on the need for tender spaces
mossy, patient, & honest
I need tender spaces.
Soft enough to fall into, spacious enough to hold my multitudes.
Here, in this tender space, there’s mossy, pine-needle covered earth. Welcoming stumbles and falls. Offering the body-mind a place to rest.
Tears and laughter are welcome here. So, too, are the dark thoughts, the depths of insecurity, judgment, and doubt, and the unbelievably bright ones, the wildly optimistic desires for what could be.
Wide, softness embraces it all. Squishy, absorbent, malleable. Tender space is not indestructible, but it is responsive and anti-fragile.
There are no rigid white walls and right angles. No poured cement and its illusion of clean, even ground. No rooms to be separated into or out of.
There are rocks and roots here, inviting me to pay attention, to be oh so present as I navigate this textured landscape.
It’s inevitable that I’ll trip over my words and actions. Say something imperfect, get too close or cross a boundary. This does not banish me from the woods. It asks me to wake up, to check on myself and the roots I just kicked.
Be here. Stay for a bit before running away and hiding from yourself, from your responsibility to life.
There is space here for all of me. For the repetitive, embarrassing meanderings of the judging mind. The sticky patterns that keep showing up - am I lost? do I belong here? do they like me? why do I care so much? why don’t I care more? do-I-but-wha-if…..
Thank goodness, there’s a pool of cool water to jump into. Deep enough to keep cool, to be a source of renewal. Wide enough to hold the bubbling, frothing agitation of the subconscious making itself known.
I’ll tread water for a bit. Thoughts moving and seeping into the cool depths. Nothing is exiled, just spatialized to make way for more of myself to show up.
As I settle in, possibilities for play emerge. I splash in the water, make a mustache from a soggy leaf, wade through the creek, find the perfect bough to sit on, follow a path new-to-me. Again, I may slip, I may fall, I may get lost.
Tender spaces are full of risk. It’s not always easy to be here. This is not a sanitized space.
I will get dirty. I may get bruised. This space will leave its impressions on me - needles get tousled in my hair, soil under fingernails, dried leaves cling to my back, muscles ache from effort.
I don’t come here to stay the same. She changes me. This is what makes it so alluring and terrifying.
Sometimes the change is so subtle, barely perceptible. Other times dramatic, needing care to integrate.
She keeps calling me back.
Speaking in a chorus– trees, moss, roots, water–whispering:
We see you. You belong, no matter what. You can make mistakes here. Stay. Take care of yourself. Take care of us. We want to see you grow in strength and connection. We believe in your capacity to handle this. We’re in it for the long run.
In other words, tender space is full of radical acceptance, patience, curiosity, love, and honesty.
It’s brave to be tender with yourself, with each other.
I get glimpses of this changing me and the communities I show up in.
I’m more and more convinced that this is crucial to tending personal and community resilience. It feels like the rich soil from which bold action, accountability, and transformation can actually take place sustainably and with momentum.
I am in practice, a student of the spaces and people who have held me tenderly.
What do your tender spaces look/hear/feel/taste like? I’d love to know and tend to these spaces together.
with warmth,
em