After an Ending

Entering Liminal Space

I ended a job. It was messy. There will be more to say about it at some point with more time and space to process, but what’s on my mind now is the liminal space in which I find myself.

Liminal, from the Latin word limen, a word for the cross-piece or frame of a door, describes a threshold, an in-between place, having left one room, but not yet entered the other.

A significant chapter in my life has ended, and I don’t have clarity yet about what the next chapter will be like. I’m listening, looking, discerning a path forward, but also bringing my awareness to my experience of being in this liminal space.

The uncertainty can be frightening, and the trauma of my past screams loudly about all that could go wrong, all the ways it could all just fall apart.

There was so much I could not control in my childhood, so many things I could not fix. Having a clear plan and achieving it in other areas of my life created that sense of control, and for a long time this was how I moved through the world. Decide, accomplish, achieve. Even as the course has changed at times, the process remained the same. Through college, multiple graduate degrees, getting a good job, making it through a long process of ordination, seminary, working my way “up” in church jobs. The accomplishments were signs of worth, markers of identity, and for a long time, the only way I really knew how to describe myself was through my accomplishments or by the roles I played.

Letting trauma-fueled need for “success” guide my decisions may have served my resume well, but not always my soul. At times it’s led to further wounding by the ever-receding horizon of “enough”. My internal work over the last few years has been a process of becoming acquainted with the person I am beyond accomplishment or productivity.

Changes are stirring, and all I know right now is that my next chapter will not look like the ones before. The person I have come to know and to love—my true self—is the one I’m listening for now. She is the one I take with me into this liminal space. She will lead me through to the other side.