Dweller on the Threshold
Tracey Berglund
After years of stumbling through professional and personal transitions, I recently came across a concept that almost perfectly articulates that middle space between changes and how and why it can be so unsettling but also so transformative. Follow me here, as I think this is a powerful visualization and one that can help you reframe your own perspective:
The word liminal comes from the Latin word for “threshold.” The concept of liminal space, refined by the anthropologist Victor Turner, refers to the unknown place we find ourselves in when we are on the threshold of change. Ringing any bells? Career changes, rites of passage, personal milestones…there are countless thresholds we all linger on at various stages of life as we move through transition. To put it another way (and this one comes from one of my favorite spiritual writers, Richard Rohr), liminal space is “when we have left one room but not yet entered the next room, any hiatus between stages of life, stages of faith, jobs, loves or relationships.”
Maybe it’s because I’m a visual thinker, but I love this idea of being caught between two rooms when we are in transition. And to take it one step further and capture the full essence of the experience, I would argue that the best analogy for the liminal space is a hallway. Think about it: In the physical world, a threshold is a boundary between where we are and where we’re going — a point. But a hallway is a space in its own right. We have to move through it to transition from one room to another or, metaphorically speaking, from an old self to a new one. And in this space, we can do some of our most important work. The first room may represent an old job we have been at for a long time, and the second may represent a new career. In my experience, some people shed a business or relationship and rush through the hallway of their transition just to get it over with. Others might run back to the comfort of the old room out of fear of all that’s unknown about the hallway and new room ahead. Either way, I would argue, they are missing an opportunity to lean into the power of the liminal space.
This past fall, the last of our children left for college, so I’m on the threshold of being an empty nester. But I’m deliberately not rushing through this liminal space. And it’s not because I’m fiercely holding on to what came before. It’s because I’m excited, curious, and even a bit uncertain about this next stage of life, and I want to be intentional about discovering what shape it might take. I may not know exactly what it will look like when I get to the other side, but for now, as the old Van Morrison tune goes, I’m a dweller on the threshold. Is anyone else experiencing something similar?