The Art of Being Held
A place to set the weight down
For much of my life, I didn’t really know what it felt like to be held. I don’t mean only physically, although that was part of it. I mean the deeper experience of knowing someone or something had my back, that there was a place where I was safe enough to stop bracing, stop taking care of everyone else, and simply be who I was.
I think the people who most need to be held are often the ones who look as though they need nothing. I know because I was one of them. I became very good at being capable, carrying whatever needed to be carried, and being the person others could count on. From the outside that can look like strength, and it is strength, but there’s a cost when you rarely have a place to set any of it down.
Even when there was nothing left for me to do, my body didn’t know the day was over. The responsibility might be finished, but the bracing remained. Tight shoulders, a mind still running, some part of me waiting for whatever I needed to handle next. I lived that way for so long that I didn’t always recognize it as tension. It was simply how I moved through the world.
Looking back now, I can see how deeply that shaped what I made.
I wasn’t simply designing beautiful things. I was creating, over and over, the experience I had spent much of my life needing. The weight, the warmth, the softness, the beauty, the feeling of being wrapped and supported came from somewhere much deeper than aesthetics. I knew what it felt like to move through life without really feeling held or fully loved, so I kept making pieces that offered exactly that.
At the time, I didn’t understand the connection as clearly as I do now. I knew what felt good. I knew what made the body soften. I knew the difference between something that was simply beautiful and something that seemed to create a sense of sanctuary. I followed that knowing in the fabrics, the weight, the scale, the texture, the way the pieces fell around my body.
I was making what I needed long before I understood that I was making it for myself too.
Giving came easily to me because it gave me purpose. There was also safety in knowing I was never asking for more than I was willing to give. I could easily anticipate what someone else needed, make a space beautiful, create comfort, sit with someone in grief, make something I knew would feel good against the body. Receiving was harder. It meant accepting care, love, and support without first proving I deserved it or making sure I had already given enough first.
That changed one night in the hospital last summer.
There was nothing anyone could have said to make me feel safe that night. I was frightened, exhausted, and had reached the point where I couldn’t hold myself together anymore. I had brought one of my Soul Wraptures and a Bubbe Pillow with me, and when I wrapped myself in it, I felt something shift almost immediately. With my arms hugging my pillow to my chest and the weight of the blanket enveloping me, something unexpected happened. The physical sensation was part of it, of course. But what happened went much deeper than comfort. I felt Spirit holding me in grace. This wasn’t a religious thing at all. No. It was a direct experience of being held in a suspended place outside of all that was happening around me. The lights, the noice, the constant interruptions–none of it seemed to affect me. I’d been in the hospital many times before without that experience.
This time, was completely different.
For the first time that night, I didn’t feel as though I had to stay on alert or figure out what came next. I didn’t have to hold myself together. I felt supported in a way I had never experienced before, knowing that something larger than me had taken over the holding for a while.
And because of that, I was able to deeply rest.
Nothing around me had changed. I was still in the hospital. I was still sick. I still didn’t know what was going to happen. But I was no longer meeting all of it from the same place of fear and bracing.
That night changed my relationship with the work because I finally understood in my own body what I had been making all those years. Until then I knew the pieces gave people warmth, beauty, and comfort. I knew there was something about the weight that helped the body soften. But that night I felt the deeper purpose of it. The physical sensation opened the door, but what came through was safety, and from that safety came the ability to let go.
I finally experienced why I had been compelled to make these pieces in the first place. It went beyond understanding to a recognition in my body that made the purpose of these pieces so clear.
And I also began to see that being held was much bigger than the physical experience itself.
To me, being held means knowing I don’t have to carry everything alone. Sometimes that comes through another person standing beside me without trying to fix or change me, simply listening and staying there whether they agree with what I’m sharing or not. Other times it’s a room where my body softens as soon as I walk in, the feel of warmth, beauty, touch, or cloth, or the sense that Spirit is present and something larger than me is holding the space when no human being possibly can.
The form changes, but what it gives me is very similar. The ability to stop bracing and just rest.
Being held isn’t the same as being rescued. It doesn’t take away my ability to choose for myself or make me less capable. If anything, the kind of holding I value now gives me enough support to stay fully myself.
For years I thought of luxury mostly as something beautiful, artfully made, something that delighted the senses. I still believe that, but my understanding has expanded. There is another kind of luxury in allowing something beautiful to actually comfort you instead of admiring it, saving it, or giving it to someone else.
That distinction is important to me now.
I’m letting love in without keeping score of whether I’ve done enough to deserve it, allowing support to simply be there, and seeing rest as more than stopping.
Sometimes rest is simply the feeling that, for a little while, I don’t have to hold everything together.
And once I knew what that felt like in my body, I started recognizing it elsewhere.
I’m much more aware now of the people I can really relax around and the ones who make me tense without even realizing it at first. I can feel the difference between someone simply standing beside me and someone trying to manage me or steer me somewhere. And I know how different it feels when I don’t have to explain myself or defend what I’m feeling.
The same thing is true of the spaces around me. My studio, my home, the chair I sit in, the things I choose to live with, even the pace I ask of myself all affect how I feel. I know now when my life is supporting me and when I’m asking too much of myself again.
That may be one of the biggest changes for me.
The Soul Wrapture gave me the physical experience first, but the experience didn’t stay attached to the cloth. It became something I began looking for in the way I lived.
The textiles are still one expression of that, and the materials matter because the body responds to them so directly. The weight, the velvet, the softness, the beauty—all of it can create a sense of safety before you ever have to put words to what you’re feeling.
Your body knows when it can relax, when it can soften, when it feels supported.
But the meaning has grown far beyond the textiles now.
Being held means something much bigger to me now. It shows up in the relationships where I know someone has my back, in the places where I can relax and be fully myself, and in the way I’m learning to create a life that supports me instead of asking me to carry everything. I’m still strong. I just don’t believe strength means doing all of it alone anymore.
I learned that in a hospital bed, wrapped in something I had made with my own hands.
I had spent years creating what I needed and offering it outward before I knew how to fully receive it myself. That night, I finally did.
And what stayed with me was much larger than comfort.
It was the recognition that safety, love, support, and grace were never things I had to earn. They were always mine to receive, and the experience of being held was how I finally came to know that in my body.
Continue the thread
Being held began for me as a physical experience, but it became part of how I understand support, safety, love, and the life I’m creating now.
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