The space in between full
You will have to scrape through all the layers of coveringĪnd according to your readiness, everything will open. Only you know where the casket of pain is interred.
Having waited all these years for you to return and know. Now the act of seeing begins your work of mourning.Īnd your memory is ready to show you everything, You could only see what touched you as already torn. That faced them through a dark fester of thornsĬonverting whoever came into a further figure of the wrong How deep down your eyes were always owned by something When you should have felt safe enough to fall toward love, You are coming to see how your looking often darkened That has grown always invisibly beside you You had forgotten you knew from the inside out Īnd a time when that bitter tree was planted Through the white curtain of yesterdays to a place When the pain takes you where you would rather not go, This is the season of your awkward harvesting, I want to see if we can find some ways to narrow the space between us again.“For Someone Awakening To The Trauma of His or Her Past:įor everything under the sun there is a time. Maybe you’ll say, “It feels like we’re growing apart. I think my strong reaction was telling me something important that it would be helpful to discuss, but I don’t condone the way I said it.” Maybe you’ll say, “I’m embarrassed by my strong reaction to what you said. Maybe you’ll say, “Things have felt tense between us lately. The best way to the other side - to them, to where you hope to get, to who you hope to be - is through The Space Between, slowing down, taking a breath, raising up for consideration and conversation those things that have been widening the space. We try to navigate around it, to avoid the discomfort, hurrying to solutions like we hurry through the woods at dusk, hoping to get safely home before the wolves come out.īut as Frost taught us, the best way out is always through.Īnd so it is with The Space Between. A misstep feels like it can cause catastrophe. When the space between is widening, it feels increasingly uncomfortable to traverse. Sometimes the solution is in the conditions we set up around us sometimes it’s in the work we do with ourselves. We think of conflict resolution as an action or an interaction. Getting the conditions right is also about more than the transactional nature of any conflict resolution process. In mediation we use the phrase, “ holding the space.” It means not filling the space with our own judgments, discomfort or desires, but holding the space open so that the important work can be done and done well by the people we’re serving. If you get these relationships right, a sense of purpose and meaning will emerge. It is worth striving to get the right relationships between yourself and others, between yourself and your work, and between yourself and something larger than yourself. Other conditions require relationships to things beyond you Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil to thrive, people need love, work, and a connection to something larger. Some of those conditions are within you, such as coherence among the parts and levels of your personality. You have to get the conditions right and then wait. Happiness is not something that you can find, acquire, or achieve directly. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has some insights about the space between: