What Does It Mean to Hold Yourself?

When someone asks you what it means to be "held," what comes to mind? Perhaps you picture an embrace by your partner, or hug from your parents or siblings... or perhaps holding your baby while they simultaneously hold you back. Or you remember a specific moment when you felt held by a God of your own understanding or quite literally the earth beneath your feet.

But what if being held begins with us first? What if the foundation of support is actually much simpler—and yet much deeper—than we realize or have been led to believe? As mothers (women), we are so conditioned to look outward for rescue, waiting for someone else to step in and hold us. I mean any woman raised on Disney knows this.... Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty all have a prince that rescues them. These are the storylines that sold us the lie that the prince or someone is going to sweep us off our feet, and hold us and take our cares away.

There is no such thing... it is simply the relationship you have with you...

Being held starts with the ability to meet ourselves first. It’s about naming and knowing our own desires, needs, and wants before we look outward for someone to tell us what they are.

When we understand our own inner landscape, we completely change the way we ask for help, or allow others to hold us. Instead of outsourcing as a way to escape responsibility, there is a way to outsource in a way to resource and enrich your life.

That is what I am sharing about today. Learning how to outsource as a way to resource our lives.

The Mom Self-Care Trap: Outsourcing vs. True Resourcing

There is a trap so many of us fall into: following someone else’s "menu" of self resourcing aka self care, and this works for them and that is why they shared it... AND if you're like me you ran with it and committed and felt more drained and exhausted rather than resourced.

Sometimes we delegate tasks because we think we should, yet we don't feel any better for it. The calendar and schedule is cleared and more spacious but the internal static is still there.

I know I have been guilty of outsourcing and following that standard menu, only to find it wasn't actually resourcing me.
The big question we have to ask is: Does this outsourcing actually resource me, does it allow for my nervous system (aka regulation system) to come into a rested, relaxed, expansive way of being? Or does it stress me out, cause me anxiety, create more worry?

It can be tough to distinguish what things you are outsourcing and know if it is truly filling your cup.
For a long time, I just did what "others" did for self-care or delegation. At one point I thought sleeping in, staying up late, binging a new TV show, or having a glass of wine. None of these are innately wrong and I can still get sucked into a good TV show and I now know how to check in and attune.

And I also outsource and feel fully resourced for days after our housekeepers come. I am filled with tenderness and gratitude when I come home after the housekeepers come. Truly, they resource me for days! I feel weightless like a cloud, and my whole system can lean in and rest. My capacity for more presence increases ten fold.
Another way this can play out... something as simple as cooking. One might outsource cooking to their partner to take a load off their plate. But what if cooking is actually the thing that nourishes their soul? In that case, they've removed a task, but they haven't actually resourced themselves. They've cleared an hour on the clock, but how did they use that time to feel restored.. and do this for more than a day and give the take over completely... have they traded emptiness for an internal emptiness.

Why Modern Mothers Give Away What Feeds Us

How do we—and I say we because I mean me too—accidentally give away the very things that actually fuel us? Here are my thoughts:

We are on the back burner. We are so accustomed to putting ourselves last and running on empty that keeping tasks that bring us joy and restores us feels completely foreign.
We are flying blind. We are genuinely unaware or unable to distinguish what actively drains us versus what restores, fuels us and offers aliveness.
The fuel feels like a load. Sometimes the thing that fuels us also carries a logistical weight, and we feel like we just can't carry one more thing. Because choosing it requires advocating, possible tantrums, feelings of guilt. It feels like choosing what we want and don't want at the exact same time. It's the double bind feeling.

The Motherhood Double Bind: Navigating Conflicting Desires

I watched my daughter dance between these two camps the other day, and it is a perfect mirror for what we navigate as mothers. She was distressed and stuck in the double bind. She wanted to get dressed for the day, but she didn't want to do it right then. She wanted to get dressed to go to the store with her dad, but she wanted to keep playing.

She knew fully well what she wanted—she wanted both. Sitting with her while she decided what she wanted more, and what she was willing to let go of, negotiate and accept in order to choose so she did not stay stuck, is the exact same messy nuance we have to navigate in our own lives.

Especially as mothers and women. We are constantly navigating this exact same dance. We have to sit with ourselves and decide what we want more, and what we are willing to let go of, grow up in, or accept in order to choose what will resource us and hold us.

I experienced this with my morning walks. Early morning walks bring me great joy—the sounds of the birds, the smell of the earth waking up, the various whiffs of beautiful flowers, the sun coming into full view dancing with the trees creating shadows that feel like glitter. These walks are so centering and ground me—they resource me for the whole day.

And I also want to be there when my kids wake up for early those morning cuddles, groggy voice and messy hair and any words that spill out that melt my heart and bring me joy. And if I stay until they wake up I am often met with pleas to stay mama, them holding my held or feet down or them asking to come with me. So the question I ask myself on a daily basis is what do I desire today and I choose that. It's not about being rigid it is about being receptive, restored and resourced.
Today, as I was choosing to go on that morning walk. My kids randomly woke up early, and one of them begged to come with me. I said yes. I made the choice to keep the walk and invited her into my experience with her company and you know what? We were both held and resourced. However the day before my youngest woke up and I was pealing him off my feet as he was preventing me from putting on my shoes while he kept saying “build with me mama - no walk.” I invited him he said no and I went on the walk.

Nervous System Regulation: Creating a Safe Container in Motherhood

In the thick of motherhood, we naturally become the ultimate containers for everyone else’s experiences. We hold the big emotions, the shifting schedules, the physical, mental and emotional weight of growing and nurturing life. Yet, so often, our own inner landscape becomes a forgotten terrain. We live on the surface of our days, reacting rather than responding. I have a blog post on that ____

To hold yourself means to intentionally slow down enough to cultivate internal safety. When we don’t know how to do this, our partnerships and children bear the brunt of it. We reach a breaking point and begin "spilling" our overstimulated nervous systems onto those around us.

But true support isn't about finding a dumpster for our stress, or spilling over onto others for them to hold. It’s about establishing a safe container within ourselves so that our nervous systems can open, soften, and step into regulation (parasympathetic). When we take responsibility for our own regulation, our range to hold ourselves grows.

The reflection question we have to ask is: Does this action create more capacity in my nervous system, or does it just leave me feeling empty in a different way? Does this action support my container in being able to hold it, not outsource or look outward to someone else to hold me before I've even tried to hold myself? Am I spilling over onto others and expecting them to hold me which creates a range of other emotions?

And some days, depending on what we have already held, the answer could change completely. And sometimes we need the extra support and will spill on others. I believe it is the gift of being in community and having a village to support us in holding ourselves. And the responsibility is that we are holding ourselves first. If we are living in the Princess mindset wanting someone to hold us while we deny responsibility to ourselves while we "stand there and look pretty," well then I don't think you will ever truly feel held.

So how does one move from outsourcing tasks or themselves to resourcing through outsourcing?

handling Big Emotions: Numbing vs. Nourishing After Parenting Moments

It’s about knowing your energy and seeing what drains you versus what fills you. I can tell the tasks that drain me directly in my body. Sometimes that's par for the course of life and motherhood. A sudden shift in the energetic of my home like my kid reacting and accidentally hurting their sibling... this jolts my system. I can hold them and I will need to hold myself (in ways that resource me).
And look—I don't do this perfectly. Good thing because perfect is booorring.
Just this past weekend, my daughters had escalated emotions around those coloring tablecloths. My eldest said it was hers from a year and a half ago and she happened to find it (our garage is a total treasure hunt for lost crafts). Anyways, she completely lost it when her brother colored on it. Now no one—and I mean no one—was allowed to color on it. That was her boundary—yes, she used that exact word. If they did color on it, it had to be in the specific color she chose.

Cue 20-plus minutes of listening, affirming, and negotiating with her and my middle daughter through all the emotions—waves of anger, injustice, sadness, and arriving to a place of sharing this one while also getting her one that is just hers (because she is allowed to have something fully for herself).

After that? I proceeded to scroll on my phone for 10 minutes.

Did I come out of that scroll feeling more restored or fulfilled? No. I felt half-buzzy and scattered. This is the ultimate example of choosing an easy "check-out" over true resourcing. In the moment it felt like resourcing because I didn't feel like I had anything to give to myself—the effort to take space while not be interrupted... We survive a heavy parenting moment, grab our phone for a "break," and mistake numbing for nourishing.

Somatic Tools for Nervous System Regulation and Receptivity

I still dump. I still vent. Sometimes holding everything feels less like a container and more like a total collapse. But over the past year, I have actively practiced tools to expand my ability to hold and be receptive, moving away from that place of collapse.

If you are looking to build your own toolkit, these are the exact practices in my rotation:

EFT Tapping
Tracing my hand so slowly, back and forth, until I feel my system soften and exhale.
Carly Rae’s work has completely transformed my life—this is a beautiful, high-touch practice.
Neuro Care Apex: Has taught me the somatic tools to expand my ability to hold myself.
Meditating: my favorites are a Zen Mind and The Inward Journey.
Recording a voice memo to myself just to speak it out loud and get it out.
Sitting with the parts of me that just want to be heard and witnessed.
Dancing and moving my body - this moves so much!!
Allowing my emotions to flow - along with the physical expression of them like crying, lion.
Using sound to vibrate and settle my system (like vooo, huuuummmm, or ssssssss).

Setting the Stage for Others to Enter As a Resource, Not as the Ones Responsible...

When you master the mechanics of holding yourself, you completely rewrite the dynamics of your relationships. You stop asking your partner, your friends, or your village to do the internal work you won't do for yourself.

When I expect our friends, family, partners to fix my dysregulation, i hand them an impossible job. I enter my relationships from a place of depletion, treating the people we love like emergency escape goats and unintentionally use them - creating friction in the relationship and likely draining them too.

And when I anchor my own system first, I step out of that frantic cycle. I am not asking them to rescue me; I am inviting them to meet me. I stop demanding that they do the work for me and instead I create a sovereign space where both of us can actually connect, lean in, and be met as equals. This is where receiving comes in and allowing them to also hold you.

Your Next Step: An Audit for the Unheld Mother

To move this from a concept into your actual, daily life, let’s look at the practical application:

Look at what you've delegated. Look at the ways you outsource and see if you are feeling rested, restored, relaxed and regulated. Is it actually helping, or did you accidentally give away a piece of your creative joy or create more stress?
Check-In Rituals: Find a way to "meet yourself" at the start of the day before the world tells you who to be. Maybe this is meditating, gratitude, putting your hands on your body, journaling, eyes on the sun feet on the ground...
Track what you've handed over. What is one task or ritual you have completely given away that you actually need to take back because it holds the key to your creative joy, aliveness, and restoration? (Are you trading a busy schedule for an internal emptiness?)
Audit how you ask for support. When you share your stress or request help from your partner, friends, or village, are you communicating a clear, resourced need? Or are you collapse-dumping an unregulated nervous system onto them and expecting them to fix it?

Being held by the world is a beautiful gift. But learning to hold yourself? That is the greatest gift you can ever give to yourself, and to the people you love.

Space to Be Held: Postpartum Support and Motherhood Community

Are you ready to step into a space of communal support where you can truly practice this integration?

True support requires us to move away from isolated parenting and actively step into an intentional, shared ecosystem. We have to stop waiting for a passive village to appear and instead learn how to become active, resourced villagers for one another. The Village Reimagined is a 6 week cohort for community and connection. to get the details click here.

Together with the wonderful Stephanie Hupp, I am offering a day immersion for postpartum women called HELD—a dedicated space where you finally get to receive holding for the woman inside the mother. You are fully capable of holding your own system, but you were never meant to do it entirely alone. To learn more and claim your space in this container check it out here.

I support women in their becoming as mothers, holding them as they learn to hold someone else. You are not dropping yourself in postpartum; you are outsourcing your holding you while you integrate yourself as a mother and embrace your beautiful baby. If you want to dive deeper and learn more begin with my downloadable guide - Village Mapping Guidebook.

What Does It Mean to Hold Yourself? | Overcoming Motherhood Burnout