Navigating Our Liminal Spaces

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so a couple of years ago just before

thanksgiving my mom was in and at our

house and my son was home from college

and

he came to me my son came and said um i

have a question for you mom

you’ve always told me that savings is

for savings and

and i can’t figure out what to do and i

said what what’s the question he said

well

my credit card i can’t cover it

with my checking account and i’m

thinking well maybe yeah maybe i can

help him a little bit

so i said well how much is it show me

that number and i said oh

this is a perfect time to take the money

from the savings and move it from the

checking

and pay your credit card bill

but what it was it wasn’t that really

wasn’t the thing

because then he came back and he said

mom i really need to talk to you about

something that’s actually more important

i’ve been having dark thoughts lately

and i’m not really sure what to do

i’ve got some anxiety i think i’m self

diagnosing myself maybe

what’s what should i do

and in that moment i had recalled that

about four weeks before that a friend of

his from college had committed suicide

right after the

2016 elections and there might have been

one other person

and so i thought to myself this is a

time for me to listen

and to empathize and ask him to tell me

more what is it that’s

that’s troubling you what are you

thinking about

and by the time i was done listening to

the conversation and not really asking a

lot of questions

he told me that in the 18 months before

the time period

there was probably more than a half

dozen people in his life who had decided

i’m done that’s it

it’s a tough place to be in this is what

we struggle through those are big

struggles but we also have little

struggles in our lives

there are these threshold spaces where

we could walk through

much like this picture here where i

could decide to go into the tunnel where

my son was going to go into the tunnel

but the idea of that might be very

frightening because he knows really what

it’s like on this side

and while it’d be on the verge of

something else you don’t know what’s

past the tunnel

or what’s through that door if he goes

through that door

these are called liminal spaces in our

lives where we’ll be twixed in between

we can’t decide if we should move

forward

or come backward we’re really kind of on

the verge of something but not really

sure

and we think well it’s safe here i know

what this is but what’s on the other

side

so my role at that point was to really

say i don’t i don’t know what it feels

like to be you

but i’m here for you i didn’t want to

sympathize with him and say

i really know what you feel like because

i didn’t know what he felt like

so the opportunity for us to do these

thresholds and there’s large thresholds

like this

and then there are micro thresholds as

well that we go through and we have to

pay attention to

how we considered to take a look at them

the thing we know about the brain is the

brain

loves failure and hates failure all at

the same time

and thinking about going through a

threshold and not really sure what’s on

the other side

the prefrontal cortex says to us

failure fascinating let’s do some

learning i want to go there let’s just

go

run let’s go to the door and behind us

in the amygdala it’s saying oh my gosh

please no

don’t go there you know what this is

this is really safe and ugly

but it’s a good place to be isn’t it

so our brain does that to us it talks to

us all the time right it’s the voice

inside our head

and so we have to think about what is it

that we need and we need

other people so how do i support him how

do i support others who are in that

space

the next part of this being a

liminologist as i call it and thinking

about how to help people through

thresholds

is that you might also be like this

stuck in an eddy in a circular space

where you’re going round and round and

round

i have a niece who has probably been

stuck in an

eddie for 25 years

and many of us in the family just listen

to her and she talks a lot and she

really brings things some

from some things forward and i think

she’s asking us for help

but as my father-in-law said ah she’s

just like her mother

we let her go she’s just like her mother

she’s destined to do this

what she really needs from us is not to

pull her out

but to pull her over to the side and say

hey come over here

let’s talk about this how might you

explore some other things during this

part of your life

this latest trouble that you’ve talked

to us about what might you do

differently

not pulling her out again we often try

to fix

we don’t let people struggle we often

make them go through things when they’re

not ready

and it’s more about our discomfort than

their discomfort

and so there’s no fixing we have to

understand their point of view and

really begin to understand

not to hold so tightly and to really

help them

see what might be their way forward

it reminds me of a video that a friend

recently showed me

and it was a two ducks and their

ducklings

and they were going traversing across

the little rapids on a river

for the large ducks the parents it was

easy to do but for the little ones

it was going following the parents and

then whipping around because the current

took them and then they would try it

again and they would whip around

well what were they doing they were

learning

they were learning what it was like to

traverse the rapids they were really

beginning to go through this

point and as they each was able to make

that go forward

they were stronger for it parents just

didn’t look back

maybe one of the parents struggled at

one point and as the final little

duckling went through

you know everybody on the video was was

cheering for them it was just their

learning moment

it was just when they were in school it

was the parents allowing a struggle to

happen

and we really need to think about how

can we be alongside people for their

discomfort

how can we help them grow into something

that maybe they’re fearful about

how can we really help people move

through those hard places whether

they’re large hard places or small hard

places

one of the other things that we can do

is also consider getting on a bike with

someone

a tandem bike in fact it’s a place to

hold some space for them

but our job when someone is going

through a struggle going through a

threshold space this liminal spot of

struggle

troublesome is help them maybe find

where the transformative space is

so i’m going to get on the back of the

bike not on the front

they need to steer and set the pace

but at some point i need to say to them

hey if you need to take your foot off

the pedals

i’ll pedal as fast as i can you keep

steering

because i know there’s something that

you need to figure out

and discover that space and i’m right

behind you

you have the potential you have the

ability and you’re not alone

we really have to think of how we can

move people through because at some

point

i might need to be on the front of this

bike i too will have struggles i too

will have things that i need to learn

and need to have others beside me to

help me or behind me

to pedal faster or slow us down

this opportunity for mutuality and we

sometimes don’t really think about what

that would be

and and we often times just kind of

leave people be

so we might leave people to be alone on

an island

it’s not a very good place to be hard to

learn

you can learn some things but only for

so much of the space on the island we

need other people

so it’s really important not to think

about leaving people alone to be on an

island

i had a friend who the other day um and

this is a real true story was on a

public bus going to an event

and she um saw a young man start across

from her so decided to strike up a

conversation because he looked a little

troubled

they talked for a while and they were

having a really great pleasant

conversation she even shifted

seats over and sat next to him as more

people got on the bus

and she said didn’t you just miss your

stop i thought you said that you were

going to get off here he goes yeah i was

going to

but i’m really enjoying this

conversation today it’s the

best conversation i’ve had in a long

time and i really need to finish the

route to go back home

she goes why is that he zipped open his

backpack

you can imagine what was inside a real

story from a real friend of mine

who in that moment she helped someone

through a struggle space

that she had no idea she was helping him

through

he might have been like this he had

people who were orbiting around him

watching and not really paying paying

attention fully to what he needed

not asking if he needed to talk

i mean this would be my niece we’re

revolving around her watching it

sometimes when we say

that person’s a hot mess and i’m like

that’s good this

and so what are we really doing when we

say that

what is really needed is for us to be

in community with one another to really

think about how we should be holding one

another

in a space that’s real to stop thinking

about ourselves

and and whether or not we’ll say the

right thing is just to say hey

i’m here that must be hard for you

what what else can i do for you

how might we think about this

differently what else could happen here

the whole opportunity we have to be

liminologists for one another

is to help us throughout our lifespan to

really think about how to go through

these struggles whether they’re large

struggles and

complicated like anxiety or depression

or just small everyday struggles

where you don’t really know what’s

really going on and you just need

someone to give you some ideas or some

thoughts

or just to listen my son was spending

money

for happiness they discovered that money

wouldn’t do it

and you know it drained his bank account

so what would happen if we were more

had more empathy for one another who

instead of saying oh i know what that’s

like that’s sympathy but have empathy

and say i really don’t know what that’s

like but it sounds hard

what if we were just to listen just to

lend our ear to one another

and just really say gosh i don’t know

what to say

let’s explore this more together i

really enjoying talking to you let’s

let’s let’s talk some more about what

what you’re concerned about

let’s just listen i’m just going to

listen to you

that’s what many of us need

how could we also have compassion for

one another another in care

being a part of community it’s really

important for us to think about that

because we need to hold space for one

another we need to think about how we

can help one another through the hard

spaces

how we can really begin to feel for one

another

and care for one another what would the

world be like if that’s what we ended up

with

i think that’s the place i want to live

in don’t you

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