I love the story that Heather Plett shares in this article she published recently. Heather is among other things, a practitioner and teacher of The Circle Way. She is someone I’ve only met online, yet some of my best friends know her well and tell me that we should meet!
Her article is tender, as it always is when caring for those that we love. It’s also wise. These are eight bits of wisdom that would do any facilitator some good as a starting point, or as something to come back to when a gut check is needed.
I’ve listed the tips below. The full article is worth a full read. Heather’s Ann reminds me of my Audrey, who was a different kind of care-giver (midwife for my first child), but also a great space-holder.
- Give people permission to trust their own intuition and wisdom.
- Give people only as much information as they can handle.
- Don’t take their power away.
- Keep your own ego out of it.
- Make them feel safe enough to fail.
- Give guidance and help with humility and thoughtfulness.
- Create a container for complex emotions, fear, trauma, etc.
- Allow them to make different decisions and to have different experiences than you would.
I love Heather’s closing paragraph that names “holding space” is a life time practice in the many walks of life we all find ourselves in.