31 December 2020
When my ex-husband and I split 15 years ago, I had a lot of soul searching to do. There was no event, nothing salacious or titillating that ended us, but we were both there and there was plenty of fault to go around. We were married for seven years and to tell you the story of our relationship and its demise would take another seven years. It was weekly, daily, hourly – the little joys and the little hurts that add up to heartbreak and longing and loneliness and ‘could have’. To cut a seven year story short, my chief failing was this – I did not make a safe place for him to be himself. He tried to be himself, but I didn’t make it easy, so he stopped trying. I’m sure there was much more to it in the weekly, daily, hourly but in a nutshell, that is what I learned about me.
Since that time, I have taken it as my job to create a safe place for people to be themselves with me. This avocation of mine – creating a safe place – is not limited to my relationship with Stellar Steve, though that is the most important place that I practice it. I also take this avocation into my friendships and my work relationships. Of course, I have had to be reminded from time to time. Lessons, for me, are not only learned once; instead, they are reinforced in different circumstances in different places and times. Small interactions that make me say, ‘oh yeah, that lesson again’. I don’t mind – it’s a bit like being pruned so that I grow well.
What does it mean to make a safe place? My starting point at work is giving a person cover from the noise of ‘busy-ness’ and constant requests so that they can get on with their best work. At home my starting point is being open minded and non-judgemental – letting quirks be quirks and letting foibles be foibles. Letting go of the need to control. Letting go of the need to be the one who knows the one and only way to do everything. It is delightful how many interesting and lovely things emerge when people have the space to do things their own way in their own time. Letting yourself be surprised is one of the tricks.
Since the debacle, I’ve had more than a few interactions that have given me pause to think about this ‘safe space making’ idea. One type of interaction that has happened over and over is people opening up to me out of the blue about a challenging experience they are going through. Sometimes it is a work colleague or a friend and sometimes it is a complete stranger. A friend at work who had a few scary months of treatment for melanoma, a woman whose daughter had surgery for severe scoliosis and now has a scar on her back just like mine, a man whose close friend had an accident and is now tetraplegic, a woman whose uterus is playing up in odd and publicly embarrassing ways. Another type of interaction is one I’ve written about before – street people giving me a quiet thumbs up as I pass.
I think all of this is of a piece – there are two things going on that work together. The first is being open and the second is being vulnerable. I choose to be open to new and different. I have no choice about showing vulnerability. People see the chair and, whether it is true or not, they see suffering, imperfection, challenge, misfortune. Perceiving me as vulnerable makes others feel safe and gives them permission to open themselves to me and expose their own vulnerability. This is a gift and I accept it with gratitude. I also feel the weight of it; the weight of my responsibility to listen openly without judgement. You can see how these two things work together, one driving the other. You can also see how these things require courage on everyone’s part. It takes courage for a person to show me their imperfections and it takes courage on my part to hold the space open and listen. As one of my favourite researchers, Brené Brown says, this is the risk we must take if we want to experience connection.
One of the most interesting results of these interactions and reflections, is that instead of feeling weak and vulnerable, I come away feeling stronger and more energetic. The connection is so important to who we are. All of you who know me know that I have worked so hard these past five years to regain as much of the independence I used to enjoy as an able-bodied person. I want to be able to do things by myself, on my own, without assistance, but I have learned so much about what it means to be truly independent and how important it is to be able to see and help each other. The connections that are built when we help and are helped, when we expose ourselves and really see the other … without doubt these interactions and connections strengthen our sense of belonging and our sense that we are all in this together.
I am finishing 2020 stronger, more connected and happily vulnerable.