“When you see yourself clearly, with eyes full of love and acceptance, you hold space for others to meet your higher self “– Karly Ryan.
Remember yesterday’s post about the geese falling back and going to a place in the VEE where they have held space for them? Well, it works both ways. Sometimes we need to fall back a bit for others to fit in where they can be held until they gather strength again.
All of us have had a person in their lives who was support, coach, guide. We have experienced non-judgment by someone who we knew or was a complete stranger and we wondered why they were so. A chance meeting at an auspicious time has made friend of someone who was stranger. There is a serendipitous relationship or two we can name. There are moments of knowing someone else knows and they know you know as well.
Wanda Lea Brayton and I have that kind of knowing. We have never met and our relationship over one and a half decades is based on knowing and relating to one another through poetry and circumstances. We walk similar paths in life. And all we need say to each other is “I know you know I know”! We do not have long sappy phone calls or texts. We write poetry inspired by each other. She will write something and I will write a reply through poetry. It is an amazing relationship, truly, and I DO know she knows. We offer each other gentle support through words, phrases, metaphors and beautiful rhythmic poetry... well, hers is. And there is a quiet support there, nonjudgment, guidance, understanding on even the hardest days of our lives. Neither of us try to fix the other. We affirm and acknowledge each other. It is a treasured kind of relationship.
Poetess pulse: i know you know i know you know
women know: you know, we
know
why grass bends over on its own;
when a child had taken hold of bowlbelly warm;
it speaks to us in whispers
vibrating against our uterus
that is how we know
knowing when it's over;
knowing when it's begun
(mad talk should be put to bed:
mad is something clawing at poetry
wanting to shake its fist at heavens)
i know you know
paper and pen makes for lonely prophets
and stone sucks our inkwells dry
like sandstone drinks tears,
like throat opens up to swallow sorrow
she turns her head: no sound needed
she feels comings and goings
like a butterfly brushing her brow
we are aware god is so damned far away
we make our own miracles,
set little statues on our stone mantles,
just in case
it’s knowledge attached to a weeping;
it’s a surge of soul at a certain set of eyes;
it’s knowing your child is choking in another room;
we even know the other woman before our man does
we do not get lost in wildernesses
that belong to someone else: we know wildness
tucked in our earthbones, hipbones, shinbones
that have been spoken to
we are prophets, prisoners of earth,
queens of mirrors in our bathrooms,
our kingdoms can be our kitchens
where we raise sons like Lazarus’
and daughters like dough that rises
to music of its own. We know how to be still
as statues when fear grips our throats
and rattles language out of us
our kingdoms have come falling down;
there’s cracked fragments of us
left in houses we have run from,
knowing earth will ache in that spot
for eternity. We know where we wrote our names
to make sure, one day, someone would know we were there
i know you know I know you know;
listen, your blood hears my music, sister,
rise up and speak what you know,
you are a poetess pulse
*****For Wanda and Randomly Beautiful, Carol Desjarlais
We hold sacred space for each other from afar, very afar.
Everyone needs a space holder. It is a kind of relationship where we open our hearts, unconditionally, for another. Sometimes we are holding space for someone who is holding space for another. We empower instead of enable. We simply accept their choices no matter what we think of those choices (non-judgmental). Space holders are there to encourage, to be gentle with each other’s hearts. We trust their lessons in life as others trust ours. We are a safe haven in storms, even if the storm is of their own making. We make sure that people we hold space for know that mistakes are part of one’s journey and we cheerlead them on. Space holders keep their Ego out of the relationship so that judgmentalism and competition and correcting to suit our own Egotistic rules of our own life.
Be a space holder but expect it to be a learning process. We cannot just jump in and fly. We need to spend short bursts of time being a space holder. Practicing this can enrich relationships in ways you would not even think of. It is well to note that as we space hold for another, we need to have a space holder in our own life, as well. It is hard not to let emotion or Ego control relationships but it is imperative we cultivate a gentle leaning in on someone else we can trust to be a space holder. We know they are there. We may not have allowed them to brace us.
Be a space holder, sisterfriends.
©Carol Desjarlais 9.23.20
***photo is taken at my sons' resort Gnome Village
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