Liminal Living

I learnt a new word this week, “LIMINAL”! But more than a word, I learnt that this explains something I’ve been experiencing recently…

“The Secret Of Change Is To Focus All Of Your Energy Not On Fighting The Old, But On Building The New”

Socrates

Photo by Rowan Freeman on Unsplash

They say every day’s a school day, and well, last week I learnt a new word “LIMINAL”!

I was listening to a talk by a Clinical Psychologist and was introduced to this word… and it was like a light had suddenly been shone on a dark crevice deep within me…

Liminal basically means those in-between stages in life… those periods of transition…

I was like the eager student at the front of the class, in awe of the prophet who stood before me and understood more about my mind than I did!

I wanted to sit there all day and listen… absorb all her knowledge!

Because knowledge to me gives me a sense of… control (And oh how I like control!! Read MATCHING PEGS to hear more about this!)...

A sense of understanding gives me a handle on my thoughts… my feelings… and more importantly, my actions!

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A Liminal Life

We can experience liminal stages in life when we go through significant life events, for example, starting a new job… getting a divorce… leaving school or university… moving somewhere new… perhaps when your children ‘fly the nest’…

For me, recently, it has been cancer (alongside watching, from behind a cushion, my 13-year-old navigate his own liminal life stage through adolescence!)

Cancer has been my most recent and most major liminal stage! And one I feel I am still in, although more recently, coming through the other side (she says with her fingers and toes tightly crossed!)

But this stage of transition is natural… its normal… it’s part of the human condition.

And perhaps if we’re aware of it, it helps us to understand it, and then move through it more easily… perhaps even with positive changes, outcomes and opportunities …

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My transition took on a new trajectory

When I was first diagnosed, the path before me suddenly crumbled and ceased to exist…
I was no longer transitioning from a degree to a new career; instead, I was facing a huge life challenge and a year of physical treatment…

Having now finished ‘active’ treatment (but still blurrily fumbling my way through the drug treatment), I’m trying to figure out who I am now…
I know I will not return to the ‘old me’, the person I was before my diagnosis, yet I still haven’t quite worked out my ‘new normal’…

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I’m still in that state of transition

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Perceiving the Positives

However, along the way, there have been things that have positively changed me…
My diagnosis has taught me to live now!
To take risks…
Be daring and courageous…
Care less about getting things wrong or looking silly…

I’ve learnt to seize opportunities right here, right now…

These are all things that I wouldn’t have experienced without this diagnosis, so yes, I am grateful for it, and yes, there have been positives to come from it…

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Liminal doesn’t have to mean difficult

In truth, it’s not the liminal stage that is the true challenge, it’s how we ‘view’ it! And that is the key – to ‘SEE’ it… to acknowledge it… to face it… and then to move through it… and we all know how much of an advocate I am when it comes to self-awareness! (If not, then check this out, or just search my posts for ‘self-awareness’ and you’ll have a year’s worth of reading on your hands!)

It’s the uncertainty that’s unnerving…

It’s stepping into the unknown that is unsettling…

It’s the ‘change’ that we’re apprehensive about, because change is disruptive…

But the change is happening whether we like it or not, and if we can welcome it like a new friend, then just maybe it will become an open door to new opportunities and personal growth in ways we couldn’t have imagined… and we never know where it may take us one day…

Take care & much love,

Julie x

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