How do we hold unmet needs for long periods of time? Justice for Trump and his administration’s behavior may never come. What do we do?
A client sent me this question the other day.
Like with so many questions right now, I don’t have easy answers. So, I’ve been trying to take the words of the poet Rilke seriously—trying to love the questions themselves and not seek immediate answers.
So before sharing my response with you, I invite you to get curious about how you might answer it. You might even get out your journal and a pen and write what comes up for you—
What helps you hold unmet needs for a long time?
Then, when you’re ready, here are my thoughts:
Over the years, I’ve found many responses to my client’s question—building collective power, cultivating community, moving my bodies, learning enoughness. But as I sit with my client’s question today, one response wants sharing:
Mourning…
Most mornings nowadays, I wake up with the ambiguous grief of collapse times, a hot ball in my solar plexus, that space right at the bottom of my ribs.
I take out my journal, turn toward the sadness, and ask it what it wants to tell me. Most times, the words are few. It’s as if my sadness is a deep underground pool, poignant, still, bottomless. The sadness appreciates my attention, but that often doesn’t make it go away.
I find myself able to release my tears mostly with friends. In the past, I’d struggled to cry and held an intention to allow myself to cry more.
Nowadays, though, when a dear friend asks me how I am, and they give time for the answers, I share how scared I am for my loved ones. Then the tears come.
…with Resonance
Trauma forms when we’re too alone, and the energy of hard moments gets stuck in our bodies. Even the most challenging moments—and the most unmet needs—don’t become trauma when we are accompanied with warm resonance.
Yesterday, the tears during our weekly Collapse Study Group. With the attention and attunement of my friends, it felt as though the sadness could breathe a sigh of release, as if it had been a dry clay ball to which water was added, as if it could soften and take a different, more relaxed shape.
I asked my dear friend, who is a Quaker and lives in the same building, if he might want to experiment with a weekly Morning Mourning Worship to check in about our grief and sit in silence with it. We started on Friday.
Mourning honors unmet needs.
In the Nonviolent Communication lineage, where I first learned to center needs, they list mourning in their needs list.
That’s because even as we work toward a world in which all peoples’ needs are met, even as we work toward a life in which all our own needs are met, they won’t be. Especially not under fascism. Especially not in collapse times.
I’ve found that a big part of living with this reality is not fighting against reality but turning toward reality, and recognizing it with respect. Not liking it, not even accepting it, but honoring it—acknowledging what is with respect.
Acknowledging what is is the first step toward healing, toward reclaiming agency, toward fomenting the potential for change.
What helps you?
I’d love to hear what helps you hold unmet needs for a long time, and if you consent, to share your thoughts with my client.
If you feel called to share your response to the question or what came up for you as you read mine, please do. Mine is not the only answer.
With so much love and solidarity,
P.S. Are you grappling with the uncertainty and the heartache of these times and longing for support leading with clarity and confidence? I currently have one opening for a private coaching client. I offer a free one-hour discovery session before enrolling any new client.
To apply for a discovery session and discuss the possibility of working together, click here. I’d love to talk with you!