Recently I read a poem by James A. Pearson in his collection ‘The Wilderness That Bears Your Name’. You can find the book here: https://jamesapearson.com/wilderness-book/. The collection is split into seasonal sections which is a lovely way of organising them. James has given me kind permission to talk about the poem “All I Mean” which is part of the Winter section.
Here is the poem:
“There are a thousand
wounds but all I mean
by healing is this:
that you learn to hold yourself
in exactly the same way
you were never held.”
This spoke to me about the psychotherapy work I do. Some may think of therapy as healing, and there are all kinds of healing, this is just the one that I offer. Talking is healing, and there are many words - a thousand words - in the poem, meaning all kind of words that could be offered when someone is in distress or needing comfort. All kinds of words that may be good words that have meaning to the listener.
But it seems the poem is saying is that for all the words, the good words, healing in whatever form comes from the way you are held and were possibly never held, and this might mean literally, from the way a baby is held or not held or comforted, or attended to in the way that a baby should be.
It might also mean the way you as a being “were never held”. In therapy we talk about ‘holding’ the client in a psychological way, in a way that the client feels that we are attending to them, we are really listening, and we are caring about what they are bring to us, and we are holding it with them. We are alongside them in a way that says, we are beside you, we are with you, and there is goodness inside you. It’s not something that can always be articulated for the client, but they just feel it. They know if we can understand them in a way that makes them feel held, because sometimes they have felt what it is like to not be held, to not feel as if they are welcome in the world, to not have their fears and disquiet listened to.
For me, this poem is so powerful because it is saying that you can learn this holding from someone who knows - a person in your life who can show you what it is to be held safely, sometimes in arms as well as in minds, but it is in minds that holding is really known. And this means learning that you are truly worth the holding, worthy of the feeling that you have a place in the world that is welcoming to you.
It can be a painful journey, and it is sad that this poem does have meaning, because it is saying there is something missing here for some people, even for most people at some time in their lives when they were not held as they should have been for whatever reason. I hope that you are being held today, by yourself and by others.