Liminality
Limbo
Curiously she felt that she had arrived
For the first time the future was now
Lives are lived in time, they have direction
Always moving forward to this illusive point; the future
Planning
Thinking
Anticipating
Finding solutions
One step ahead, what next? ready, steady….
But illness turns this on its head
The future changes, shrinks, recedes…stops.
Nothing to be planned for, scary
A sense of limbo; hanging there
What will happen? When? No control. No say.
Abandonment of power
Yet there lies the paradox
Always there is paradox
In the abandonment lies the liberation
The future is now. It always was
Full of colour, beauty potential, love
No need to look ahead
The poem above describes a time when, during my husband’s illness, I found myself in a strange and uncertain space. Suddenly there was no future — at least, not in the way I had always anticipated it. Perhaps the future ahead simply felt unimaginable. When someone we love becomes seriously ill, life can quickly lose its familiar structure. All the small acts of planning — What shall we do next Saturday? Where shall we go for our next holiday? — quietly dissolve. It is one example of what I have come to understand as a liminal space.
A liminal space is an in-between space — a threshold where what was has passed but what is yet to come remains unclear. The word liminal comes from the Latin limen, meaning a threshold. We encounter such spaces throughout life: when changing jobs, moving home, becoming a parent, or entering a new relationship. Yet grief can plunge us into liminality with particular depth, for it unsettles every familiar rhythm. The sense of being out of control, of being lost or uncertain, can be profoundly disorienting.
Naturally, we long to bring this uncertainty to an end. We seek closure, clarity, some form of control that will steady the ground beneath our feet. But as one of my favourite writers, John O’Donohue, reminds us, these are not times for quick solutions. They are times for listening — to that deep inner voice, to the subtle feelings that move quietly within. Liminal spaces, like grief itself, are not to be hurried. They ask to be experienced, explored, and gently tended. In their way, they can become fields of transformation, places where something genuinely new can unfold.
I notice that I dip in and out of liminality still. There are times when I feel at one with life — when things flow easily and all feels well. Then something shifts, and I am plunged again into questions about purpose, identity, and vulnerability. I have learned to recognise these times as invitations: to sit for a while with the discomfort, to listen, to trust that understanding will come when it is ready.
It is the nature of life that all things change and all things pass. I am learning, slowly, not to fear these thresholds but to rest more willingly within them — to stay present to the uncomfortable spaces, and to trust that what I need will often arrive in the most unexpected form and at the most unexpected time.
Practice: Listening at the Threshold
When you find yourself in uncertainty — waiting for news, for clarity, for change — resist the urge to fill the space.
Sit quietly, perhaps with a candle or a hand over your heart.
Notice the sensations of not-knowing: the flutter, the tightness, the stillness.
Ask softly, “What wants to be heard here?”
Don’t force an answer.
Just listen.