Holding Space When It Hurts

This morning I woke up with a sharp, breath-catching pain under my ribcage. The kind that makes you pause mid-inhalation and wonder what your body is trying to say. I know what mine is saying: Slow down. That mattered.

Yesterday I spent time with the son of a terminally ill client—a man holding his mother's hand as she prepares to let go of this life. He's strong and composed on the outside, but it's a hard thing, losing a parent in slow motion. I know this from personal experience: I lost my own dad to heart failure over thirteen excruciating months. It's a strange, suspended kind of grief, loving someone so fiercely, fighting to hold on to them while at the same time learning, day by day, how to let them go. There's nothing anyone can say that can take the pain away. All I could do was try to hold space for him to pick his way through it.

But what does it mean to “hold space”? The truth is, it’s hard to describe. It’s not about having the right words, because there are no right words. Nor is it about fixing anything, because this is something that can't be fixed. It’s about being fully present. It’s about staying calm when someone else falls apart. It’s about bringing love to the party and listening — really listening — whilst letting silence do some of the work. It's not easy to do: the urge to try and 'fix' is strong. But I'm learning, and, I hope, getting better with practice.

And so yesterday I listened. I listened to a man grieve his mum while she was still here. I listened to the stories he told me about her and I watched the way his face lit up when he spoke about her zest for life. I listened as he talked about how fiercely independent she'd always been — “stubborn as a goat,” he called her. She'd once tried to re-roof the garden shed herself in her slippers because she didn’t want “some daft laddie” from the village doing it wrong. We both laughed at the image of her up there, swearing at the roofing felt, dropping the hammer onto the grass, and refusing all offers of help. That story came out of nowhere — unpolished, unplanned — but it lit up our conversation with a kind of defiant joy.

Then there was the quieter memory: how she still sends him a voice message first thing every morning to check he's eaten breakfast. She always starts her message the same way: "Hi darling: It's just Mum here." And suddenly the laughter gave way to something softer — that ache of realising how much of someone’s love is woven into the tiniest, most ordinary gestures. “I don't know what I'll do when I stop getting those messages,” he said. And then he broke down.

There’s nothing anyone can say to take the pain away. So I didn’t try.

I’ll be the one to tell his mum's story when the time comes. But long before the ceremony is written, long before the words are spoken, this is the work: witnessing. Honouring. Holding space.

Sometimes it leaves a mark. A physical ache. A lingering sadness. A ribcage that won’t quite let you breathe as deeply as you want to.

But it also leaves me with something else — a quiet certainty that this work matters. That love and grief are two sides of the same coin. And that when we show up for one another, even in the hardest moments, we make the world a gentler place.

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