The Space Between Holding and Being Held

I’ve spent a lot of my life holding things together—for others, for my clients, for my family. But the truth is, I don’t always have it together. This season has brought up grief, fear, love, old wounds, and deeper self-awareness.

I’m sharing this not to be dramatic, but to be real. Because I believe in modeling to others—especially my clients—that being emotionally raw doesn’t make us unwell. It makes us human.

⸻

The last few days, I’ve been moving through a storm of emotions. On the outside, I’ve kept moving. On the inside, I’ve felt raw and untethered, caught in the heaviness of unspoken grief, relational tension, and old wounds echoing in the present.

It’s not one thing. It’s all the things—stacked, tangled, layered.

A memory resurfaced recently: I was three years old, living with my dad while my mom was trying to get sober. One night, she came to see us, but something happened—he did something that pushed her away again. 

Later that night, he was bathing me, and he started crying. And instead of being comforted, I found myself comforting him. I had to make him feel okay… while I was the one missing her.

That moment shaped something in me. It taught me—quietly, powerfully—that my job was to hold other people’s feelings, even when I was the one in pain.

That’s developmental trauma. It doesn’t always come from overt abuse. Sometimes, it’s the subtle, repeated moments where a child’s emotional needs are unmet, unseen, or reversed—where the child becomes the caregiver. Those moments wire themselves into the nervous system, shaping how we attach, how we protect ourselves, and how we show up in relationships.

I’ve carried that pattern into adulthood. Into love. Into parenting. Into moments where I don’t even realize I’m doing it—until my body tells me I’ve had enough.

Recently, I felt that same heaviness with my partner. A moment that should have felt safe and certain instead left me spinning. His uncertainty triggered something deep—something old. I realized I didn’t feel emotionally safe. And in trying to communicate that, I found myself once again doing emotional labor—trying to make him feel okay about me not feeling okay.

And then… I hit a wall.

I told him, truthfully, that I didn’t want to talk. That I didn’t feel safe. That I was done holding the weight of two people’s feelings. And if I’m honest with you, part of me still feels like setting a boundary is a kind of abandonment. That if I don’t stay and manage it all, I’ll lose the love.

But there’s another part of me learning a new truth: it’s not my job to regulate someone else’s emotions at the expense of my own well-being.

That truth has been reinforced by something else: my 15-year-old son, who is so emotionally attuned it both breaks and expands my heart. The other day, I was quiet—hiding how I felt, smiling through the ache. And he said gently, “It’s okay, Mom. You can be sad. You don’t have to act happy.”

He saw me. Just like I saw my dad in that bathtub. Only this time, there was no emotional caretaking. No pressure. Just presence. Just truth. My son was reflecting the kind of emotional permission I’ve worked so hard to give him—and it was stunning to feel it returned.

And now, woven through it all, is the slow goodbye to my mother. She’s dying in a nursing home, and our relationship has been messy, painful, layered with anger and grief—but also filled with moments of deep love. She let me be me, even when she couldn’t always care for me the way I needed.

Now, all I want is to lay beside her. To hold her. To be held. To rest in the simplicity of presence—no more roles, no more stories, just two human beings at the edge of a lifetime.

This moment in my life is teaching me what it means to hold and be held.

It’s teaching me that healing doesn’t always look like answers—it looks like space. It looks like finally putting down the weight of being responsible for everyone’s feelings. It looks like learning how to say: “I matter, too.”

And maybe, most importantly—it looks like letting the little girl in me finally rest.

I don’t write this from a place of mastery. I’m not a finished product—I’m a work in progress. I carry relational wounds that still whisper old stories. But I’m learning to meet those stories with compassion instead of shame. To honor that mastery isn’t perfection—it’s presence. And right now, I’m practicing the art of showing up for myself in the moment I’m in.

If this resonated with you, I invite you to pause and ask yourself: Where have I been carrying too much? You’re not alone—and you don’t have to keep holding it all. Reach out today for a free 15-minute consultation.