The Power Of Being Held

As founders, we are often in our heads.

Solving problems. Running teams. Planning launches. Holding space for everyone else.

Even our own healing becomes something to manage. Another item to analyse, understand, or fix.

But what if healing is not something to work on?

What if it is something to allow?

Back in 2016, I walked the Camino. It was meant to be a reset, a break from the thinking mind.

One afternoon, I was walking alongside a man named Philippe, listening to an audiobook about healing the mother wound.

It described how some wounds are not resolved by insight or awareness.

They are not always healed through words or being seen.

Sometimes, they are healed by being felt.

Not fixed. Not processed. Simply felt.

So I turned to Philippe and said something unusual.

There is an exercise in this book. It is not romantic. It is just about being held.

Would you hold me?

And he said, “I’ll ask my wife.”

The next day, he came back and said, “She said yes.”

Each evening, after our walks, he would hold me.

No fixing. No talking. No advice.

Just a quiet presence.

And something shifted in me.

Something I did not even know was asking to be felt.

As founders, we carry so much.

We get used to bracing.

To being the strong one.

The capable one.

But under the surface, our nervous systems are often asking for softness.

Not solutions.

Presence.

That moment on the Camino reminded me of this.

And years later, when I was pregnant with my daughter, we were choosing names.

I said to Aaron, “What about Bonnie?”

And he said, “I love it.”

Bonnie was Philippe’s wife. The one who said yes. The one who gave permission for a simple act of kindness that I still carry with me.

Sometimes healing is not a breakthrough or a breakthrough strategy.

Sometimes it is in the moment you let yourself soften.

To be held by something. Or someone.

To stop bracing.

To let your system catch up to your soul.

So if you are building something big right now, I invite you to ask:

What part of me is asking to be felt today?

Not fixed.

Felt.

Tanya Cross

Leadership Coach & The Coaches’ Coach

Master Certified Demartini Method Facilitator

BAppSoSc (Counselling)

The Coaches’ Coach (TCC)

Maximum Growth