Finding What Keeps You Steady When Life Shifts

I often use this analogy with my clients: our life is like a house on stilts by the beach. I’ve

attached a photo if you’ve never seen one. It’s a house on wood beams, higher than everything

around it. The house is elevated due to its surroundings: the sand, the wind, and the water. It’s

raised higher for stability and safety.

We as people require some level of grounding. We must have things in place, to keep us upright

for when life’s challenges hit. We require some form of stability, to hold us steady and help us to

feel safe. When our stilts aren’t built or if one is crumbling, our whole house will feel like it’s

falling. When all of our stilts are solid, so are we.

When I teach clients about their stilts, I’ll often give examples of mine. Currently, the 4 stilts

holding up my house are different than they might have been even a year ago and that’s

important to note. For this exercise, I might share that my current 4 foundational pieces holding

my person steady are: quality time with my husband, enjoying this stage of parenthood, reading,

and leaning into what my body needs. I’ve created my stilts out of things that haven’t always felt

good and have rocked my world. We don’t notice we have stilts until one isn’t there or has failed

us. We notice them, like most things, when we need them.

Clients often jump in by identifying their own. Friendships, updating their houses, finances,

motherhood, careers, travel, hobbies, the list goes on and on. Anything can be a stilt. These are

the things that we want to pour into and in turn, feel grounded in. They are the parts of our life

that make us as a whole human. I’ll ask clients to ponder, “What are you grounded in?” or, “what

fills your cup and makes you feel safe?” Often, what we think holds up our identity isn’t at all

what we want or maybe isn’t true. This part of the process requires acknowledging and sitting

with who we are and being okay with it.

Maybe, we’d always thought motherhood would feel euphoric and satisfy that part of “who am

I?” but in sitting on our stilts, we realize that our career feels more like a piece of our identity.

Maybe, we’ve always loved to travel and see the world, but now, for whatever reason that’s no

longer our focus. Doing this activity helps us verbally and visually (if you are drawing your house

out) to see who you are focusing on and why.

The hard part with this is just because motherhood or our career doesn’t feel integral to our

identity, we still have obligations. We’ve signed up for these roles and we also need money

(dang it). The good news about houses is most often we don’t notice the foundation. We might

not feel grounded in motherhood, but it’s that big bay window where we watch the world from.

It’s the most interesting part of the home. It’s noticeable. We don’t have to have it be our

grounding force. It doesn’t mean that we aren’t good moms or wives or whatever the thing is

that doesn’t create our identity. Not feeling grounded in your life partner doesn’t mean you ditch

them, it means you have your identity placed on the supports around you so that you can be a

good partner back.

Sometimes some clients will easily identify 14 stilts (okay I’m being facetious but you know who

you are). These clients will identify that ALL major life themes are grounding and important and

they need them all to hold up their house. All of these things feel safe and needed. Which will

then require another layer of exploring ourselves. This part will be the place where we have to

decide what’s most important to our life and what items take the most priority. We can’t have 14

stilts because we don’t have enough of ourselves to pour into all of them. We can’t have 14 stilts

because, hello, anxiety.

Examples of this might be: I want to be a good friend, respond when people reach out, make

plans and be available. I also want to be an active partner, scheduling date nights and initiating

intimacy. I want to grow in my career and be patient with my children. I want to ensure we go on

a vacation at least once a year and that we have 3-6 months of expenses if there is an

emergency. And oh yeah, I want to lose 13 pounds. The idea is if I had all those “stilts” set up,

I’d be whole.

Identifying that our brain can only focus on a few different areas in life at a time can be scary

and freeing. It rewrites our narrative that our car must be clean and we must have abs. It

reinforces that being present is more emotionally valuable than being perfect.

So as you go about identifying your “stilts” look at your life as a whole. What needs cut down?

What needs to be built up? Where do we pour into something and where do we say, I’m okay

enjoying this but not making it my identity. Find your foundation, and stand proudly on it. Set

boundaries around the things that don’t ground you and celebrate the areas that do. When we

see all the extras as lovely to have or the beautiful parts, we often can ground ourselves in

actually living.