Take your space
Dear One,
We don’t do the best job of “saving space” for one another, do we? We work 40+ hours a week… we pay bills…we Mom or Dad or Marriage or Friend 40+ more hours a week… we sleep…we eat…we repeat. Where in the world can processing pain even fit into all that responsibility?
The truth is… societally… we’ve gotten great at busying ourselves so that we don’t have time to sit with the monsters of emotion and pain and process. We’d rather throw them scraps to keep them quiet… nestling safely in the untouched, dark corners of our hearts.
If there’s anything we’ve learned in this journey, it’s that you have to make space for yourself to process this out. We know how scary that feels - there’s so many ways that could “go wrong.” You’re afraid someone’s feelings will get hurt. You’re afraid someone will think differently of you. You’re afraid you’ll be misunderstood. You’re afraid you’ll be told you’re wrong for feeling how you feel. You’re afraid once you “open the door”, you won’t be able to “stop the outpouring”. You’re afraid you’ll be left alone because people will grow tired of hearing about it. You’re afraid you’ll be seen as weak or incapable of “pressing through”. You’re afraid you’ll be asked to “press through” when you can’t press through anymore.
But darling, can we tell you a few things we’ve learned:
1) People will surprise you in the best of ways. If you let people in, they’ll make the space to learn how to be there for you. There are people who genuinely WANT to be there for you. Don’t put a stop sign in front of someone holding a yield - their yield is a “how do I do this with you?”, not an “I’m not interested in doing this with you.”
2) Society needs more people openly processing hard things. They need to see the starting points and the in-between’s…not just the perfect endings. People need to see the rise and fall and risings again of hope & confidence. People need to feel the shortened-breath of the valleys and the crisp air of the mountain-peaks. Process is rarely spoken of yet regularly experienced. We need to hear your voice in the in-between.
3) Your heart is not a step-child kept in a coat closet under the stairs. Your heart deserves a voice, deserves to be heard & deserves a space in conversation.
4) Process is not THE destination… so stop treating what you say in process as if it’s your final decision. You’re allowed to say you’re in pain. You’re allowed to say you’re struggling to find hope. You’re allowed to say you’re afraid & unsure. You’re allowed to cry and you’re allowed to not be able to be there for someone else while you’re in process. Vocal processing is a PATHWAY, not a destination. So stop shutting yourself down because you’re afraid you’ll “say something you don’t mean”. Just because you mean it at the time (because you DO) doesn’t mean you’ll mean it inevitably. How else do you get it out if you don’t say it?
5) Balance. Perhaps one of the most important things we’ve learned - process is about BALANCE. “Emotions aren’t meant for the trunk. They’re also not meant to drive the car. They’re meant to ride along with us in the backseat (Abi Stumvoll).” We don’t ever ignore our emotions. But we never let them steer the ultimate direction of where we’re going. We let them be a part of the conversation… we let them be a part of the ride… but we always steer towards healing and freedom.
6) YOU.CANT.DO.THIS.ALONE. Be wise with who you bring in to your process with you. There’s 3 “vetting” processes, so to speak, that we’ve discovered for ourselves along the way when determining who we bring in to our process: (1) do they know how to “save space” for us? Meaning, do they know how to give us space to process without thinking differently of us, trying to “fix” us or trying to sympathize with us? We want empathy - the ability to put themselves in our shoes and feel what we must be feeling; we don’t want sympathy - detaching emotionally and from a distance, extending a surface-level “feeling of sorry-ness” for our situation; (2) do they have emotional maturity? Do they show the ability in their own life to healthily process emotions? And (3) are they filled with hope and truth? We need their gift of hope when we don’t have hope for ourselves and we need rightly-measured & rightly-timed truth in the deep places of our process.
You may make it to the healing process on your own… but you can’t make it to the freedom process on your own. We can patch up wounds on our own. But we can’t perform major surgery on ourself, by ourself. Freedom requires more hands, more voices and more expertise.
Darling One,
My heart is hurting, too. I’ll reach out my hand if you’ll grab it with yours. We’ll walk as far as we can walk together & then we’ll stop for a rest. Practice letting your voice be heard. Take your space - I’ll share mine with you.
