Can I hold that for you?

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Hello, how are you?

I think the last time I wrote to you we’d had a weekend of unfamiliar, yet very welcome, warmth. People shedding coats, sunglasses on their first outings of the year! It was short lived as it turned out. Hats and scarves and hoods back on within days as temperatures plummeted.

It was, from the shop floor, interesting. We couldn’t help but notice the lighter footsteps, the easy laughter and smiles. Women – for our shop is mostly women – heads up, eyes darting around. Conversation easier to conjure up when faces are open. Couples and groups of friends bumping into each other in the doorway. The sound of conversation and laughter. Energy and vibrancy.

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We’re used to seeing people weighed down. Juggling handbags and shopping bags, laptops in backpacks, glasses, wallets, pints of milk, buggies and babies strapped to chests. We spot customers cradling mugs, jewellery boxes and greetings cards and ask if we can look after them.

We tell them that we’ll pop them behind the till so they can walk free handed. That there’s no pressure to buy the things they hand us. We’ll just let the shelf behind the till carry the weight.

It’s not just the physical load. We’re pretty good at spotting the focused eyes, the way someone loops around the shop not asking for help but so relieved when one of us approaches. Shoulders drop, a deep breath released. Overwhelmed with decisions and wanting to get the gift right for their friend’s daughter’s 21st, their mother-in-law or their ‘kooky aunt who’s going to be 60’. We try to lighten these decisions. These decisions, our shop, should be a place where people can feel light.

I’m always struck by the look of surprise that flits across their face, the relief released from their tightly held body. One less thing they need to think about, carry on their own.

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Women holding things

This idea of how we hold onto things has been with me since seeing this beautiful film shared by @feminist and @messynessychic on Instagram on International Women’s Day.

messynessychic

A post shared by @messynessychic

I’ve seen it before and it’s one of those films I tend to play not just once, but a few times. Less than a minute long, it blends footage of women criss-crossing the streets of Paris holding children’s hands, their partners hands. Shopping bags, bunches of flowers, chairs, a vacuum cleaner with Maira Kalman reciting an extract from her book ‘Women Holding Things’. A book she describes as a, ‘a love song to women and at times everyone (as exhausted as we all are from holding everything).’ A book born during the pandemic.

Sometimes, when I am feeling
particularly happy or content,
I think I can provide sustenance
for legions of human beings.
I can hold the entire world in my arms.

Other times, I can barely cross the
room. And I drop my arms. Frozen.”
Maira Kalman, Women Holding Things

It reminds me of an email exchange I had with a therapist back in October 2022 where, and this was before she’d met me in person, she wrote.

‘Thank you so much for sharing a little bit about what is bringing you to therapy. It sounds like you have been going through and also ‘holding’ a lot of things – I hope you are ok.’

Ping. The lightbulb.

Yes. Holding was the word.

I was so good at holding. Adding each blow to the last. The grief, the cancer, the relocation. Holding my breath in anticipation of the next blow. Holding my children’s emotions, holding my own, holding the to-do lists and not knowing how to lessen the load, gripping, holding more and more, tighter and tighter. My husband too.

I’d hold onto unhelpful conversations I’d repeat in my head. I’d hold onto memories played and replayed in unending circles, replaying events over and over in often failed attempts to make sense. I was unable to find the door, the path that would help me to lighten the load. There were tears, outbursts of anger and frustration. A general sense of not feeling right, of being weighed down, unable to move. I didn’t’ feel like me, not that I really knew who me was in this changed world.

I think it was one or maybe both of my sisters who gently asked during another tear-filled phone call if I thought it would help to talk to someone.

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That was the autumn of 2022 and in the following January I wrote a little about how I was feeling after a couple of months of Monday afternoon therapy sessions. I’ve shared it here. An hour sitting opposite L on the couch. Box of tissues, herbal tea, nowhere to hide. A gentle, probing gaze. Silence and thoughts. The ritual of arriving not quite knowing where the conversation might go but also knowing that this space was somewhere that would help me to learn how to release the load.

This year feels different

‘I think I’m able to look forward because I’m learning how to look back. I mean properly look back, not just rehash what went before but look back so that I can move freely, in whichever direction I want to. I was so bored and fed up with forever trying to move forward only for the bungee cord to snap me back and leave me swaying the wind, not knowing (again) which way was up. I wonder if there comes a point where holding onto the past is easier than trying to work out how to live in a new future.’

It’s been two years since those weekly sessions came to a natural end, and there’ve been times where I’ve thought about restarting them but haven’t. Sometimes it’s enough to know that I can if I need to and sometimes it’s enough to have words like ‘holding’ or that Instagram story to take me back there.

I’ve felt like I’ve been holding onto things more these past weeks. Things I’d got used to brushing off. Conversations and exchanges landing with a thud, taking longer to pass through me. I’ve been holding my breath again. Holding onto perceived slights even though I know I’m imagining something that wasn’t there. Reminding myself that we’re all holding stuff. I know too that some of my reactions in conversations haven’t been quite right.

I notice that when I’m holding too much too tightly that my world shrinks. My walks shorter, more likely to follow the same path. Reluctant to talk. It’s why I turn to writing. To Writers Hour with

London Writers' Salon

. I love the gentle acceptance, energy and warmth of that space while I write whatever it is I need to write.

I also know that when I’m holding myself too tight, it makes it harder to be held. To soften enough to allow someone else in.

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At some point during those Monday afternoon sessions on the therapist’s couch I printed out a feelings wheel and sellotaped it to my fridge. A prompt, a nudge. New words to describe what any of us in the house were feeling because I figured if I didn’t have the words, then there was a good chance no one else would.

I come from a family of talkers and listeners, but in the years leading up to sitting on the therapist’s couch I’d become acutely aware that my emotional vocabulary was limited. I was either tired or fine, which in a decade of grief, and cancer, relocation and chronic fatigue and parenting, was clearly not entirely true. Plus, I wasn’t great at using the few words I did have.

I didn’t know how to say, ‘I feel cross/confused/angry/happy/disappointed/scared’ without feeling embarrassed or shamed. I didn’t know how good it felt when I allowed myself to name those emotions, to listen and notice where I felt them in my body, accept them, allow them to stay a while before making space for something else.

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We had a friends round on Friday evening for drinks and a bite to eat, a relaxed evening of chatting in the kitchen. We don’t do it often and I suspect I’ve been holding my breath a little more than usual in planning the evening. Thinking about the combination of people, will they enjoy themselves. Do we have enough food? All that stuff. It led to a cleaning blitz and I wondered if I should take the feelings wheel off the fridge.

I didn’t, and I’m glad it didn’t, because it prompted conversations. Where did you get it? Do you use it, do the children use it? One of the guests a therapist, all creatives and empaths. A safe, gentle group, why wouldn’t I want to share that with them?

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Back on the shop floor, out of ten customer’s approached and nine, ‘Oh thank you, that would be great, I was worried I was going to drop the my/vase/box of glasses/scarf’ exchanges there’ll be a tenth, ‘oh thank you, I’m fine.’ And they’ll wander off holding the jumper or the cushion, often tighter, to their chest.

Because there’s comfort in holding too. The warmth of another’s hand, being held in a tight embrace, the comfort in wrapping our hands around a mug filled with tea, coffee or hot chocolate. Being wrapped in a blanket or even the gentle touch of hand on arm.

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This piece of writing has been lurking in the corners of my mind for a few weeks. The ‘Women Holding Things’ video,

Annette Vaucanson Kelly

’s siren call, inviting me to share some thoughts on International Women’s Day, plus reflections on how I’ve been feeling. I knew I wanted to start with the word ‘holding’ but I wasn’t sure where it would take me. Thank you for following the thread to this point.

Harriet

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