Holding Space

 This morning, I called a close friend going through terrible loss.

I know it's too much for her to answer calls, so I leave messages. I want her to know she is not alone, even though I cannot show up at her door to hold her.

I do not have a Holy Me Too to give her.

I have not experienced this brand of grief.  But the griefs I’ve known opened up before me like a limitless abyss and I can guess she is staring into that same inky black darkness.

I know the vertigo that happens when you stare into the great black hole of loss, when you know all you have to do is lean in to the void, and you will become the void, and that will mean you don't have to feel anything anymore, and that seems like a very blessed release.

It's awful when people you love experience the void.

You'd give your anything to make the pain go away, but you know you can't fix it, and it sucks so bad to sit with the helplessness. It's petrifying.

How can the world become in an instant just entirely too much to handle?  

And if it can for them, then it sure as hell can for you.  

And there it is.  

The awful truth of all of our lives reveals itself: the world truly is entirely too much to handle.  

It's hard not to freeze up on the best of days, and now this?  All of our ideas for comfort seem so ridiculously pathetic, insulting almost, and so it seems better to do nothing, at least not make it any worse.  

What could you possibly say that would make it any better?

Nothing. Your words can’t do anything. They might comfort, they might cushion, but they can’t make the bad things better.

But the ACT of calling?

That might do something.

You, inserting yourself between your loved one and the great awful hugeness of the world.  You, showing up, even if you have no good ideas for how to make things better.

It's called holding space.

They can't hold the space.

It's everything they can do just to keep on breathing.  

To not topple into the vast blackness.  

So you do it for them.  

You fill the space with your presence.  

Even if you feel stupidly small to fill the space; even if you feel like a pipsqueak with a toothpick for a sword.  It's not about you.

We pull people into the present with presence.

Not because we magically figured out the right thing to do when someone you love is suffering, but because we know what every child knows who has ever skinned a knee and had it healed with a kiss: we don't need someone to make it better; we just need someone to show up.