Held and Holding Each Other

At Highlands Church in Denver, Colorado, belonging is taken seriously. Erin Reyes serves as the church’s Belonging Coordinator, helping people find connection in a congregation known for its commitment to welcome. When the Austin Story Project Story Circle became one of the church’s winter small groups, she expected people would enjoy it. What surprised her was how quickly people who already knew each other could discover that there were still stories waiting to be told.

The Tuesday morning group met in a quiet corner of the church. Most of the women were retired. Some had known each other for five, six, or even ten years. They gathered around mugs of tea in a small room filled with donated furniture that looked more like office space than sacred space. Outside, the church carried on with its usual rhythm. But on Tuesday mornings at 10:30, the hallways were mostly empty, and for ninety minutes the room seemed to become something different.

Week after week, the women began entering what Erin described as “a different kind of space.” They would gather, take a few breaths, and settle into the grounding practices together. Then, for an hour and a half, they inhabited a way of being that felt increasingly rare in the rest of their lives. It was a space apart from the pace and pressures of the day, one that many of them seemed hungry for. There, stories could be shared without interruption, vulnerability could emerge without being forced, and people found themselves, in Erin’s words, “really held and holding each other.”

The format appeared simple enough. Each person would have five minutes to tell a story prompted by a question. No interruptions. No follow-up questions. No fixing. Just listening.

Five minutes did not sound like much.  And yet week after week, the women found themselves learning things they had never known about one another.

What surprised them most was not simply the vulnerability of others. It was their own.

Stories surfaced that had remained mostly unspoken. People who expected to share something light found themselves speaking more honestly than they intended. The structure created an unusual kind of safety. Knowing that no one would interrogate or analyze what had been said gave people permission to tell the story that wanted to be told.

Erin noticed it happening in herself as well.

As both facilitator and participant, she entered each gathering carrying the normal pace and pressures of life. Then the group would settle into silence, take a few breaths, and enter what she came to think of as a different kind of space. Not separate from reality, but deeper within it. A place that did not exist in the rest of the day.

The deepest moment came during the session centered on suffering and death.

Knowing the theme would touch tender places, Erin approached that gathering with extra intention. She encouraged participants not to feel obligated to tell their hardest story. They could share whatever felt right for that moment. The invitation was not to relive every wound but to listen for what wanted to be shared here and now.

As the stories unfolded, Erin found herself unexpectedly emotional, telling a story about the end of a cherished season of life and the loss that accompanied it. Then the stories continued around the circle.

One woman spoke about grief she had carried quietly for years. Another shared the death of a relationship. Then a participant who had initially decided not to speak about her deepest losses heard Mary tell the story of Jesus’s death.

Something shifted.

She began talking about the death of a child.

The room listened.

No one rushed in with answers. No one tried to make the pain smaller. The group simply held the story together.

Later, Erin would struggle to describe exactly what happened in those moments. What she remembered most was the feeling of being both held and holding one another at the same time.

For a group of women who had known each other for years, it turned out there was still more to discover. Five minutes was enough time for stories to deepen. Enough time for strangers to become friends and friends to become companions. Enough time for an ordinary room in a quiet church to become sacred space.

And enough time for people to discover that beneath the surface of familiar lives, there are always deeper stories waiting to be heard.