The Space Between

Dear Friends,

As we’re thinking about back to school (how are we there already?!), we were reminded of a concept called liminality, or the state of transition.  Liminal states are the emotional threshold between one state of being and the next. These are times when we are departing from the familiar and preparing to step into the unknown. Liminal space is the journey from where we’ve been to where we are going.

These are times when we can feel particularly unmoored. When we don’t know what to expect next, we might feel disoriented, uncertain, or even afraid. Living in the unknown can be unsettling.

We’ve left the familiar behind, but we haven’t yet found our next comfort zone. Our sense of belonging or identity can be compromised when the path is unclear, and our usual routines or benchmarks are disrupted. It’s normal to find ourselves overwhelmed by what we are leaving behind or to doubt ourselves. We might wonder if we are capable of handling everything that’s still to come.

In architecture, liminal spaces are literally thresholds between one space and the next (stairs, doorways, hallways). On the surface, these places aren’t uncomfortable to us, but like emotional liminality, they can be scary, unsettling, or off-putting if we imagine staying there. For example, an endless hallway is the stuff of horror films.

Liminality is especially salient because parents experience it so often. Perhaps, the most recognizable instance being pregnancy where we exist between our old identities and becoming parents. Everything we’ve known is changing, and yet we’ve not held our child in our arms. We hear all the time from parents about how becoming a mom means finding themselves all over again in a new and unique way from what came before.

There are infinite variations of this that we see in our clients. There’s trying to conceive, a space where the two-week wait is a limbo between pregnancy and trying again. It’s a bit like Schrodinger’s cat in the box. For those two weeks, we are both hope and heartache.

There’s loss. A space where we say goodbye to the familiar and to our dreams and visions of the future before finding a new path that looks nothing like we’ve planned.

There are the many times our children grow and change—the space between infant and toddler, between toddler and child, between child and teen, and of course between teen and adult. There’s sending your kids off to daycare, kindergarten, or even college for the first time. Each of these spaces requires us to adapt our parenting to meet new levels of independence and new facets of our child’s personality. Suddenly, everything we thought we knew about how to parent them is shifting.

There are role changes. Work is a common example. Many people find their work identities shifting after having a child. Maybe you transition to stay at home, maybe you change jobs, or maybe you just find that you relate to your job differently while also balancing parenthood.  Careers can be a big piece of our adult identities and it can be difficult to suddenly find that space changing.

There are relationships. While marriage and divorce are obvious examples of how relationships can involve major transitions, there’s also ways that parenthood can alter how we relate to each other in otherwise stable relationships. It isn’t uncommon for people to tell us that after having a baby it feels like their old relationship is “gone” and they haven’t yet figured out how to exist as a family instead of as just a couple.

In our work, we’ve found that while liminality is incredibly common, we’re often not particularly good at recognizing when we are experiencing it. Many of these liminal states can feel like endings but really, they are just transitions from one phase of life to the next. Change is an unavoidable part of the human condition, and it’s the only way to grow forward. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. 

So often, people going through big transitions wonder why they are struggling with things that don’t quite fit or are feeling generally adrift. Once you recognize where you are, it can be easier to forgive yourself for feeling uneasy and give yourself permission to lean into the challenging work of finding your new normal.

And if you find yourself feeling stuck in the proverbial horror film hallway of liminality, we are here to help you find a way to move forward. Therapy can help us to find why we feel stuck and to finally open the door on the next chapter.

Warmly, 

Kellie Wicklund, LPC, PMH-C
Principal + Clinical Director

Christina Moran
Executive Director