Liminal Spaces
I was born in 1978, part of an often-uncategorized generation born between the late 70s and early 80s. I grew up without the internet, like all of Gen X, but the world wide web debuted as I entered high school.
The Dave Matthews Band also debuted more widely at this time and their 2001 song, The Space Between, has been playing through my head for the past several weeks. About emotional space between two people, it also prompts contemplation of the many in-between spaces we inhabit. Having been born during a liminal time, perhaps I feel a sort of camaraderie with all things nebulous and peripheral.
My birth year also puts me squarely in middle age, its own sort of space between. No longer young, and not yet old, things are changing, as they are wont to do. I find myself awake more often in the middle of the night, captive to my shifting hormones and the sort of deep darkness only available at 3 or 4 am. These night wakings impact my daytime self, too. I’m slower, more prone to 20-minute naps before school pickup. I bake more and have a jigsaw puzzle going.
It is also January, arguably the most liminal month in our calendar year.
As Katherine May writes in Wintering, this time of year “offers us liminal spaces to inhabit. Yet we still refuse them. The work of the cold season is to learn to welcome them.” It is hard to be still, harder yet to be still without knowing what comes next or being able to see the value in the present. Pregnancy felt that way to me, especially the first time around. It felt so very hard, and so very forever. I felt slow and tired and not nearly as productive and capable as I wanted to feel. I hear this sentiment echoed so often from so many pregnant students.
When I first learned of Rest Is Resistance and reframed my own relationship with rest, the value of any real self-care practice became abundantly clear. We have been societally taught that constant activity is the key to our value. As Tricia Hersey, the founder of the Nap Ministry, teaches, “rest disrupts a system that views human bodies as a tool for production and labor.” The world we live in is driving us to exhaustion. Burnout is a trendy word because burnout is a trend. Rest resists that.
Whole Mama Yoga marked the Winter Solstice with both an evening candlelit practice on December 19, and a 3 hour mini-retreat on the solstice itself, both honoring the importance of this darker and quieter time of year.
Nature easily takes its cue from the darker, slower days. This in between time is when hibernation happens, when seeds germinate, when fallow ground has time to renew. It is not easy for us to follow the same cues, living as we do. But liminal space is everywhere and stepping into pace with life’s natural rhythm reveals its value.
If you too are struggling to find rest or are feeling resistance to slowing down, might I suggest carving out some time for yourself by dropping into a weekly yoga class? We offer classes that serve you from preconception through parenthood.
And if you have found yourself in something of a liminal space in this season of life (like pregnancy or perimenopause), know that you are not alone. We all ebb and flow in our doing and being. It is often fallow ground that is the most transformed come spring.
“[this time of year] offers us liminal spaces to inhabit. Yet we still refuse them. The work of the cold season is to learn to welcome them.”