124: The Art of Holding Space

If you’ve been a parent for a while, or maybe even if you haven’t, you probably saw an article on Holding Space making the rounds of online communities a few years ago.  In the article the author, Heather Plett, describes how she and her siblings were able to hold space for their dying mother in her final days because a palliative care nurse held space for them.

The article outlined some principles of holding space, and I think it really resonated with a lot of people – possibly because so many of us wish we had been held in that way, and we find ourselves trying to hold space for others in that way without a lot of guidance or support.

I kept that article in the back of my mind, and last year I took Heather’s 9-month in-depth course on holding space, and she’s just released a book called The art of holding space: A practice of love, liberation, and leadership.  In this episode we discuss what it means to hold space for others as parents, and how to raise our children to be able to hold space for others.

Links mentioned in the episode

The Art of Holding Space: A Practice of Love, Liberation, and Leadership (Affiliate link).

The Centre for Holding Space Website

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Jen  00:03

Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a FREE Guide to 7 Parenting Myths That We Can Safely Leave Behind, seven fewer things to worry about, subscribe to the show at YourParentingMojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.

Jen  00:59

Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. If you've been a parent for a while, or maybe even if you haven't, you probably saw an article on holding space making the rounds of online communities a few years ago. In the article the author Heather Plett describes the death of her mother and how she and her siblings were able to hold space for her mother, because a palliative care nurse was holding space for them. The article outlines some principles of holding space. And I think it really resonated with a lot of people possibly because so many of us wish that we had been held in the way that in that way. And we find ourselves trying to hold space for others in that way without a lot of guidance and support.

Jen  01:38

And so, I kept that article in the back of my mind. And then last year, I took Heather's nine-month in depth course on holding space. And she's just released a book called The Art of Holding Space: A Practice of Love, Liberation and Leadership that she's here with us to discuss today. Welcome, Heather.

Heather  01:52

Thank you, Jen. It's good to be here.

Jen  01:55

And we should mention we were just chatting beforehand. Heather was mentioning her voice is a little raspy today because she's in the middle of recording the book for the audio edition. So that should hopefully be available very soon. And I also just want to mention before we get started that we may mentioned today, some topics that might be difficult for some