Leaning Into Liminal Space and Embracing Uncertainty
Trusting that you are where you need to be in life
The first time I heard the term ‘liminal space,’ just so happens to be the first time I decided to listen to a podcast. I had spent the last year or two working in a respectable career knowing that it just wasn’t quite the right fit for me, despite the fact that I was actually quite good at it. There was something else I needed to try, and while I couldn’t quite put my finger on what that ‘something’ was, I knew I wasn’t going to get any closer if I just kept doing what I was doing.
Eventually, I decided to take the leap of faith and leave my relatively comfortable, salaried job that I knew like the back of my hand and leap into a bit of an unknown. I took on a job in tourism, and then Covid shut down the world about a week later. In addition to the shock of processing what was happening in the world, I was also facing the shock of wondering if I may have made one of the silliest professional decisions of my life.
Since then, I’ve made a steady transition into the world of solopreneurship, and I think I’m getting a little closer to that ‘something’ I’ve been looking for, but in the meantime, I’m sitting here wholly absorbing the in-betweenness of it all.
Finding Meaning
The word ‘liminal’ comes from the Latin root ‘limen,’ which means a threshold. So, liminal space, as it turns out, is considered a sort of ‘crossing over’ space of identities. Just like a caterpillar has to enter a cocoon and essentially turn itself to goo before reforming into a butterfly (yes, that is a thing), we too must, at times, retreat from what was, to become what we are meant to be.
When I listened to that podcast for the first time, I was about a month or two into this new, altered reality, and it was like a wave of relief washed over me. It had a name! This unshakeable feeling of having been launched out of such a familiar space and not being able to find my feet in the present moment, this place I was in…it was a thing! A real thing!
And while I was acutely focused on my professional life as I considered this concept of liminal space for the first time, I quickly realized that it also applied to the current state of the world.
We were all, and still are, living in a liminal space — and it’s equally as terrifying as it is exciting if you allow it to be. The world we once knew was yanked out from underneath us so suddenly and still, nearly a year and a half later, we are all still kind of just floating here in ambiguity waiting to see what things will look like once the dust fully settles.
There is no way to get from one room to another without going through a doorway
But what if instead of being impatient, and just wishing it would all go away and that we could return to the much more familiar world or state of being we used to know, we leaned into it? Because there is really no other option, to be frank. There is no fighting the space between. There is no way to get from one room to another without first going through a doorway, and we can’t go back to what was.
The last year or so has been wrought with change, uncertainty, leaps of faith, and leaning into the unknown. It’s uncomfortable, it’s scary, and it’s completely and utterly unavoidable. As nice as it would be to just close my eyes and open them again when I actually know what the heck I’m doing, or when this new world has taken on a more concrete shape — where’s the fun in that? We are living through an unbelievably historic moment in humanity right now, and I don’t want to miss a moment of it, no matter how scary some parts of it all might be.
Personally, I am in the first few months of working for myself — and it’s hard. But it’s supposed to be! I’m experiencing growing pains and without overcoming them, I would never appreciate the wins, or what I have accomplished when I succeed.
Trust That You Are Where You Need To Be
I feel like a wobbly little toddler figuring out how her legs work at the moment and I don’t know exactly what direction I’m headed in, but I have an idea and I know how I want to feel. I know that so far, despite it being a little scary to be completely in control of my income and no longer able to rely on a steady paycheque — there is something that feels right about this path I’m on and I am leaning into it with open curiosity.
I’m learning that it’s okay if you feel like you don’t know exactly where your path is taking you. It can actually be quite exhilarating if you take a deep breath and trust that you’re where you need to be, and that if you listen deeply enough, the right answers will come. And honestly, could there be a better time in recent history to lean into the unknown a little harder than we ever have before?
The art of leaning into liminal space is to accept that this in-between space is necessary and healthy. It’s sitting back and letting your mind wander a little, being open to whatever is to come, and trusting that it is going to be exactly what you need at that moment.
It’s the practice of gently telling that voice inside your head that says you must always be moving forward, figuring out your next move, and always be striving for the next best thing, that you appreciate their input, but you’re embracing this period of the in-between. It doesn’t mean that you’ve become a lazy person, or a useless person, as your logical brain may try to tell you. It means that once you’ve taken all the pieces of the puzzle apart, it can take some time to start putting it back together again. And that’s ok.
I hope to look back at this point in my life and know that I trusted my instincts, and trusted that I was on the right path even if I didn’t quite know what the final destination was yet. That one foot in front of the other, innate curiosity, listening to my intuition and faith that all is as it should be, guided me to the most amazing destination. And I don’t think it is an accident, or that I am alone in experiencing this immense internal transition at the same time that the world went topsy-turvy.
I’m glad we’ve been forced to look at life through a different lens because I don’t want to go back to the way things were, personally, or in a broader sense. And I don’t think we can. It feels like we have entered a revolution of sorts, and I for one, am so, so excited to see where it takes us.
