Some people possess the rare gift of weaving together knowledge from multiple fields, using it to chart new and inspiring directions. Amy Wright Glenn is one of those remarkable individuals. In this conversation, Amy and I talk about birth, breath and death, and about “holding space” for difficult experiences. What does she mean by that phrase? What are threshold experiences in our lives? How might we strengthen this skill, whether we are family members, friends, or practitioners and clinicians working with clients? How can developing our compassionate presence help us be comfortable with the uncomfortable, so that we can say, “I will be brave enough to sit with you in this.”

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Transcript:

Diane Hullet: Hi, I’m Diane Hullet. Welcome to the Best Life, Best Death podcast. Today I’m here with Amy Wright Glenn, and this is actually going up in the week of the holidays in December 2024. So I felt like, you know, I really wanted someone sort of thoughtful and heartful who would really hold this space because what a beautiful time of year.

So welcome to Amy Wright 

Amy Wright Glenn: Glenn. Thank you so much. I’m so grateful to be here. And all of you watching, I hope that the day is unfolding with ease and wonder and insight for you. My name is Amy Reitglen, and in 2015, almost 10 years ago, I founded an organization called the Institute for the Deaf. for the study of birth, breath, and death, and it was named that because my first book is called Birth, Breath, and Death, and I have worked with the birthing as a birth doula, with the dying as a hospital chaplain, and like all of you, we breathe through the bookends of birth and death, and my Practice of yoga, teaching and meditation really focuses on breath as an anchor to help us be present in the moment to be more awake to what is even when what is is challenging.

And so birth, breath and death not only follow that sequence of most human life. But it’s also a symbol for me, breath is a symbol of presence and being present. So the Institute is home to people who work in the birth world, midwives, OBs, nurses, lactation consultants, prenatal yoga teachers, you know, this whole birth world community.

And then it’s also open to people who work with the dying, would be. Hospital chaplains, people involved in hospice work, either as volunteers or social workers, palliative care physicians, death doulas, and then anyone who’s involved in mindful living practice, which would be, I hope, all of us, right, to try to be mindful as we live.

And the goal is to create courses that nourish our personal and professional development, so that people who work with birth are in a class with people who work with dying, and they can communicate and talk and reflect and share, and, you know, And there’s a lot of cross pollination that is so nourishing.

So that’s a bit about what I do. I hope that’s helpful. 

Diane Hullet: Oh, so helpful. I think that’s such a fantastic overview. How did you like, what, you know, give us like the brief version of your path that led to saying, I want to form this Institute and create this truly community space for these various components of life.

Amy Wright Glenn: Sure. Well, I, let’s see, this is where to begin. I was asked to go to St. Louis to speak at the MANA conference, Midwives Association of North America, and I’m not a midwife, but I’m a trained doula, but I had written this book, Birth, Breath and Death, that had become well read in the birth world. And so I was so honored to go and speak at the MANA conference in St.

Louis. My son, who is now 13, I think was around three at the time. So this is about 10 years ago. And it, it was the beginning of the Institute. So I go to a MANA, craft a presentation for birth workers. And the topic was, what can those of us who work with birth. Learn from those of us who work with the dying.

And since I had been trained in both, I felt like I could create that Venn diagram, right, where it’s not identical. There’s a lot of difference, but there’s this place where there’s an overlap between the skill set and the training and the The type of heart that is called forth in birth and death. And so as I was presenting and, and, you know, listening and spending time with the midwives in that circle, I think there were probably 30 or 40 midwives that attended that talk.

A lot of them said, you know, I’ve sat at the bedside of my mom or my dad or my sister or my child. And it felt similar to what it felt like to be at the bedside. Of people I support with birth and there was just a real recognition, like a lot of nods and some tears and sense that there’s this place where mystery is touched, you know, that we’re in a threshold place.

It’s not easily spoken about with conventional language. There’s something that’s poetic and not prose in birth and death. There’s something where something ruptures through some kind of wonder, some kind of pain, some kind of wisdom that comes into knowledge and being. that changes us in birth and death.

And it was after that conference, I went home and I remember reflecting, I’d like to craft more places like that, more spaces in person or online. And that’s when I started the Institute. It was after that conference. So that’s a little bit about how the Institute was formed. And at first it was small, you 40 members.

And we had our first Institute gathering in Fort Lauderdale. I think 15 people came. And now 10 years later, we have at this point, I think, at this moment, maybe more than 5000 people enrolled in the Institute course. I’ve traveled in different places and taught. I’ve trained people to teach. It’s become something wonderful.

And I hope in the next 10 years, it continues, right? 

Diane Hullet: Absolutely. I think that that possibility of these threshold places, as you say, and the people who witness those threshold places and the people who move through them, if you’re a birthing family, or but also the people who, So it’s like the people who work in those spaces and the people who witness those spaces both bring something to that experience, and they leave something from that experience.

And I think, I don’t know, I’d love to hear you talk more about threshold spaces. What do we mean by that? I 

Amy Wright Glenn: mean, some of this comes from the work of Joseph Campbell. He was an inspiration for me. And for those of you who may not know about Joseph Campbell, he was a professor at Sarah Lawrence College for about 40 years.

He taught mythology. He was so well loved. It was an all women’s college at the time that when he was engaged, they flew the flag at half mast. Like he was just like the crush on campus, right? He was this fun, handsome, thoughtful teacher. And he wrote his first book that he was famous for was called The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

And his, Basic theory is that across time and culture and throughout human history, there’s been certain stories that we tell. And they have different inflection and different characters named, you know, in different parts because every culture is different. But there’s these common motifs, common threads, like the trickster is a common, like, thread in stories, or the guide who comes and helps the hero.

And it is in Campbell’s work where I first encountered the idea of threshold spaces because the hero has to leave the known. And so, And enter the unknown for the hero journey to begin. And that place, that threshold place, you know, in film, you can think of the film, the first episode four of Star Wars, where Luke enters the bar, the cantina, and it’s full of strange creatures.

And, you know, he has a guide who’s helping him figure this out, but he’s left the known world of his, you know, aunt and uncle’s life. And he’s in this, you know, This unknown world, but it’s not the place he’ll stay, it’s the place that he has to move through to go to these other places. So thresholds are doorways and worlds that we enter and exit through that change us, but they’re mysterious, they’re different, they can be scary, they can be dangerous, they can be edifying and remarkable.

And then we’re different, that’s the point, that the hero is different after the journey, that cycle is completed of departure, fulfillment, return. When the return occurs, the hero is transformed. And so are we in the story, right? We, we’re transformed through the story. So birth and death to me are hero journeys.

And if we’re awake, I think each breath could be to 

Diane Hullet: That’s great. Each breath is a threshold space and each breath is a journey that is moving us towards this final threshold of our living into death. You, you talk a lot about holding space. You talk about the beauty and the power of holding space and.

I’d like to hear you talk about what it means to hold space and also can we learn to hold space? Like, is that just something you’re born with and you know how to do or is it a skill that can be taught? 

Amy Wright Glenn: I have a great question. So I did not come up with the term holding space. I, again, like I didn’t come up with the term threshold.

I encountered the term holding space for the first time through the work of Canadian author, Heather Plett, who I read her an article years ago on What it meant to hold space when her mother died. And she writes about her sister and herself and the palliative care nurse, you know, supporting the mother, Heather Plett’s mother.

And so I think the title is Holding Space, Eight Ways to Do It Well, something like that. And it was just such a great article. And then after Birth, Breath and Death was published, I was contacted by the publishing company called Parallax Press. And that’s Thich Nhat Hanh’s publishing company. It’s a Buddhist publishing company in San Francisco.

And the editor, the acquisitions editor, called and said, we’d like you to write a book that we would like to publish. I’ve read Birth, Breath, and Death. Could you write a book just on death? And, and I said, oh my gosh, of course. I would love, love to dive into this. And the topic is something we spent a lot of time reflecting on.

I wrote the book, my second book, Holding Space. And the term holding space, we decided to use death. Because it encapsulated so much of what it meant to be at the bedside of the dying. But I didn’t originate, that term didn’t originate with me. And a lot of people use it now, not just about care for the dying, but, you know, holding space for ourselves in a hard day, or holding space for joy, holding space for wonder.

What does it mean to hold space right now with you? You know, to be present to you, to connect to you, to be vulnerable and open to you, and to hold all that that means for me in my body, in my breath, in this moment. So I define holding space as strengthening our capacity to show up with compassionate presence to whatever is, and what is can be really hard, you know, Syria just has gone through this last week, this transformative moment where 50 years of a dictatorial regime ended.

And so the rebel forces that pushed Bashar al Assad out have been opening the prisons and letting out tens of thousands of people who were political prisoners and tortured in his regime. What does it mean to hold space for this event in the world? But if you’re there to be at the prison and watch people walk out, to bring compassionate presence to that, that’s what holding space is.

And for me, holding space would mean being able to listen, being able to listen to ourselves, our own inner dialogue, our own story, listen to others, and through holding space, then an action might appear that we couldn’t have had if we didn’t pause to really be present. The only tool in the human toolbook, right?

It’s one tool. So holding space for me is one skill we can strengthen. I think maybe there’s people who are sensitive and more introspective, who might be more akin to the style of being in the world, but I, I mean, I think we can all strengthen this skill and I’ve never met anyone who does it perfectly.

I don’t think that’s possible, but. You’re holding space for me right now, you know, in your capacity just to listen. You may not agree with what I’m saying even, but you’re just listening, you’re breathing, you’re connected. You’re bringing your compassion and presence. 

Diane Hullet: I love thinking of it as in, in a way, it’s so simple.

It’s so complex and so subtle. And on the other hand, it’s so simple. And the full title of that book is holding space on loving dying and letting go. And it’s, it’s such an incredible read in terms of those types of skills at the bedside of the dying. Right. 

Amy Wright Glenn: I mean, I will say that When we hold space, we choose to enter someone’s story.

We choose to hold our story kind of on the side for a minute and not, not be the narrator. You know, if I’m holding space for someone and they’re going through something difficult, it’s not my chance to be like, Oh, and I went through that and let me tell you my whole story. It’s my time to, to listen and to learn and to say, tell me more.

Right. And to notice the emotion that might be coming and not shy away from it by trying to fill a silence with lots of. My own story or my own meaning so for instance with pregnancy loss Which is a hard topic to talk about and there’s breath before birth, right? Like the infant may be breathing in the womb, you know practicing breathing with amniotic fluid But when if it’s a stillbirth the child never breathes air You know dies is born dead and for families who experience this Incredible grief a lot of people don’t know what to say When they hear that they had a child who was stillborn or who died shortly after birth.

And so holding space helps us be comfortable with the uncomfortable. It helps us sit with someone’s pain and know we can’t fix it. I can’t bring the child back. I can’t make the pain less, but I can be with her or them or him in the pain and let them know they’re not alone. I will be brave enough to sit with you in this.

Diane Hullet: I think that’s an incredible way to state it, because there’s something about our, our discomfort and our sort of illiterate ness, I want to call it, our illiteracy around grief and around death makes us feel so much like we have to do something or say the right thing. And, and so, you know, in your experience, is this kind of presence and holding space, is it enough?

Amy Wright Glenn: Well, often not. I mean, if I’m a medical doctor and a child comes in with a broken arm, I’m going to hold space for their pain and listen and try to comfort emotionally, but I also need to set the arm and take care of the wound, right? And perhaps give pain medication because the child may need some surgery or some kind of physical support.

So I don’t think it’s the only thing we do. If someone’s hurting physically, we have to, I think, use our best skills medically too. It’s just as a hospital chaplain, what I saw in the hospital is that medical staff know how to administer medicine and know how to do the surgery and know how to approach the vitals.

But the heart of the person, the pain, the suffering, they might sidestep and then bring the chaplain in for that. And so what I would like to see is that human beings. Across profession, you know, medically trained people, I’m a teacher, you know, kids, people in high school or middle school. I teach middle school have more skill with holding space.

So when a student comes to me and says I’m having a hard time today. And this does happen. And they start to cry. That I am like, not worried I’m gonna mess it up or, oh don’t worry it’s gonna be better and dismiss them. But to really pause my moment and just say, can you tell me more of what’s going on?

And to really be present. So I think every human being can strengthen what it means to hold space, but it’s definitely not the only human skill. We need all the other skills too. Is that clear? Does that make 

Diane Hullet: sense? Yeah. Yeah. For, I guess the way I was wondering about it is. If people, like if a lay person has a family member, a friend who’s dying and they’re scrambling in their mind to do the right thing, I almost want to say this is enough.

I mean, if you don’t have the skills of a chaplain or you don’t have the skills of a doctor, there, there is this capacity to just be there. Be with that. I think so many people have gotten away from, so they think they have to do something. So I kind of, I’m kind of playing around with, is it enough? And I love that you’re saying, Oh, it’s not enough.

There’s other tools in the toolbox. And at the same time, there’s this juxtaposition where it is enough. Sometimes it is the thing to simply allow yourself to be this human to human spaciousness. I want to call it that I think struggle with in our society. Okay. 

Amy Wright Glenn: I hear you. Yes. So it’s both and, and I teach a course called Holding Space Training, where we have maybe 150 to 200 people will sign up.

And I’ve taught it, I think four times, four or five times. And I lead people through modules of practicing holding space, and they partner with each other partner and they, you know, do, there’s a scope of practice that helps them guide, the session. So you start with a mindfulness practice. You end with a mindfulness practice.

And what I mean by that is, you know, something like, okay, sit up tall, go on your shoulders. I invite you to take a moment, perhaps bring a hand to your heart, perhaps close the eyes or leave them open and take a breath with me. Just inhale

 and exhale.

 One more time.

 And when you feel ready, go ahead and open the eyes if you close them and, you know, just that. So start with what’s happening in your body. You know, bringing the hand to the heart. It’s called heart centered breathing. Dr. Laura Markham in New York says it helps calm the vagus nerve. Right, just hand to heart and breathe.

And if I end with that too, it bookends that 50 minute session. And then my job as the one holding space is to really listen. And if someone is expressing a strong emotion, I can, if there’s a pause, say, You know, I heard you say that when your sister died, that it felt like your world broke. You know, I will repeat what I heard and then say, Can you tell me more?

So it’s like I lean into the emotion rather than lean away. Right? You lean in. If the tears come, it’s like, I saw, I saw your eyes tear up when you mentioned this about your brother. Can you tell me more? And they can say, no, I don’t want to. Or they could say, oh my gosh, here’s someone who’s not afraid that my eyes teared up, right?

And so it’s about learning how to be more open. skillful with grief, literate with grief, and our own and another’s, and not have to feel like, like in a therapeutic setting, there’s usually a change oriented approach. Like, okay, if someone has an eating disorder, I’m going to try to support a more ordered eating, right?

Or if someone’s struggling with an abusive relationship, I’m going to try to as a therapist, help intervene, reveal patterns, help them see they can use boundaries and stand up for themselves. Some people who take the training are therapists, but this is a training just to strengthen the skill of holding space open to anyone.

And so it’s clear that I’m not here to change you. I’m not going to offer change oriented approach. I’m, I’m really just going to listen to you share. And the, the trust is that we all have answers that are sort of spinning in our confusion. And if someone was to sit with us while we’re confused and that we get 50 minutes to kind of talk it all out, we might land into an answer that it’s already been in us.

But someone’s just witnessed us, like, find it. 

Diane Hullet: I think we underestimate the power of that. I think that, you know, going back to Joseph Campbell, he was a storyteller, right? And, and he helped us name in a modern culture the stories that we are missing. But that storyteller and that listening, storytelling takes a listener and a teller, right?

And that listening deeply and framing the story, I just think that’s such a piece in our modern speedy culture that we’re missing. It’s like we tell the fast story of our day, we like relay the agenda, but the deep storytelling of what’s really truly happening for us. And the deep listening and receiving without solving or making it about, you know, your story is, it’s, it’s really interesting, isn’t it?

And I think, I think this really comes forward at the, at the deathbed is what I’m going to call it. And so there is this possibility. Of just holding space and deep listening when we’re at those again, that kind of threshold place that I think people underestimate the power of is what I want to say.

Would you agree? 

Amy Wright Glenn: Yeah, but I think it’s true as. Thornton Wilder helped us see in Our Town, if you’ve read that play, when Emily asks the stage manager to be able to go back to watch one of the days of her life after she had died in childbirth. Remember that story, there’s a young bride, she dies in childbirth, and she’s like, but I had so much to live, I’m not ready to die.

and be dead and, and the people in the graveyard have kind of let go of the world. She’s like, but I want to go back. Let me just see, let me see what it was. And she witnesses her eighth birthday and she’s so overwhelmed by the beauty of it. And she kept saying to the mom on the stage who can’t see her, but she sees the eight year old in the memory.

Don’t you see me slow down? Don’t you see me? Will you look at me? Just look at me, mom. Look at how beautiful this all is. Don’t you see? And she turns to the stage manager and says, Do people not see? And he says, well, the poets and the mystics do some. So I don’t know if we have to wait till the end to see.

I mean, that’s my hope is maybe we can see more.

Diane Hullet: I think that’s an incredible place to end, Amy. What a beautiful way to say it. May we see more. May we hold space for each other. May we witness these threshold moments and almost like allow those threshold moments, which as you said, could be every breath. Allow them to stretch out. so much. And allow us to see the beauty and the grace in those moments.

And in each day, thank you so much for your time. You’ve been listening to the best life, best death podcast. You can find out more about Amy Wright Glenn’s work at who tell us your website, birth, breath, and death. com. Beautiful. And as always, you can find out more about the work I do at Best Life. Best death.com.

Thanks for listening.