As you change or grow, the person you are becoming still lives in the same spaces as the person you were.
Changing towards an aligned, more holistic way of being can mean things get…stranger. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but a feeling of foreignness enters and doesn’t leave for a while.
This interim period is often called a liminal space, indicating you’re at a threshold.
There are few answers, many questions.
Less certainty, more confusion.
More loss, less stability.
“Gradually, this gap, this distance between how things were and how I wanted them to be, began to undermine me.”
Rachel Cusk
The first time in this space is the toughest, because “hey, I thought things would feel good”. But as you become more present, more is presented to you. You’re offered a choice. Keep going or turn back?
It’s not that binary though, because once you’ve grown into a new way of being, you are being something new, something even foreign to that person you used to be.
It’s natural that the symptoms of the liminal space would be confusion or loss.
Imagine being dropped in a country you’ve never been to and asked to make your way back home. What is even home now?
Knowing you are in a liminal space can make all the difference.
You’re waiting. Simply waiting.
For what? The confusion to end? For this new way of being to feel normal? To know how long this will last? These are all also desires of who you used to be, and accepting (not resisting or avoiding) them offers another path.
“We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.”
Joan Didion
Less certainty, more love.
More loss, less fear.
Few answers, much patience.
Embodying the liminal space, fully experiencing the waiting room is also a choice.
You’re no longer waiting to be called because that’s also a way of being. You simply are being where you are.
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