Holding Breath

The grace of advent and discovering perspectives on restraint, creativity and rediscovering one's voice

Early this morning, I found myself taking the time to look at the moments in my life that have stretched me into a shape that I’m learning how to befriend. Advent for me, has always found its way of slowing time just enough for what has been held back to surface. Advent as I am beginning to realize this year, does not rush resolution; it waits with what is unfinished. It honors longing without demanding answers. As the world rehearses light, I become more aware of the places in me that learned to dim itself, to stay careful, measured, restrained.

This season invites me not to do any fixing but of tending to a well of experiences that I have been holding in but have not fully made sense of. Like a batch of photographs tied together by twine. Unsorted, a little unkempt, but snapshots of what moments have marked me in these seasons of learning to become more and more myself. So I sit with them honestly, to notice where breath was paused and voice softened in the name of love, work, or faithfulness.

Speaking carefully

The past couple of years has been a season where I learned how to speak carefully. Not because I had nothing to say, but because saying it cost too much. So I became fluent in restraint. People called it wisdom. My body called it holding its breath.

I learned to hold my breath in rooms where discernment was welcomed but authorship was delicate.
In spaces where I was invited to think deeply, feel widely, and carry complexity, but not always to name its cost. I learned it while stewarding vision from beside the work, not fully inside my own authority.

Where authority did not need to announce itself, and my own sense of leadership had not yet learned how to stand unborrowed.

So I practiced proximity instead of presence, and let my voice arrive quietly. Where my breath adjusted before my words ever did. Where timing mattered more than truth, and harmony was prized over resonance.

I learned it in spaces where work and trust are woven closely together. The kind that asks for your whole mind and heart, yet quietly teaches you which parts must arrive already tempered and softened. So my breath learned to pause. Not from fear, but from attunement. I became skilled at sensing when to exhale and when to stay still. Over time, stillness became habit. My body adapted before my words could object.

Restraint protected me from being misunderstood in spaces that mattered to me. It shielded the work, the relationships, the fragile ecosystem of meaning I was building. It protected me from being seen as “too much,” from disrupting a story larger than my own.

Restraint also protected my tenderness. It kept my disappointment from turning into bitterness, my frustration from becoming judgment. It allowed me to keep showing up with care even when parts of me felt unseen. But what it protected me from externally, it slowly cost me internally. Because restraint, when practiced too long, doesn’t just guard the heart, it forgets how to let it breathe.

Guarding the Heart

Guarding my heart kept me from collapsing, but it also kept me from expanding. What began as wisdom slowly became habit. And habit, over time, began to feel like distance, from my own longing, from my creativity, from the part of me that once trusted joy without needing to justify it. I learned how to stay composed, discerning, steady, even faithful, but I also learned how to keep my inner life carefully managed. The guarding that once helped me remain loving began to limit my range of motion. I could still care deeply, but from behind a watchful stance. I could still create, but only in ways that felt safe, measured, explainable. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, my heart learned how to stay protected even when no immediate danger was present.

Guarding my heart shaped not only how I created, but how I related. My imagination learned to move along safe paths, to offer what could be received without complication. I learned to translate feeling into something more palatable, to edit instinct before it reached the page or the room. In relationships, I practiced a similar care, present, attentive, generous, yet rarely unguarded. I learned how to be near without fully arriving, how to stay connected without placing too much weight on anyone else or allowing too much weight to be placed on me. What once felt like maturity slowly became a narrowing. Creativity lost some of its playfulness. Intimacy learned to hover just shy of risk. And though I was still showing up, still loving, still giving, something in me remained held back—waiting for a signal that it was safe to be fully seen, fully felt, fully expressed again.

Making Room

Advent does not ask me to abandon what I have learned. It asks me to listen for what is ready now. I am still discerning, still thoughtful, still inclined toward care—but I am also beginning to sense where guarding can soften into welcome. Where watchfulness can give way to trust. The heart I protected so carefully is not wrong for having learned vigilance; it is simply ready for a different posture. One that allows breath to deepen again. One that lets creativity return without apology. One that permits closeness without excessive rehearsal or restraint.

This is not a dramatic opening of gates. It is quieter than that. A loosening. A willingness to stay with what stirs instead of immediately tempering it. To let joy appear without explanation. To let my voice arrive not perfectly formed, but honest and alive. Advent reminds me that light does not force its way in—it is welcomed, prepared for, received. And so I practice making room. For my own authority to stand unborrowed. For creativity to play again. For relationships that do not require me to disappear in order to belong. What has been guarded can now be tended. What has been held can learn how to breathe. And what has been waiting can finally begin to sing.