Excuse Me, You're Stepping On My Bubble

social distancing - wtf?

So, SPACE. What is it? What does it even mean, “give me space”?

Literal, “step back and allow me to exist with a perception of no-contact buffer between ‘you and me’”?

Figurative “stop talking or moving or adding to my information input long enough for me to process on my own time-line”?

Feel free to leave loooong comments here about what this whole concept of “personal space” means to you…

For me, it’s nebulous, felt, ineffable.

I know what the experience of “space” has meant to me, scenarios when the perception of “space” in me gave me a reference point for “less space” or “no space”.

So abstract!

Here’s a concrete story: Parenting.

Most of my time on the mom job I had the sensation my head was filled with right ways to guide my kids, what I thought best based on who I “knew” them to be, what I wanted for them - safety and freedom, a sense of self-worth and grounded knowledge they are loved - unique and cherished, fitting in the whole - belonging to themselves first and all of us as essential.

After years of “instruction” - what I thought was the best way to “mom”, even the more laid back “guidance” that in retrospect was at least subtly manipulative, I had the felt experience of giving them true “space”.

That only came after I had worked through many of my personal questions and arrived at a comfort with myself…had more “space”. The rigid framework of my identity had fallen enough times for me to have more comfort with the unanswered questions of life, and openness to what life was presenting to me in each moment.

As if instead of me insisting how life was, I was asking - “how is life right now?”

That seemed to feel like “me” had more “space”…