
“We hold so very much, don’t we? So very much.”
Tears.
I’ve said this more than once to a woman new in her pregnancy. There is no glow yet, there is no round belly, just the constant green malaise of morning sickness, and usually the feeling of being subsumed. In those early days of pregnancy, a woman learns live and to make cereal in the mornings and pull the weeds from the garden while holding the dual possibilities of motherhood and loss, checking, each time she uses the bathroom, for devastation.
It is to hold, in one body, the possibility not only of life and loss, but to hold every single question about what that might mean for one’s life, every single moment of every single day,
while also making the cereal in the mornings and pulling the weeds from the garden.
We women hold so much in our bodies. In our hearts.
It’s an inner experience that skirts around the edges of our awareness, day in and day out, without relent, but one which often goes without naming. And so, the naming of it is to feel seen, so deeply.
We hold the dates of every upcoming birthday party,
the care of grieving friends, those who might need a phone call today, or a batch of homemade granola next week.
We hold the awareness of our childrens’ challenges and foibles, noticing quietly, but often not mentioning anything, when the baby doesn’t learn to roll over, or the teenager hasn’t been eating.
We hold it all, the fluttering in our chests, the empty toilet paper rolls, the co-worker’s cubicle-sheltered admissions that she is unhappy, and brushing up her resume. The recipe for grandma’s pie crust, the exact right words to say in a phone call to the parent of a bully.
We hold it all. Somewhere between the crown of our heads, the edges of our hearts, and the turning of our gut, all of it.
It is both our greatest power, and our greatest undoing.
So, sweet love, I want to say,
not – at least today – anything whatsoever about the patriarchy or emotional labour or the magnificence that women bring forth life and nurture it forward in a million tiny significant ways
but rather
I see you.
I know the tensions your heart holds, because I hold them too.
I know the silent reckonings that you make every day, because I make them too.
The recipe for them, I have found, is to render them both powerful and powerless in the naming,
and so, sweet love,
if you can,
whisper it soft, tell it loud
to the bathroom walls or the convenience store clerk or the person you love the most:
you hold so much
and we can help hold it, too.
What are you holding, sweet love? Take a moment, take some time not to make a list of everything you must do or everything you are responsible for, but a list of what’s on your heart. Fold it up and hold it tight, share it soft or loud, or burn it up and let it go, the choice is yours, but name it.
Related
The Becoming Podcast has been on a short hiatus while I focus on writing my book, but oh what a comeback episode I have for you!
This month, I spoke to Toko-pa Turner, who many of you may know as the unofficial patron saint of many of my circles and gatherings because of the sheer number of times I’ve quoted from the wisdom of her book, Belonging.
Toko-pa is a Canadian author, teacher, and dreamworker. Blending the mystical teachings of Sufism in which she was raised with a Jungian approach to dreams, she founded The Dream School in 2001, from which thousands of students have graduated. She is the author of the award-winning book, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, which explores the themes of exile and belonging through the lens of dreams, mythology, and nature. This book has resonated for readers worldwide, and has been translated into 10 different languages so far. Her work focuses on the relationship between psyche and nature, and how to follow our inner wisdom to meet with the social, psychological, and ecological challenges of our time.
Here’s some of what Toko-pa and I talk about in this episode:
> The dream that changed Toko-pa’s life, causing her to question her career and, ultimately, her identity
> How we can court our dreams to support us during times of radical transformation – and the reasons so many of us have a hard time remembering and working with what shows up in our dreamscape
> Toko-pa’s perspective on the message of Belonging after the divisiveness our society has experienced in the years since it was published
> What happened for both Toko-pa and I when we fell out of belonging from the ideologies of the “wellness world”
> How to build community when you’re under-resourced
> “The Big Lie” when it comes to belonging, and how we can reclaim a sense of belonging to the greater family of things, as Mary Oliver so famously wrote
Show Notes
Toko-pa’s Website
Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, Toko-pa’s book
The David Abram video about animism mentioned in the interview
Toko-pa’s self-guided program, Dream Drops
Companion, the program that accompanies Belonging
Also, while you’re at it, if you enjoy The Becoming Podcast, I would be so grateful if you would rate and review, and even subscribe to it on iTunes. That goes a long way to helping more and more people find and benefit from hearing these interviews! Thank you so much!