Let’s get acquainted.
Hi there! We are so glad you are here.
Welcome to our small corner of this huge and wonderful (and often overwhelming) internet. The Holding Space Birth & Wellness Cooperative is proud to host a blog, titled “Transitions,” as a one stop shop where we can all talk about those questions we google at 3 am when we can’t sleep. As women, our bodies, our hormones, our roles, and our identities are in a constant state of change and transition throughout our lifecycle. So many of these normal life transitions, from puberty to childbirth to motherhood to menopause, are met with silence or shame or unanswered questions. This has to change! We are here to start the conversations, to answer the questions, and to make you feel a little less alone and a whole lot more supported.
To begin, let’s start with an introduction! My name is Erin Delaney and I, along with Miranda Montellano, founded The Holding Space, with big dreams of creating a physical space in our community of Anacortes as well as a virtual space for women and families to feel safe, heard, and supported. I met Miranda when I moved back to Anacortes, WA in 2020 after living on the east coast for 4 years. The last time I had lived in Anacortes from 2012-2016, I was single, had no kids, and was flying multi-million dollar airplanes for the Navy, stationed out of NAS Whidbey Island. I experienced intense training and long work days and deployments on short notice. I very much loved my time in the Navy and felt I was working very hard on a daily basis in an extremely challenging and equally rewarding profession. Fast forward through getting married to my wonderful husband Sean (also a Navy pilot), and having 3 kids…and I can tell you unequivocally that being a mom is WAY harder (and also more rewarding) than flying airplanes.
As a Navy veteran herself and former emergency flight nurse, Miranda shares this sentiment. She recounted a story to me during one of my appointments, in which she remembers being deployed to Iraq when her children were 3 and 7 years old. The difficulty of leaving young children at home was huge, but counterbalanced by the demands of another important job needing to be completed. While walking from her barracks after changing from a workout, to the galley to eat a meal (that someone else cooked) she remembers a sense of feeling like she was on a vacation! Of course, she didn’t want to be away from her children and she missed them immensely, but at the same time, life somehow seemed simpler on a combat deployment. There were two main responsibilities: take care of herself and do her job. This is something Miranda shares with struggling mothers: How crazy is it that a deployment to Iraq as a trauma and flight nurse felt less stressful than normal life at home with two children? We talk about this not to diminish our military and the very important job service members do on a daily basis, but to highlight how HARD motherhood is! Add in today’s lack of the traditional village of family and friends that women used to rely on for centuries, and this job can feel nearly impossible at times.
Many more conversations and shared experiences later, the idea of the Holding Space Birth & Wellness Cooperative took shape. We have poured our time and resources into forming this community-led 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that works in cooperation with for-profit businesses in the community to accomplish a shared mission of supporting, educating, and serving women and families through their most transformative life events. Both in person and virtually, we strive to create an environment of awareness that provides comfort, safety, and compassion for all. We welcome you. We hold space for you.
Love,
Erin