Welcome to Day 23.

We’ve moved through over three weeks together now in practice, which can feel a bit like when you undertake a big closet clean out or a Marie Kondo moment. You’ve decided you’re doing this. You’ve started doing this. You’ve pulled everything out of the closet. And now you have to muster the energy to go through it, to decide what to keep and put back in carefully, and what to give away. You’re halfway through. Definitely in it. And definitely not close to “done.”

There's a word for this middle point.

Liminal.

I first read the word in Terry Tempest Williams's memoir When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice, where she writes, among many beautiful things: "Liminal. A threshold. My body between worlds."

And it captured me. Gave me letters to string together for that in-between, transitional place I often (always?) seem to find myself in.

Liminal.

Or

Liminality.

Say these words out loud, let them roll around in your mouth.

And if you don't already feel what they mean, you are now beckoned to discover.

Liminal comes from the Latin for "threshold."

It holds not only the experience of passing through, but also the qualities of uncertainty, even disorientation, that can mark the middle of a rite of passage.

When you no longer hold the old title and rituals of the former state but have not yet completed the rite, have not yet walked through the doorway into what's next.

Remember back to the summer vacation between grades? You're no longer... an eighth-grader. Not yet a high-schooler.

The natural preparation period of pregnancy is liminal, particularly with a first child. No longer not a parent, not quite yet a parent.

Liminality holds the process of becoming, fraught, at times, with all its ambiguity.

Perhaps this moment in time feels like a liminal one for you too.

We're still in the doorway, hindsight might show us what we're leaving behind, but it's not quite time to pick up the reigns of what's next.

If you're feeling any ambiguity right now, perhaps you can place it in the container of liminality.

"There's a word for this!"

A revelation that makes me feel so much better about the messy middle of things.

I wonder how this feels for you?

To the middle of things,
Cath

Meditation: Keep going with Nadi Shodana below. You can safely and wisely keep edging your way into more rounds and cycles. Remember, there’s 3 cycles of 9 rounds for 20 minutes of meditation below. Go at your own pace.

Reflection: Are you in a liminal place right now?