Back when I first committed myself to diving deeper into this work of holding space, after I’d wrestled through the initial resistance and overwhelm that came when my blog post went viral and my inbox was suddenly flooded with requests for me to teach about a...
Companionship
by Heather Plett | Jul 19, 2021 | Circle, Community, Family, Holding Space for Others
“Will you be my companion?” That was a familiar phrase in our household when I was growing up. As a farm family, my siblings and I all had daily chores that we had to do in the barn after school, and none of us wanted to do them alone. If one of us had a job we...
Holding Space for ALL THE FEELINGS
by Krista dela Rosa | Sep 10, 2020 | Brave Space, Complexity, Family, Fear, Holding Space for Yourself, Privilege
Listen to Krista read the post... This week, I sent my kids back to school after having had them home since March. I thought I was ready. I thought I was calm and cool and in a place of acceptance, knowing that things were going to be strange and that they...
How does one become an “expert” in holding space? First, you fumble.
by Heather Plett | Jul 29, 2020 | Brave Space, Family, Grief, Holding Space for Others, Liminal Space
Listen to me read this post... Here we are, five years after my blog post on how to hold space went viral, and we’ve just launched the global Centre for Holding Space. It’s exciting and gratifying and also a little nerve-wracking. I couldn’t have imagined this even as...
The Wounded Parent: Raising kids while we do our own healing work
by Heather Plett | Aug 6, 2019 | Family, Holding Space for Others, Holding Space for Yourself
Our vacation didn’t start well. We’d barely arrived at our AirBnB apartment when my daughter and I got into an argument. Only one of us could have a bedroom to herself for the week we were there. My daughter had done the research on where to stay in Chicago and had...
How to Hold Space for Children
by Heather Plett | Jul 21, 2017 | Family, Holding Space for Others
I swore I’d never write a parenting blog. Parenting feels like a lifelong experiment where the variables, subjects, and researchers keep changing so that there’s never any way to prove your hypotheses. Just when you’ve figured out that “Action A applied to Subject B...
What it means to “hold space” for people, plus eight tips on how to do it well
by Heather Plett | Mar 11, 2015 | Family, Grief, Holding Space for Others
When my mom was dying, my siblings and I gathered to be with her in her final days. None of us knew anything about supporting someone in her transition out of this life into the next, but we were pretty sure we wanted to keep her at home, so we did. While we supported...