The S P A C E Between
No, this is not a review of the Dave Matthews Band
song. This is about a different kind of
space between; one that many of us misunderstand and tend to avoid. The term for this not-knowing “space between”
is liminal space which literally
means “threshold.” Some have described
it metaphorically as standing in the threshold between two rooms; you are not
technically in either room. You haven’t quite left one or entered the other. It is altered space, twilight, neither fully
awake nor fully asleep space. It is
often characterized by uncertainty and—for some of us more than others—the “not
knowing” is almost intolerable.
About ten years ago my wife, my daughter, and
I—all lifelong Midwesterners—transplanted to California
from Minnesota
(you bet) so that I could attend grad school.
It was a big move. We sold our
home, closed a business, and stuffed what belongings we hadn’t sold at our
monster garage sale into a 24 foot U-Haul truck, and headed for the LA Basin—without
jobs—to begin a new chapter (more like a new book) in our lives. Somewhere bouncing along in Nebraska in the middle of the night, my beloved and I were struck with the magnitude of what we were doing. This was liminal space; not planted where we came
from, not planted where we were going, just in Nebraska , jostling down the interstate in a
noisy truck. We cried. We prayed.
We kept driving.
Liminal space is not necessarily good or bad, it is just
what is. It can be useful, though, even
life changing if it is accepted and embraced as opportunity. People often make important life decisions in
liminal space such as being on vacation.
On the more difficult end of the continuum, in the painful spaces of
disillusionment, suffering, and transition, people sometimes discover their
life-callings and give birth to unexpected dreams. Things are planted and take root here where
the hard-packed dirt of safety and complacency is broken up by the painful
harrow of unbidden change. We would
never sign up for these experiences but they change us deeply. We need to be changed.
Crisis and trauma can thrust us into very frightening
liminal space. It may be that a
marriage, a job, or life’s dream is crumbling, forcing us to move to a “new”
and unfamiliar space. Stunned,
disoriented, in pain, we are propelled into a journey from the familiar to
we-know-not-what. Even when the familiar
was miserable, it was at least familiar.
Like refugees forced from our homes by disaster or despot; fleeing,
clutching only what could be hurriedly stuffed into a suitcase we set out in
search of some kind of safe place to land, sometimes with children in tow. We can also find ourselves in the space
between due to a collapse of our familiar way of doing things as when a
dysfunctional coping strategy or a cherished defense mechanism stops working
for us—goodbye denial. Sometimes our
whole belief system goes up for grabs.
Let me offer a couple of pointers for traversing the space
between. First, in the middle of pain
and suffering when we are hurled into transitional space, as unpleasant as it
may be, it is extremely important that we allow ourselves to feel our feelings
because these emotions are part of our grieving process, the process of letting
go of what was. They are sources of important information we
may have been missing. In fact, checking
out, tuning out, and numbing out may contribute to our plunge into
crisis. Stop. Stay present.
Feel.
Secondly, we are faced with a deep challenge to choose to
make meaning of suffering or risk sinking into bitterness and despair. I am not talking about yanking ourselves up
by the bootstraps or propping ourselves up with pithy little mottos—the stuff
of church message boards. This will be a
wrestling match. An authority on
suffering, Auschwitz Concentration Camp survivor Dr. Victor Frankl stresses
that the critical factor in surviving such experiences with our humanity intact
is the ability to struggle with finding, no, making meaning of our suffering. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning Frankl writes
Paradoxically, while the trip across the space between is
usually a solo interior journey, we may find great comfort and strength in
knowing we are not alone. We need the
love and support of others to walk through pain that is uniquely our own. Just so you know, you are not alone.
Copyright 2014 John D. Deyo, M.A., LMFT
