Story & Song: Holding the Space

Hello lovers!

Here's another love song to lullaby you gently into the new year. Enjoy!

The story behind Holding the Space

By Kristi Casey

Where did the idea for Holding the Space come from?

Steven and I tend to talk on the phone on nights we’re apart from one another. Our conversations encompass everything from philosophy to dad jokes. One night, we got on the topic of gratitude. We’d just celebrated one year of knowing and growing together. I woke up the next day and this song poured out of me before I finished breakfast.

What inspired the lyrics?

I can trace every line in this song back to something Steven or I said the night before. Take, for example, the first line: You opened the door and I walked into the room of your soul’s longing. Right before we met, Steven had told a friend he was opening the door to see who might be waiting for him. He had been wishing to meet different kinds of people. And boy did he ever.

When you love someone you want to minimize or eliminate anything that causes them pain. But Steven reminded me that storms that weather wood make us who we are.

Rumi wrote that you can be a ladder, a lifeboat, or a lighthouse. “I’m a lighthouse,” I told Steven. “Lighthouses aren’t only about safety,” he reminded me. “Lighthouses are warnings. They can also tell people to stay away.”

What’s Holding the Space about?

Holding the Space is about how liberating it is to bring your full self to a relationship and have a partner who’s comfortable enough with themselves to do the same.

It’s rare to find someone who can see who you are instead of who they want you to be. It takes a great deal of courage, vulnerability, and trust.

This song is also about unconditional love. There are always challenges and obstacles in life, but when you know someone has your back one-hundred percent, it’s a great blessing.

How the song came together

Our friend Jason was in the studio with us. I’d been playing and singing Holding the Space for days, ironing out the kinks, and couldn’t wait for them to hear it.

“Why don’t we record it,” Steven suggested. “We don’t have to share it with anyone.”

“And this time,” Jason said, “really attack your guitar.” (He’s a big fan of playing loud guitar.)

I played it. Steven and Jason said I’d killed it. We debated releasing it as is. But a couple of weeks later, we added some harmonies, being careful to “hold” enough space for the original rawness to shine through.

Fun fact about Holding the Space

Steven is a big fan of assonance: the practice of rhyming vowel sounds rather than consonants. I usually rhyme the consonants—it makes it easier for an audience to sing along, but it also makes lyrics more predictable.

Because this song was so inspired by Steven’s words, I used his rhyming schematic as my guide. You’ll find words that directly rhyme within the same phrase, but in this song, the words that rhyme at the end of lines are mostly assonance-based.

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