It was a dark moving entity.

“I feel like I’m constantly trying to hold it all together”

This is what a friend said to me the other day. She’s a mum of two and has a reasonably stressful job. Nothing terrible is happening in her life, yet the stress of “holding it all together” is paramount. You could say she has high-functioning anxiety. It keeps her from sleep at night and from joy in the day.

It’s a theme, I hear people say similar things quite a lot and maybe you do too. The sad thing is, we often accept it's just the price we pay for being an adult with lots of responsibility.

But we don't bring awareness of what "holding it all together" actuallyis to the fore. We just drag ourselves around with it.

So I asked my friend, "Can you experience what "holding it all together” actually is?" Can you actually feel physically where you’re holding it all together? Is there a shape to it? Does it move?"

She closed her eyes and said she could feel it in her throat, her chest and stomach. I asked her more questions about its nature and she said,“It’s like a sort of moving shadow, almost an entity, of achy dark tightness.”

(When I first discovered mindfulness, it amazed me that I’d never considered this... here I was “holding it all together”, but I’d never considered what that was.)

And of course, it's there and it’s not that pretty. Because we’re doing our best. There’s so much to do, so much to think, so much “adulting” to be getting on with. Health, bills, the planet, the kids, past pains, orange presidents, ageing, loss, relationships, all-consuming media, wars, what-ifs, goals, grievances, sock-eating washing machines, dreams and broken dreams. We’re trying to control it all. We’re trying to hold every last thing together. Because we think we’re not good enough if we don't, we think it will keep us safe.

But is that what our little life on this planet is for?

Close your eyes, can you experience this “holding it all together” force inside you? What shape is it? Is it moving? What colour is it?

And what if today, Tuesday 18th February 2025, you did something different with it?

What if, rather than resisting it, coping with it, you blossom instead?

You deserve to blossom. Every part of your beautiful soul deserves it and wants it. That’s why holding it all together is so hard, because we resist holding it all together.

(When you were a baby, you were probably a very happy little blossom. Like everything else in nature, we’re here to bloom.)

So what do we do?

Well, nothing and everything.

As meditation teacher Henry Shukman said recently, “What if we don’t have to do anything about it?”

When we allow ourselves to experience this energy within us without needing to change it, when we show it some compassion, we hold the part of ourselves that’s trying to hold it all together. Just becoming aware of it, its shape, its movement, its texture – and allowing and loving – is all we need to do.

Here’s Blossom, our cat, who doesn’t worry about orange presidents or broken dreams (I don’t think).

Happy Tuesday,

Love,

Jo x