Recognising when you are in a place of scarcity

You can't hold space for people if you have run out of space for yourself

Photo credit: Mals Photography UK

When my husband Rob died unexpectedly nearly 10 years ago, I continued to have therapy with the same person who had been helping me manage my relationship with him when he was alive. Rob’s death was a tragedy; it snapped the futures of those closest to him like wheat stalks after thunder has rolled through, but that’s not what I went to therapy to talk about.

I went to therapy to talk about how I could live with the people in my life. How I could manage my relationships with them when I had nothing to give them, and wouldn’t do for a long time. How I would navigate their weddings and significant birthdays and baby showers when the idea of being around more than six people at a time, made my body physically freeze.

I went to therapy because I needed permission, from someone neutral and with no skin in the game, to tell me that what I was doing was necessary and that it was okay. That I couldn’t give because there was nothing to give.

I couldn’t care about your life, when I didn’t care about my own.

And this was important because the person who I was before Rob died, was someone who gave from an empty cup, constantly. I pushed my bank balance into the red for other people’s weddings, went out several nights in a row because I didn’t want to miss out, hosted people at our home even when things felt shaky around Rob’s recovery.

In the last 10 years since he died, I found meaning, and managed to forgive myself. At some intangible point, I was able to hold space for others and be there for them. As anyone who has experienced traumatic grief will tell you, there is no going back to the person you were, but in the pause and silence I was able to work out what parts of myself to keep, and what parts had to change out of necessity. And grief is scarcity at its most acute. You cannot give, push, barter, bargain, wheedle and hope when your insides are empty yet teeming with chaos that feels pulled in from another dimension.