Life Transitions are Laboratories for Growth
Also, “Maybe You’re Already Doing It.”
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I was sitting in the park with my friend Elisabeth the other day, catching up on kids and travel plans, when she asked the question I keep circling:
“So…what are you doing next?”
I paused, probably over-explaining (again) all the things I’m not doing right now. I’ve been in this unsteady in-between place, wondering how to describe it, justify it, make sense of it. My friends have been generous listeners.
Then Lis just looked at me and said,
“Maybe you’re already doing it.”
That sentence startled something awake in me.
Because if I’m honest, this time feels so open that it borders on uncomfortable. Spacious, yes. But also disorienting. And lately, I’ve realized I’m not the only one feeling it.
I’m in a few Substack communities that do virtual gatherings.1 In a recent gathering of Showing Up with
, others were talking about the same sort of liminal in between, where identities felt blurry, next steps still fuzzy.I definitely felt a sort of collective exhale.
I logged off thinking: Oh…this isn’t just me.
And now that I am talking about it, I am finding others over here, too in about 50% of my conversations this week. Maybe you, too?
The Big Idea
Reading
’s recent post on liminal spaces felt personal. Like someone had taken the temperature on my internal weather.Liminal space is the stretch of life where you can feel your mind identity evolving.
And LeCunff’s words tend frequently to find me when I’m in the thick of something. It keeps happening, like a horoscope or a fortune cookie - but better and with more credibility.
Open time has always made me twitchy. My reflex is to fill it with projects, plans, tasks, anything that makes me feel productive or useful.
Doing means contributing, belonging. It means I’m okay.
And yet…here I am. A whole year and a half without a “steady job.” “Freedom,” I’m learning, can feel a lot like falling through open air.
But real learning happens in this in-between free fall time, when we’re not trying to hit a benchmark, but we’re asking a question we don’t know the answer to yet.