Holding Space - Article Published in Alternatives Magazine

"What does it mean to be a woman?"

"Who am I talking to?" I asked.

"God..... What does it mean to be a woman?"

I mumbled some words - "Receptive, reflective, nurturing, birthing, creative, consuming. Sensing, hearing and feeling - the brain stem and limbic system functions. Holding group space and the wider view."

"And what does it mean to be a man?"

"Active, assertive, protective, separate - moving forward and acting alone. Seeing and thinking - the higher cortex functions. Focused."

"Come to Peru and write"

I became aware again of the soft voice and rattle of the Ayahuasca shaman as he sang the icaros to call the spirits of the medicine plant we had taken earlier. This was a different, much gentler, journey with the medicine than my two previous experiences. We had come to the jungle of Peru for a few days and this young Ayahuascero had agreed to work with us at short notice and the vine he picked to make the medicine was also young. It was a relief not to fight the nausea I had come to associate with this ceremony but to find myself in this sweet space. Yet here was the challenge - come to Peru and write. Write what? I did not think of myself as a writer.

What did it mean to be a woman? The question stuck with me. Somehow I knew my response in the moment was inadequate. This land and these people had already taught me much about opening the heart - and in helping to open mine I had quite fallen in love with them - like a young goose imprinting mother onto the first object it sees on being born. So the invitation to come back was welcome if a little scary. What would they teach me about being a woman?

What does it mean to hold space? The spirit of the Ayahuasca plant showed me in further visions that the cosmic joke was that this was all there was and I wrote the poems Mother and Holding Space as an expression of this knowing which became then key to my life and work. Two years later, I sit in the forest at Breitenbush with the sun in Cancer opposing a full moon in Capricorn just a week after a joyful community experience of Summer Solstice contemplating a new/old paradigm of mothering. Months spent in the Sacred Valley of Peru, my work at Oregon House and time spent with the community here have taught me much about this aspect of the feminine. And I grieve for our cultures in the West who ceased to value it, for in doing so they disempowered the women who kept the hearth fire burning in the home and sent them out to work, creating generations of latchkey children and men fed on fast food and television, not to mention burned out women doing two jobs. It may seem politically incorrect to talk about the need for women to be at home, but let me make it clear that I am not talking about all women here - for I believe there are many expressions of the feminine that women need to honor at different times in their lives. I am simply now aware that, unless someone - and a man can express this aspect of the feminine just as well - holds space for us as children, then we cannot learn who we truly are, there is no safe container for healing and growth and we cannot come into our creative power.

What I have learned about holding space is that it takes a lot of energy even though it may seem as though we are doing nothing. We at Oregon House, the community at Breitenbush, and all those running similar centers have an enormous job to do - an unseen and all to often unacknowledged job, in addition to the housekeeping, maintenance, office, administration, preparing meals, taking care of the gardens, giving massages.  In order for the thousands of individuals and groups of people who come to our retreat centers to receive healing from the sacred land and waters we are stewards of, we who live and work there need to hold space, that is, hold a safe container, for them. But what is this that we do? We make sure that our guests basic physical needs are taken care of - that their rooms are clean and comfortable, the meals are nourishing and served on time, that access to the land and waters - be it the beach or the hot spring pools - is safe and monitored. We keep our own "stuff" out of the way by creating containers and support for ourselves where we can vent our feelings to each other and not have to dump our personal fears, griefs or frustrations on our guests. We extend a compassionate, confidential, listening ear, quiet presence and reflection, a gentle helping hand, a warm hug. We remain non-judgmental, a constant, loving presence, and if guests are having a hard time, we do not take it personally - for we know that part of the healing is for shadow material to come up and be seen. So we quickly learn that holding space is not about making everyone's stay perfect - that is out of our control. That one surely and sorely fed into my English sense of over-responsibility until I got it.

Is this not what mother does - or did before she went crazy? Either because she felt she should or had to contribute by going out to work - staying home was not a valid or valued contribution and there was no support for this.  Or because she never wanted to be a mother in the first place - that was not her true path but the only option other than warrior sanctioned and supported by a social structure where the roles of priestess, sacred virgin/prostitute, single woman/healer/creative artist complete unto herself were not honored - unless she became a nun. In the villages, the women worked hard at the daily chores but there was not the sense of heaviness around this that comes of not being valued. The women were confident in their sense of themselves, they supported one another and often made light of the work by doing it together. I enjoyed watching them laugh and joke together as they did the laundry in the river that ran through the village or sitting for hours twice a week on market day selling the few vegetables they had harvested from the parched soil. Here is where the support of community lightens the weight of loneliness and isolation felt by women in our nuclear family structure. And I had a strong sense that the self worth these women clearly felt came from their role as holder of space in the family - the constant center from which the children and men could leave and come back to, the hub, the core.

How can the wheel of life turn if it has a rim and spokes but no hub? How can we feel safe to go out and explore our world if there is no one to come back home to? How can we feel safe to delve into our selves, our wounds, our shame in order to heal them if there is no constant one to hold us and soothe us when we come back with our pain? How can we grow and create and be all that we can be without the security of a container? To be able to be a container for other's pain we have first to come into comfortable relationship with our own, otherwise their grieving will activate us unconsciously and we will likely withdraw, dissociate or even run if we resonate deeply enough.

I was born in England just after the war and my mother, who had already raised four children, had been enjoying her new found freedom and peer companionship in work outside the home. She was in her essence a healer, not a mother, but had been frustrated in her desire to train as a nurse. She continued to work and I was watched and tormented by siblings and various others, so I never knew what it was to have mother hold a safe  container for me as I got used to having a body. My learned survival skill was isolating and regaining control alone. More recently Mother for me became the forests, the mountains and rivers and ocean. I enjoyed an increasing sense of being held by the big Mother and She indeed holds a container for us all. Then, earlier this year I had a near death experience on a boat trip in the Bahamas. I had gone for a week of relaxation and to swim with the wild dolphins. But I had asked for healing through a release of more layers of armoring in my first chakra. They say, wisely, be careful what you ask for. I had envisioned a kind dolphin swimming up to me and zapping me with her ultrasound - a sweet and painless release of deeply imprinted fear. Oh well.

What actually happened was that the dolphins came and drew me into stormy waters and strong currents and I nearly drowned. In one of those turning points in life I simultaneously knew in that moment in the water that I was possibly not going to make it and that, if I continued to struggle to gain control alone I would probably drown myself and possibly also the man who had swum out, ill equipped but well intentioned, to help me. I knew that my survival depended on my being willing to surrender to this person. I felt my body relax completely and I drifted in and out of an in between realm and he, after a number of surreal moments, got me back to the boat. The gift as I integrate this experience is that it has given me a new survival choice. I now have imprinted cellularly - and this is important, for it is not just an idea but an experienced reality - that in complete vulnerability I can trust myself to be held by another - I can choose relation instead of isolation. It has taken all these years and a new birth from facing death, to re-pattern this. I give thanks and grieve for my old self who could never trust myself with another at this level. And it is not that others will never let me down - at times they will due to their own overwhelm- betrayal is part of life for we all are still struggling with our humanity, our unconscious agendas and poor communication. It is that I can trust myself in relationship with another, I can surrender control knowing that whatever happens in that moment I am, essentially, safe. The big Mother is always there to turn to, but now I have another choice to explore.

Mothers who truly hold space give this gift to their children. They do not have to be perfect, either. All this goes to the core existential shame. If we are not received into a safe container of parental presence and held there on incarnating, on being born, in those early years, if we cannot trust another in complete vulnerability, our experience of terror, abandonment and betrayal as we lose contact with Source, with the womb, leaves us with a core belief that we must have done something really bad to deserve this - this casting out of paradise into hell. It's archetypal and deeply held. In trusting another with my life in the water I trusted the cycle of life and death itself and changed the basis for choices in my life. I chose to return to be with those I loved and who loved me instead of returning to Peru where I was deeply held by the land but isolated. Walking through the old growth forest at Breitenbush a few days later I had a sudden sense that maybe I really had died and gone to heaven - for this was paradise - surrounded by the smells of the cedar and fir trees, the sound of the swollen river rushing through the gorge, a double rainbow cast in the white clouds by the sunlight, and the company of a dear friend. What was more, despite an old voice in my head telling me I should leave, I knew now that I could make a different choice - to stay in paradise, to know in fact that I had never left, was never cast out.

What does it mean to be a woman?  One of the things it means is to hold space - to hold a safe and constant container of relationship within which others can go to meet core fears and beliefs in order to heal them so that they can become empowered. Let us as women and men once again value this role and the energy it takes to simply do nothing but to be there, to hold the center, to hold sacred space, to get out of the way in order to be a true reflective mirror.  I give thanks to all the healers who have held space for me over the years, for this is the work of a true healer too.  I give thanks to the community at Breitenbush for welcoming me back and allowing me to stay while I really got it in the cells of my body that I was worthy to be in paradise. I give thanks for the opportunity through stewardship of the sacred land and water at Oregon House and through my healing work to offer this gift of holding space to others. And I give thanks to all the mothers who are remembering and honoring their vital, life-giving and life-sustaining role at the center of family and community.

Melita Marshall has a practice devoted to healing trauma and life-shape re-patterning and is the founder of Oregon House, a retreat center on the coast near Yachats dedicated to empowerment through purification, healing and spiritual alignment. Oregon House is available year round to individual retreatants as well as to families, businesses, healers, artists and groups of all kinds. Call 541 547-3329 or visit website http://www.OregonHouse.com for information.