When Tender Spots Connect (Part 1): Recognizing Tenderness in Ourselves and Others (with Anna Hornbostel)

Renae: Well, hey, Anna, thank you so much for joining us for this TraumaWise ministry Summit. I'm so glad to have you here.

Anna: Thank you very much for having me. It's such an important topic when people are interacting with each other in so many spaces, and especially the space of ministry, to have that trauma informed lens,

Renae: great safety for everybody, yeah, well, thank you so much. And for I've known you for a while now, for quite COVID, pre COVID, right? That's a new marker. I'd love for you to briefly introduce yourself to those who haven't met you before.

Anna: So I'm Anna hornbossel. I am an LMFT in California, in Orange County. I'm in private practice. So I am practicing solo. I mainly do telehealth. I'm also tbri practitioner. One of my hubs and the population that I work a lot with is grief. So those who are grieving, childlessness, infertility, any of the losses that can fall under that reproductive loss umbrella, and walk beside a lot of people who are experiencing that and then also general grief as they may find it impacting their life.

Renae: Well, thank you, and that's such important work. I've spent a lot of time in those spaces myself as both a chaplain and then as a emergency response person. And then also, yes, there's a cat in the background, and then also as, just as an industry person, I've heard like a leader that is a safe place for people to go to the unpacking of grief and loss is something that's really important, but maybe not something that we're really good at, especially in the church. So I think you'll have some things to talk about with that today, perhaps. So you know, the title of your talk is that tender spaces, I would our tender spots. I would love for you to when you talk about tender spots, what does that mean for you personally? What's that? What phrase mean?

Anna: So I know one of the things that we talked about is how navigating when our own grief and our own, you know, tender spots show up, and I like to say they kind of rub against each other sometimes, right? So what happens when we are the professional in the space, or the leader in the space, when our own tender spot rubs up against the person that we're trying to minister to, or their tender spots find one of ours. So those, those places where grief exists, I always say, you know, comfort disappointments are right. Like, I think it can be as simple as, hey, I had a fight with my husband this morning, and then I get into a meeting with somebody, and they're engaged, and I might be feeling a little hinder from that disagreement I had with my spouse that morning, even, you know, it can be a simple thing, it can be a huge thing. You know, somebody has lost a parent or a child. I know in infertility, sometimes hearing about somebody who has eight children, and they are in the depths of parenthood and all that that involves, and the sacrifices and the frustrations and things and somebody with infertility hears that is magic. How can you complain about having this wonderful, full life of children when I'm over here longing for just one, right? There's so many different ways that those tender spots show up in relationship and day to day interactions,

Renae: yeah, well, I mean, in in the ministry space, we're whether, whether we are in an official leadership title, or we're a volunteer, or we're just a community member, we we lead in in conversations like where we don't have to have that title or that role in order to be the person who is taking the. Somewhere or where we're guiding things to a certain place, and if in that that caring for one another, which is so important in a community, to care for each other well with with compassion, if we're not aware of or we have unresolved issues or triggers or, and I don't say anything that this is like, Oh no, they have issues. Like, we we all have issues, and we all have the potential to be triggered, right? But if we're not aware of it, it's much more likely it's going to happen, and it will be a little more devastating, because we want to have a strategy for how to get out of it, right?

Anna: Yeah. Like, what do you say if the person across from you has eight children and then they're complaining, and then they find out that the person sitting across from someone lost a baby three weeks ago, how are they going to feel potentially, and how does that change the dynamics of the interaction, of where the conversation might go, and being able to understand, wow, like I may have zero understanding of what this person has been through, and also my very life may be something that causes them, yeah, discomfort. Or, I'm

Renae: sorry, go ahead. Oh, I was gonna say our awkwardness, right? 06:27 I would say it's awkward, perfect,

Renae: just like that, like that moment, so and so, I like to point out to a lot of people, especially post COVID, since we brought that up that when we are experiencing a stress response to something in this day and age, in 2025 and this is being recorded, there is a very, very good chance that if it is related to trauma, stress, adversity, scarcity, any of those things. It's not just what's happening in 2025 that we're feeling. We're actually feeling things from the pandemic that have not yet been resolved. Can you speak to that a little bit more about what you might have seen or experienced, or how that plays out in the people that you're serving, and even for yourself, yeah,

Anna: I think, you know, you said it that scarcity, right? Like there's a this idea that something's going to happen and change our ability, either to, you know, exist how we previously existed, or that we're going to have a lack of resources. We're going to have a lack of safe, you know, we we talk about felt safety a lot as TBI practitioners, right? Which is, for those who don't know, just that idea of like, I can be safe and actually not feel safe and grief a lot of times, can be that way, right? Where we can be safe and walk into a room and actually not feel safe, because it could feel like a land minefield, right of oh, how am I going to interact with this person? They don't know that I had this loss. They don't know that I had this experience. And I don't really want to bring it up, because I don't want to be the you know is the SNL character, Debbie Downer character. I don't want to be the Debbie downer, so I'm gonna pretend that everything's okay. And also, there's elements when we're walking grief that we can't we can't hide. If we've lost the parents, if we've lost the child, if we people knew that there was a pregnancy and then there isn't a baby that comes home. There are elements of grief that we don't necessarily want to be highly visible, and yet they are. And then people who are, you know, being the receivers, right? So if I'm sitting in a room and somebody walks in, I don't know, do I do? I mentioned the loss. You know, culturally, we aren't super great about how do we how do we do that? Am I reminding them? Am I bringing up pain for them, if I talk about it? Am I experiencing my own loss? You know, again, even though it's been several years, possibly, am I exp you know, to your point, am I going back into feeling experiences that I've previously had that I haven't either fully dealt with or that will just always be reminded of? I'm pretty sure if we say COVID And then we do a word cloud, most of us are going to be able to get pretty quick back into oh my gosh, going on Zoom masks. There's probably some very common words that we would all access pretty quickly. And there may be some feelings that come up. With those as well.

Renae: When I appreciate to you talking about the, you know, the, what do I say? How do I approach it? We're not, we're not really well versed. And I think a part for me that has been, you know, for those who don't know, I have a family history of kiddos with complex developmental trauma, which the quickest way to find out if you have complex developmental trauma yourself is to introduce that in the form of children into your home through adoption and and if they have it, and you have it you didn't know, you will find out very quickly that you do. And so in that there the echoes of their loss was bumping right up against my own, and even the fact that I had not been able to process or even tell the truth about things that had happened because there was no space for it, and I can look at it now and say, my my experience of grief and loss is that it's been diminished. It was it there was not space for sorrow in my family of origin, there was not space for that emotional expression and and so I didn't know what to do with it and it so it came out all kinds of different ways. And so with my with my kids, that that loss of what was supposed to have been, with the story of our family, that we would be safe and together, and that there would be amazing healing, which there has been, and then there, there hasn't been that. I'm continually in this last cycle because of it, and it's not something I'm going to get over. I'm I'm living with it. I'm living with the joy and sorrow. But it, it feels very invisible. And so I wondered if you could talk a little bit about what you've even from your own experience of that invisibility and invalidity when it's diminished by people who are ready to see and make space for the the pain of the grief and loss.

Anna: It's it's those tender spots right lining up right at especially, I was thinking, gosh, the tender spots. Are you thinking, Gosh, I didn't want this for my children. I imagine if you could wave a magic wand, you would say, Hey, I would take away grief and loss from them. I think that's a very human thing that we do that we don't like to see other people suffer, and so out of that, sometimes to then speak to your own childhood comes. Sometimes that dismissive like, Well, maybe if we don't talk about it, it won't have an impact, or we it won't have meaning, because we won't give it meaning, right? There's some hope of controlling the narrative. And I think we haven't gotten great as a culture, and I'm going to say as a culture, either around this idea that we can give space to painful things, and that's all they need, is some space and some witnessing and some acknowledgement. And sometimes it's okay to say, hey, actually that that thing that you said that really hurt me. And sometimes that's the most terrifying thing to imagine doing, and then we walk away, and we go and lick our wounds. I know I've had both of those experiences where I say, Hey, I feel really empowered and safe right now to say you really didn't intend that message, that you said that phrasing or that word, or you just have never experienced reproductive loss. And so some of these things, I think of the when people say, just adopt, I think that's probably a universal phrase that people in both infertility and in adoptive constellations, go, Oh my gosh, if you only knew Yeah. And that one sometimes can be like, Hey, this is a great moment for me to give you some education. Or sometimes it can be a great moment of saying, I'm so thankful that you thought of me, and I'm going to go and now I have another meeting too. I'm going to quietly excuse um, there isn't a perfect response, right? It's really but then it's knowing our our needs, right? Because sometimes I say, oh, okay, somebody stuck on my grief. And it's um. I yelled at a woman, I'm not proud of it, but she said that the absolute worst thing she could think of was being pregnant. And I'm sure she had some experiences that she was trying that statement room, but I had just had a loss of a failed IVF cycle, and I was like, Absolutely not. That is not true. That is that is not true. Tender spots met, and I did not handle my tender spot the way that I should have. But also I can look at that as a learning opportunity and go, oh, when, when my grief gets stepped on, this is how I might respond, yeah. And so practicing through and finding safe people right, finding that about even if it's one safe person where I can say, hey, this thing happened, and it really upset me,

Renae: yeah, yeah. So what would you recommend the what are some ways that we could set up those type of structures when we're thinking about a ministry setting? One of the unfortunate pieces of ministry is the the more it is influenced by business culture, the more industrial it becomes, the more formulaic it becomes, the more task oriented it becomes, and sometimes that relational piece becomes a ministry, which boggles My mind that there's care ministries in a church, because the whole church should be a care ministry. 16:45 I will join you on that.

Renae: And so what if we think about that culture piece, we talk a bit like that in our faith culture that, again, taking cues from the American culture at large. I'm speaking specifically to that, because that's the context in which we're speaking. We're not good at briefing. Last number reef meant we give three to five days, maybe, if we're lucky, and that's not and then it's done, and then it's we're supposed to be done, yeah, and that's in service of an industrial complex, in service of a production mindset and has nothing to do with us as humans. And so I would love to hear if what are some ways that you might suggest that we could think about setting up those spaces across ministry. Again, not the designation of this ministry is responsible. We send them to the deacons or to the care committee, or whatever it happens to be. But what, what could we do?

Anna: I sometimes think, just starting with curiosity right around what might people be experienced? What assumptions Am I making when I'm sometimes I think I used to call the assumption of parenthood. Am I assuming every, you know, just to speak from from my own loss, but am I assuming every person in the room has the same experience? So if I'm setting up a Bible study question, I know one time I was in a women's Bible study, and Priscilla Schreier, I think is her, she's lovely, but she said, Oh, everybody here is going to be a grandma someday. And I was like, Nope, I am actually never going to be blessed with that experience. And just thinking she meant it in the warmest, kindest way. But she didn't think about maybe there's somebody in this space who isn't going to have this experience. And so I think, How can we say that you know? How you know, if we're talking in a women's group talking about other ways that women might nurture or that God might call them into different ministries or different things, and not having it be formulating, to go back to your point, is kind of fighting against some of that formula is, what are the assumptions? What are the shoulds right, if I come into a meeting, women should have babies, and that's where I'm starting from. Am I acknowledging the fact that there may be all sorts of being lived out in that sense?

Renae: Yeah, and I think there's with especially who I've learned in our family, we have one script that we say a lot, which is, I 100% know that that's what you're experiencing. I'm going to hold over here that it's not the full truth of of everything. Um. So that. So I'm not invalidating it. It's 100% true for you. And I'm also going to hold space for the other people are going to have different experiences of what of that same thing, and their experience is just as valid, right? And and that really bothers people sometimes, because they're like, How can you say there's more than one truth? I'm like, No, I'm saying there's a fullness of truth, and you talk about one little part of it, yeah.

Anna: And I think that we as humans, right? I always say we our brains, love to make meaning. We love to acknowledge patterns. We love to do this. That's one of the ways that we stay safe, right? And so one of the ways that we might stay safe is to decide that a family a certain way, or, you know, a woman acts a certain way, or a man that's a certain way. There's we could go down a list of those expectations that form, and it's out of that desire to be safe, to make predictions, to know that things are going to go a certain way. And I think grief and loss, right by its very nature, is the atom bomb that goes off and destroys expectations. Yes, and destroys and I think also being able to hold the space, but it gets messy. Mm, hmm. It grief is very messy. Or for the people who are directly impacted by whatever loss, and for those sometimes in the orbit around them, and being able to also just grief is messy.

Renae: Well, in its messy, um, the the you know, talk a little bit about the dismissal piece, and we know that we don't choose our attachment strategies for how we get our needs met, and people who gave them to us choose. There's others. When I say this, there's no shame or blame in it, up into the point that we are become aware of it, and once we become aware of it. That's where we get to choose. Am I going to default, and am I okay with that default, or is there a little more? Is there fullness that I would like to experience? Is there healing I would like to experience? And you know what people might decide they don't want to Okay, cool. Cool. You? Do you boo? Alright, you too, you boo. And when I think about the ministry of reconciliation that has been given to all believers, that's part of Scripture, this piece to me, of the grief and loss is not the the the incorrect, my word, incorrect version of resilience that we bounce back. There's, there's no such thing as bouncing back from these things, because we will never be the same. We actually are forever changed by loss, by betrayal, by by pain, by trauma, by adversity, because it's pushing on our capacities. And we don't bounce we don't bounce back from that. We either grow or we run. And so in that, it's that transcendence part that, that what you know, what? How am I going to to grow in this. And to me, that's, that's the ministry of reconciliation, of saying that it's not that I'm running from it or that I'm have to to bounce back from it or or stands firm against it. It's that this is going to change me, and this, it is an echo of death and resurrection and of of we just had Easter not too long ago. It's that echo of death and resurrection that's required for growth. And so how, when you're when you're thinking about that, these, you know, the disappointments we might have, or the betrayals that we might have. We don't want to push to triumphalism, which is like, God's going to use this that's not kind what are, what are that you've seen us hold space in good ways or the evening to people that,

Anna: yeah, I was, I will sometimes say, like, I'm going to hold the hope for you right now. I know you can't hold it for yourself that there is going to be an end to it. And speaking of Easter, I always love to point out Jesus wept blood in the garden. Right? He didn't like the adversary situation, and I always think, Gosh, and he modeled that for us, right? He modeled being human, because he was fully human and fully God. He modeled that grief that, you know, taking his safe people with him, like. And and then at the end, laying down his own things, and saying, Hey, Okay, God, okay, father, your will, not mine. And then, but not before, he had lamented, right? And I think that's a skill that we have kind of lost one of the most amazing moments. Actually, I will share two, and I might tear up and I'm It's okay. I was gonna say, I know I'm safe with you and everybody watching. I just always say I'm okay. I just still have tender spots. I was seeing a church play counselor during our infertility journey at one point, and we had gotten the news that our second IVF had failed, and I was in I sat table and I cried, and that is all I did. I think I said, you know, whatever I said to let her know that it had not worked, and I had no words. And I know not everybody is comfortable with reaching over and hugging someone. If you can just sit there. She just sat there and cried with me and hugged me for probably 20 minutes. I will never forget that gift. She didn't try to fix it. She didn't try. There was no fixing it in the moment. There was utter devastation and loss, but I was witness, and I was held and I was validated with no words, just being allowed to weep. It was amazing. And then I had a nurse, and she was asking me how I was doing, this is after a bunch of medical things, and I just started crying. And I said, Oh, I'm so sorry. If you give me a minute, I'll pull myself together, like I'm so sorry. This is so embarrassing. I'm so sorry. I can answer your question here in a minute. I'm tougher than this, right? I'm doing that whole diminishing my own dream to try to make her comfortable, right? And she looks at me, she goes, Oh no, you cry. You have been through so much. You deserve to just sit and cry. Yeah, those two gifts I take with me, and I think, gosh, they didn't have the right, perfect words. They didn't have they just held space for what I was going through. And that is such a gift. And being able to hold that space right? Takes being able to know your own tender spots. How do you feel about people crying in front of you? People have all manner of experiences related to that and traumas about when it's okay to cry and if it's okay to cry, and so being able to explore your own feelings about, how do I feel when someone's having a large reaction, and if I want to be able to sit and give a gift like that, what might I need to work on in myself to grow that capacity able to sit and witness it?