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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