Traversing Life's Liminal Spaces

I recently learnt what the term ‘liminal space’ means after reading it in the story of a woman I follow on Instagram who I admire. Curious as to its meaning, I googled it:

“In anthropology, liminality is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete."

"The word “liminal” comes from the Latin root, limen, which means “threshold.” The liminal space is the “crossing over” space – a space where you have left something behind, yet you are not yet fully in something else. It's a transition space.”

Cue introspective moment. This phase of my life is totally a liminal space. In April this year I left a city I had only lived in since February 2020. I moved there two weeks before the UK lockdown hit and so regrettably, I hadn’t bonded with it much. With that I left a job which was draining me. My partner moved back home to Sicily, and I’m now staying with family temporarily, waiting to join him when covid travel restrictions ease, I’m fully vaccinated, and we’ve navigated the fresh hell that is post-Brexit visa bureaucracy.

The months between and including April – July 2021 are a liminal space during which I’m waiting to move to another country at a socio-political time when it’s extra complicated to do so, put a final end to on and off long-distance relationship-ing, learn at least enough Italian to muddle through a conversation, and use this time to completely overhaul the way I earn a living doing things I’ve long dreamed about. No big deal.

I’ve spent the last year and a half lazily picking up words and phrases in Italian without much dedication. ‘Productively procrastinating’ watching youtube videos and reading articles about other people learning languages. I know the theories, strategies and top tips of language learning, but not much actual Italian.

Another dream of mine is to work for myself as a silversmith and jewellery maker. I took a one-day course years ago, and promptly did fuck all with it until January this year. Learning a complicated new skill, in a saturated field, when I’m almost 30 makes me feel like I’m kidding myself, but I want no part of 9-5 corporate life.

“So you think you deserve to go and live on an island in the Mediterranean, fluidly speaking the most romantic language in the world, making a living doing something you love? HA” has been the gist of my internal stream of consciousness.

The uncertainty of waiting for these things to come to fruition, and the motivation and patience that each requires on my part is terrifying, and instead of patiently working on these goals a little bit every day, I’m inclined to doom dream about the astounding amount of work and time that this life overhaul is going to take. Because it’s hard, because it’s liminal, because it’s promising.

But something I know for sure is that staying in inertia, only to look back six months, a year, or more down the line as I’m doing now with learning Italian or silversmithing – practices which if I’d just taken small doses of action on and a splash of dedication to from the beginning I’d be way further ahead with – is a habit I’ve got to stop.

Another non-committal habit of mine is jumping from thing to thing. I did my undergrad degree in film, only to go on and do a masters in gender and international development. I’ve moved around a lot. I’ve concocted life plans big and small which haven’t amounted to anything, so on and so forth. I need to start things anew for the last time, stick to plans, dedicate. Reform my quitter tendencies. Even just a little.

The promise of a great life that I have responsibility for creating is daunting. My lazy, anxious brain fights the magnitude of it, the allure of it, coaxing my thoughts towards all the ways that plans could go wrong. I’m grasping for the appreciation that I know is possible for this time in liminal space, a time that I’ve made choices to attain, to see it for the opportunity that it is.

I mean, I’ve started right? I left the city with expensive rent, quit the job which left me brain dead in the evenings, learnt un po 'di più Italiano, taught myself a bunch of silversmithing skills, and now I’m writing about it all. If that’s not progress...

I don’t have a step-by-step bullet point list on how to work through life’s liminal spaces, so instead this is a kick up the ass love letter to myself, and to anyone who finds themselves floating through their own liminal space or identifying as a quitter.

This is growth I think? Embrace it with me. Let’s ride the wave of life baby.

Quote Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality

https://transformationalpresence.org/alan-seale-blog/liminal-space-embracing-mystery-power-transition-will-2/#:~:text=The%20word%20%E2%80%9Climinal%E2%80%9D%20comes%20from,It's%20a%20transition%20space.