-stamp size capturing, and about everything that is missing, but I am setting judgment aside. I am not passing judgment on my approach to chronicling weeks. Not right now. I know I may not be a reliable critic in the moment.
My instinct in these days has been to both make a bunch of snap decisions and, at the same time, make no decisions because I think I need to let things sit, not be rash, not do things I will regret, not rush a timeline that I don’t have to buy into or delineate.
It feels like stasis.
The In-Between
My mom stayed an extra month to keep me company and to help (I think) sort things out, clean things out, get things moved around.
We’ve done a lot of nothing.
We’ve played cribbage and casino.
We’ve drawn with my group each weekend.
We’ve knit.
We’ve tried to leave the house after my work day ends and go for a walk, but we haven’t even managed that every day.
We’ve watched TV at night.
We’ve played the NYT games each day. It’s become my favorite thing to do with a cup of coffee after I log out for the day.
We haven’t done most of the fun things we had considered for this visit.
It just feels wrong.
It feels wrong that we laugh so much anyway, that we seem to just go on.
I’ve been going on for more than twenty years. I’ve adopted certain habits and patterns.
My role, in part, was to go on.
I know the reality still hasn’t reached me because so much still looks the same. I am still listening in the night and each morning for sounds down the hall.
I’m privately aware of so many moments where I see something or come upon something, and it overwhelms me.
I’m keeping a lot inside.
When my mom leaves, I’m going to need help.
I know that.
I’m going to need help to keep enough air in the room, to keep the walls pushed out so that I can breathe.
(Why did the refrain to “I’m still standing” just float through my head?)
Holding Space
There have been many thoughtful comments in the last five weeks, many helpful and insightful words.
On Sunday, people break the shores of silence and leave kind words.
One of the comments that really stuck with me was about holding space.
This idea of holding space is not something I’ve ever understood. I’ve seen people say those words so many times, words like water, and I’ve always thought it a beautiful phrase. But I’ve never totally understood it.
I’m the “but what does that mean” person.
Yes, I love beautiful words, and I can appreciate words simply for their sound, for their lyrical movement, but when words are offered as a gesture, it helps to know what they mean.
We are holding space for you.
I am holding space for you.
I’ve seen these words sprinkled in comments to other people through the years and puzzled over them, trying to understand their contours.
Yes, of course, I have some hazy, vague sense of what this means. I understand the intent behind the words, words like water. I gather we are all sitting cross-legged somewhere.
I gather it means we see you.
I gather it is an acknowledgement and an invitation.
The concept really isn’t as amorphous as it has always felt to me:
“The most important hallmark of holding space for others is creating a space where that person is fully seen, heard, and held.” (What Does it Mean to Hold Space for Someone)
It seems straightforward. It’s a nice idea.
Making people feel seen, without judgment, matters.
New Perspective
A reader (thank you, Lisa), wrote something that transformed this concept of “holding space” for me. She wrote something along the lines of “We will hold space until you are ready to take it back.”
And that…that made sense to me.
That was beautiful.
Do you remember the trash compactor scene in Star Wars: The New Hope? Luke and Leia and Han and Chewbacca were stuck in the trash pile as the walls started to close.
There was a scramble to stop the walls from crushing them.
Sometimes, the walls of our space begin to shrink.
Sometimes, the walls of our space begin to collapse.
Sometimes, the walls of our space begin to slide.
Sometimes, we are at risk of being crushed, of losing air.
Day in and day out, we hold our lives in place, holding and fortifying the walls, surveying the contours, the fraying bits of ribbon wrapped around fences and tree trunks that help outline our space, the spiderwebs that triangulate in the corners, the dust that falls as we pass.
Some days, we walk the perimeter, reminding ourselves of the lines, making note of things that are in disrepair. Maybe we apply a bit of tape or rub at a spot with a bit of spit. Maybe we stretch a rubber band between here and there, hoping to hold things together.
Maybe we scatter a packet of seeds among the weeds.
The size and shape of the space, this terrain we hold, may be big or small, the edges undulating like a heart out of rhythm or smooth, whether softened by time or simply luck of the draw.
What happens when the walls begin to fall?
What happens when the walls begin to cave?
What happens when the walls begin to shrink?
We will hold space until you are ready to take it back.
This idea that others can stand at the corners or at points around the irregular shape and hold space was the idea that I might not disappear.
This was the idea that others might be able (even willing) to help hold the walls up so that I could let go for just a minute. (I don’t really know how that works, but I found the idea comforting.)
I am grateful.
People have left in these weeks.
Readers have canceled.
People who are on the other side of burned bridges have looked away.
People who have known me well and daily have disappeared.
There are conundrums.
There are hurts.
The sense of loss has proliferated in ways that are too big right now.
We tied a piece of paracord between the rusted grill and the falling down fence.
I took down curtains that are coated in webs and dust.
We washed one set of curtains, and they disintegrated.
I swept the steps.
We have stood, more than once, looking at the weeds.
I am unable to envision that patch as something that can thrive.
Mostly, I’ve worked.
And I’ve called people.
And I’ve made a pile of papers.
I’ve made my own makeshift will, but I need two people to witness it, and I don’t know two people.
Carving a bit of time each night to at least make a note in my illustrated journal helps anchor me to each day. So much of the texture of days is lost, but at least I put a few breadcrumbs in place. That is the goal.
Write the date. Draw a box. Create a space. Make a note.
The day happened.
The week was full of moments, big and small.
It wasn’t just a blank page.
Our journals hold space.
Blank space on the page
Space for all that isn’t said
Space so I don’t disappear
I am pacing the edges,
Tracing the perimeter with a pencil
Poorly sharpened but capable
Of making a mark
Of drawing lines
Of connecting dots
Of reinforcing the shape of the four walls
Pacing, wandering,
Milling, circling
The edges of bills
The haunting feeling
Of standing in a doorway
Arms braced on the frame
Space being held within
Space to rant and vent and be bold
A few door pushups, a squat or two
A nod of understanding
And then back down the hall
To work or write or draw or read
There are no days between the then and the now
They have collapsed into a span of hours
And then now
I am pacing
Outlining space
Carrying tape
Rubber bands
And a pencil.
Photos from the Week
It feels like we almost didn’t leave the house.
Weekly Bits and Pieces
Made It?
Thank you for reading.
I appreciate those of you who make time to read and comment. I don’t know how you find the time. It has made such a difference to know “someone” is reading and seeing and somehow relating to what I am writing.
Knowing someone on the page is always different from knowing someone in person. I so value our correspondence here in the comments. Even more than working in my illustrated journal, I need to be writing. Both are important, but the writing is the lifeline.
I welcome your comments. I am always looking for and gathering quotes that might be relaxing or meaningful to letter at night. I often wonder why I am looking for other people’s words rather than just using my own….but it is sort of what we do. We use quotes and take comfort in finding words other people have used to describe what we are thinking or feeling. Feel free to pass along favorites.
How is mid-July for you?
What one change could you make that would make a difference in your space?
What are you reading?
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I am always here to hold up the wall, for however long you need.
I am about to enter an entirely new space and need to figure out how to make that work. I went yesterday to meet the current owners of the house and some lovely ladies stopped by to welcome me to the neighborhood and exchange phone numbers and it felt so right.
I also love to letter quotes in my journal, but I’m drawing a blank. I’ll keep a collection for you when I come across them.
Thanks for sharing Amy. I am always awed by your illustrated journals and love to read your posts here. It’s been a good July for us- we just moved around all the furniture again and I feel we finally settled on how stuff will work in the house. Starting to feel like our home instead of a a house full of boxes. I normally try to break up my reading with some non fiction and different points of view but this summer I’ve solely been working through the Green Rider fantasy series by Kristen Britain. It feels very indulgent but I guess that was the reading I wanted right now. I had downloaded this whole series before I lost access to my last local library overdrive - it is the best part of my old kindle is that the books don’t auto-return for as long as I have the WiFi turned off. This is a good reminder that I need to sign up at the new local library. Have a good week Amy.