From Holding the Fort to Tending the Garden

Learning the difference between holding space and being held

Photo by Meg Jenson on Unsplash

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I used to host these big potluck dinner parties. The kind where 40 to 50 people from different parts of my life would arrive with arms full of homemade food and desserts, and mingle like long lost friends. It was alive in the best way.

These parties were very me in that I never assigned dishes or asked anyone to bring anything specific. I just knew that I could rely on certain people to bring a main dish, or a dessert, or show up with a bag of chips. It always worked out.

I remember taking a stroll around my house at one of those parties, noticing that everyone was engaged. Conversations were flowing in that particular way that meant people were really connecting and having the kind of night that felt like community. I felt warmth. Fulfillment, even. This was more than I’d hoped for.

But as I kept walking, stopping by different groups to join in, something shifted. People were so absorbed in their conversations that I couldn’t quite pierce the bubble. It didn’t feel like rudeness—they just seemed deeply engaged with each other. I felt like I was on the outside looking in.

It was just a moment of clarity, standing there with a plate of food, taking in the scene. I was being a good host, yes, but I was also managing the entire ecosystem. Circulating. Making sure the gaps were filled. Checking to see if anyone was feeling left out. Tracking needs before they became needs. I couldn’t find anyone to talk to because I wasn’t really in the room—I was holding it.

I was standing at the edge of my own party, making sure everyone else was okay, but somehow feeling alone.

That night stayed with me because it helped me see something I hadn’t fully recognized before. I wasn’t just gathering people. I was holding everything together. And somewhere in all that holding, I forgot to ask life to hold me.

It wasn’t the first time that had happened, but it was the first time I truly noticed. Something about that night showed me I’d become the den mother instead of just the host. I could feel the subtle cost of being the one who keeps it all together.

That pattern started long before dinner parties.

In my family, I was the peacemaker. The regulator. I smoothed things over. Early on I was attuned to what went unsaid. I observed and absorbed, and I helped keep things balanced. I didn’t have words for it then but it just felt like being good. Doing what needed to be done. As if I’d been assigned this job at birth.

That same pattern followed me into friendships where I became the person people called when they were upset and needed someone to talk to. I was safe, intuitive, non-judgmental. I was a good listener. I felt valued.

In my 20s and 30s, when I worked in operations and HR, the pattern became official. If something went wrong, I handled it. If there was conflict, I helped clean it up. If the team needed structure, I created it. I could see the big picture and the undercurrents, how people and processes connected, where things were getting stuck. I was the glue. And somewhere in there, being the one who solved problems became tied to my sense of worth. If I wasn’t fixing things, making things work, who was I?

And I truly liked being in this role. I liked being helpful. I liked harmonizing and bringing things together. There’s something in me that naturally enjoys facilitating, teaching, and hosting.

What I didn’t realize back then was that when you’re always stabilizing a system, the system starts to depend on you. People relax into your competence. They stop noticing what you’re carrying, and they mostly just experience the outcome: things work.

Later in life, as a Craniosacral therapist, I carried the same skills into the treatment room. I could hold whatever a client arrived with. Trauma, grief, anger. I knew how to be present and create a safe space that helped make healing possible. I loved helping people feel better.

But even after years of practice, after learning tools to create better boundaries, something never felt fully sustainable about it. I still carried more than I needed to. Something in me never fully rested. It didn’t feel like a choice anymore.

The signs were unmistakable.
Exhaustion after doing a session or teaching a class.
Tension in my body that didn’t feel like mine.
Moments where I realized I was holding not just my own experience, but the entire room’s.

And then there’s the sting of feeling like you’re being taken for granted. It’s hard to reconcile, because you’re the one who showed up and offered help. So when there’s a lack of gratitude or reciprocity, how can you blame people for accepting what you offered?

I grew up learning that being ‘good’ meant being accommodating and making yourself small. That got reinforced everywhere. And when that conditioning meets genuine skill, care, and capacity, it becomes very difficult to tell where authentic generosity ends and reflex begins.

After decades of this pattern, after raising a daughter who’s now in college, after supporting several aging family members, it still pops up. Recently, I’ve watched it try to reassert itself in a startup I’m co-building. Sometimes I catch myself over-preparing when it’s clearly not necessary, or feeling that old familiar heaviness of needing to prove I’m good enough even though I know what I’m doing. But what’s different now is that I can feel the moment it crosses from contributing into carrying. I can see the pattern, even when it’s wearing different clothes. And once I felt that threshold, I couldn’t unfeel it.

At some point, I realized I was asking myself the wrong question.

It wasn’t whether I should stop holding space altogether. The real question is whether it’s a choice or a default. Whether I’m holding space because it’s what I want to offer, or because my system doesn’t know how to step back. Because there’s a difference between wanting to be supportive and automatically stepping in.

Over time, holding everything together started to mean I wasn’t really inside my own life anymore. I was managing, maintaining, and regulating things for everyone else. Standing alone in the room with a plate, making sure everyone else was okay. I decided I didn’t want to live that way anymore.

I realized that I don’t need to become a different person. I just want the holding to be clean. I want it to have edges. I want it to be something I offer from choice, not something I do reflexively because I’m afraid of what happens if I don’t.

These days, the practice hasn’t been “stop helping” or “stop caring.” It’s been learning to notice the moment before I over-carry. And it’s not always about doing too much—sometimes it’s about how I’m holding things emotionally and energetically. The weight I carry isn’t always visible in my actions.

Usually I can start to feel myself moving to stabilize something, smooth something over, pre-emptively optimize so things don’t become problems later. In the past I would do this unconsciously, and I would call it being responsible. Now I try to slow down enough to ask a simpler question: is this actually mine?

Sometimes it is. Sometimes I really do want to be the one holding the container. Sometimes it’s aligned. Sometimes it’s a clear yes.

But when it isn’t, I try to let it be imperfect. I let things wobble a little. I let someone else handle the problem. I let the system reveal what it can do without my nervous system filling in the gaps. Not out of spite, but out of honesty.

More and more, I’m noticing that when I don’t intervene, things don’t fall apart the way I thought they might. Other people are competent too. Systems have their own intelligence. Structures exist beyond my personal holding. There are forces at work that I can lean back into, trust, and let support me. I’m not the only thing keeping everything from collapsing. I never was.

Learning to trust that has been its own practice. Learning to trust that I can step back, let go, and stop proving myself through constant doing. That my value isn’t measured by how much I can carry or how well I keep things running.

Another practice I’m working with is letting space exist without rushing to fill it. I don’t rush to harmonize. I don’t rush to rescue. I pause long enough to see what happens if I don’t step in. That pause is where my life is changing.

Maybe this is what tending the garden means for me. Not holding the fort down, not keeping everything together through sheer force of will, but creating conditions where things can grow on their own. Where I can be held by life. A life with reciprocity. With rhythm. A life where I get to be in the room, not managing it from the edges.

I can still be generous, still create cohesion, still facilitate and host and care—but from a place that doesn’t deplete me, and that doesn’t require me to be invisible at my own party.

I can create beautiful gatherings and hold space for the people I love. But I also get to be at the table. I also get to need. I also get to be held.

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