Holding Space is Not About Willful Blindness or Complacency in the Face of Injustice I Heather Plett

Not long after my first attempt at defining holding space, I changed some of my original language and I added a few important nuances. Specifically:   I stopped talking about “non-judgement” and replaced it with “selective non-judgement”; I started talking about boundaries and limitations and the times when you shouldn’t hold space; I started writing about spiritual bypassing and the many ways we avoid the messiness of the liminal space (i.e. by trying to stay in “love and light”); I evolved my language around “safe space” and started talking more about “brave space”. Here’s why that matters: If these nuances are not part of the complexity of holding space, then it can be its own form of spiritual bypassing, it can be a justification for willful blindness, and it can make us complicit in allowing harm to be done. Read more...