When I was a girl one of my favorite things was to be allowed to remain at the table with all of my aunts and uncles to listen to their stories and opinions and jokes. My mother, born in 1925, was the youngest of 7 children raised in Chicago by a single mother. All four of the boys had gone off to the war and thanks be to God, they had all returned. The girls, my mother and her sisters, were educated, interesting and talented women and all but one, my Aunt Kay, had married interesting, worthwhile men. The family would gather at my grandmother’s house for dinner or Sunday brunch each week and while my cousins preferred to be excused as quickly as possible, I was desperate to remain, to listen and to learn.

My uncle Jack (youngest boy) used to burp unabashedly at the table and when my Aunt Kay
(oldest child) would turn her extremely disapproving gaze his way and begin to “tsk, tsk, tsk” he would wink in my direction and say “C’mon Kay, there’s more room on the outside” and we would all laugh a bit too hard struggling as we did under the weight of Aunt Kay’s formality. “More room on the outside,” was also his response to any and all other releases and explosions from family arguments to hiccups.

Once I found myself doubled over vomiting into a patch of Lily of the Valley behind to the public library. Too much cotton candy and a chocolate malt at the Park Ridge Summer Fun Fest followed by a ride on the Tilt-A-Whirl had been my undoing. Uncle Jack stood next to and slightly behind his retching niece with his giant basket-ball-palming left hand holding fast to the waist band of my shorts to prevent me from pitching into my own mess. After every shudder he would say, “…don’t worry sweetie, there’s more room on the outside.”

He was right. I felt ever so much better with that concoction out of me and onto the lilies. There was way more room out there than there was in my 8 year-old stomach.

More room on the outside is a maxim that I have used for years with all clients, adults and children alike, when we talk about their anxieties and emotions and the desire to keep those emotions contained. Many people are convinced that showing emotion or speaking the truth will be the one thing that makes their situation worse or their child struggle more or their spouse leave. I’ve personally never seen it happen. There is very little room on the inside of a human, even less if you focus on the finite space between your ears.

There is WAY MORE ROOM on the outside. Not just physical space, but emotional space and there are people too, people who care and have training and experience and know how to be helpful and supportive and kind. I know that it can be overwhelmingly difficult to open your heart and your mouth and let your feelings and fears out into the world. It seems so much easier to close the lid of that box of anxious voices and shove it to the back of the closet, but they won’t stay quiet. Your anxieties and emotions will call to you like that creepy clown in the novel IT and you will have no choice but to open the box or sell your house and move away from your neighborhood entirely and even then the movers might just grab that stupid box and throw it into their truck at the last minute and there you are settling into your new space when you hear a familiar call coming from that box. Damn that box.

So, think about the fact that my Uncle Jack was right and not just about belches. There is so much more room on the outside and you will feel so much better once you let it out. We can go slowly and take great care and I will be right there with you trying to keep you from pitching forward into your own mess again.