On Holding Your Own

An invitation to stand fast, together

“This Shaking Keeps Me Steady” Assemblage by Sara Saltee. Words by Theodore Roethke.

The last few weeks have been really challenging.

One of my great pleasures in art-making is manipulating disparate elements within a box or frame, playing with combinations and re-combinations until an arrangement finally clicks into a harmonious state.

I’ve built my life as a creator that way, too. I’ve built up multiple different intersecting lines of work and a collection of income streams, and for many years this Jenga tower of a life design has held up pretty well, just about keeping the Saltee clan going with the occasional help of loved ones in times where things haven’t quite lined up.

Recently, though, it has become clear that a major piece of the puzzle is soon going to fall away, destabilizing the whole arrangement and necessitating a redesign of the whole picture. It was immediately clear that there was a gap to be filled, but I’ve slowly also realized that the elements that remain are now in new relationships with each other - some don’t make sense anymore, others seem to want to recombine, and at this moment I’m only just getting glimpses of what a sustainable new arrangement might look like.

It is hard work to hold the pieces of a work-life in one’s hands and summon the courage to imagine an entirely new orchestration of them.

Holding your own

As I work through the high-stakes assemblage of a new design for my work life, a voice speaking the phrase “hold your own” has been whispering in my ear.

What does this mean, holding my own?

At one level, it has to do, I think, with holding fast to something deeper than the ground that is shaking under my feet. Holding my own power, my own space, my own clarity, my own peace, even as everything around me is in chaotic motion.

Turning the phrase over like a rock in the polishing tumblers of my mind, I find myself also connecting the idea of “holding my own” to the idea of a life-thread described in the William Stafford poem “The Way it Is:”

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

I sense that the voice telling me to “hold my own” is there to make sure I don’t get lost by letting go of the soul-connected thread I’ve been following - the thread that has brought me into art-making, into creativity coaching, into teaching and writing.

In the art piece at the top of this post, the clown inches precariously along a tightrope. Against the backdrop of stormy skies, poised over a spiky stretch of ground, he balances a bottle full of fear on his shoulder as he focuses intently on his next step.

In this moment of anxiety, when it is tempting to abandon myself for any port that promises safety, I have come to believe that “holding your own” has surfaced to remind me not to allow myself to be pulled toward opportunities that will undermine my sense of self and satisfaction - no matter how much they might seem to glitter, or how well they seem to suit others.

I am charged with carrying my fear along with me as I walk upon the thread that I must follow in order to be me, in order to be free.

Holding Our Own

Of course, my little drama is being echoed on the National scale. As they subject us to one ignorant, malicious, destabilizing action after the other, the Fuckwits are shaking the ground on which we have stood for generations. We are all having to work hard to hold our own - holding our own children and beloveds close, holding the communities we stand up for, holding our Democracy, our history, our values, our institutions. As foundational elements of our nation are being willfully destroyed and displaced, everything feels like it is in motion, all the old arrangements don’t work anymore, new combinations are desperately needed, and the stakes are very high.

Beautifully, in the mighty protests of last weekend, we saw that millions and millions and millions of us are still holding fast to the thread of the promise and legacy of the United States, the thread that leads toward - not away from - greater equality, expanding knowledge, bonds of connection, pathways of education and opportunity, healthy natural and cultural ecosystems, life and liberty and happiness. Together, we are doing the work of holding our own, and I believe we will only deepen in this work in the months to come.

Being Held

I find it helpful to imagine that as I hold my own, and you hold your own, and we hold our own, we are also being held.

We are held in bonds of caring connection, by visible and invisible networks of support, by ancestors who endured times of destruction and despair and still laughed and wrote and painted and raised kind and curious children. I like to think that we are being held, too, by the still-living systems of the Earth who, despite our abuses, continues to hold us like her own.

Your Invitation This Week

These musings lead me to invite you, this week, to check in with yourself. How are you holding your own? What are you doing to hold your own hand, no matter how shaky with anxiety it may feel?

What part are you playing in the pursuit of holding our own collectively? What ecosystems of caring connection are you nurturing? How are you holding fast to the thread of the best that we have been and the possibility of a re-assembled future that makes new harmonies possible?

What helps you access the feeling of being held by something larger than yourself? Did you feel it in the marches? Do you feel it when you zoom out to the larger arcs of history, or the view from other galaxies?

What are you holding, and who or what is holding you?