#31: Not all progress feels like progress.
Sometimes it feels like limbo.
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Her satin dress shimmering in the midmorning sun,
Kendall walked across the slender stage, totally in her element under everyone’s gaze. She took her diploma and shook the head of school’s hand. I leapt up, my baby-blue-suited fist pumping the sky and a WHOOP bursting from my mouth. Finding my eyes, Kendall did a little happy dance. Not just for all she had accomplished in her four years of high school, which is an impressive list. Also for the excitement of what lays ahead. Leaving the nest. College. Adulthood. Independence. Freedom. Responsibility. Sovereignty.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Because after graduation on Friday came… Saturday. Connor left for his summer in LA (watch out
!). Then the rest of my family departed… and it was just Kendall and I in the house again. We lounged on the couch and chatted happily, feeling both relieved that graduation was over, and also a little bit like… “Now what?” We had entered limbo.But thankfully a more pleasant version of it compared to the Wednesday… which had followed the Tuesday Mike died.
Losing my husband teleported me and the kids into the land of in-between. Our previous life had been unceremoniously ripped away, but we had no idea how to move forward or what the next stage could possibly look like. We were suspended in grief and fear and memories that were just out of reach…
Unlike the tingly anticipation for our upcoming, action-packed, post-graduation summer, six years ago I was desperate to figure out how long the suspended animation of that moment would last. How long I’d have to keep living with the feeling that surely I would die soon from this broken heart. I mentally ticked through the dates of each memoir in my grief canon, trying to predict the immeasurable timeline of grief. I would calculate, “Well, ok, she wrote this memoir in 1995 and her husband died in 1990 so probably by 1993 she was sane enough to start the writing process and thus feeling at least a little better??”
But my mental machinations were not getting me any closer to healing. They were moving me away from living in the moment, where the healing actually happens.
“Don't look for peace. Don't look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender.” ― Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now.
Pretty words, Mr. Tolle, but I’m going to need to run some tests on that really quick…
I’ve come to call these stretches of awkwardness the tween times,
paying homage to that truly terrible period of prepubescence — when one is not quite a teenager, no longer a child, lost in between and facing down the barrel of hormonal acne among other things.
These are the times when the person we thought we were — finished, complete, a marble statue artfully posed on a pedestal in our little life museum — suddenly reverts to a lump of clay, waiting to be re-shaped into our next iteration by the people, the places, the circumstances we find ourselves in next. But are not here quite yet.
The worst part is that these tween times don’t feel like a new beginning, a spring dawn, a ray of sun slicing through a spent thunderstorm. Yes, the rebirth is coming. But first, by necessity, must come a death of sorts. An abrupt end to our modus operandi: keep going, head down, faster if possible.
So much of what we’ve known falls away, leaving us in a space dark and scary with uncertainty… with nothing to keep us company (aka keep us busy, keep us validated, keep us motivated) besides ourselves.
Thus, we lose form and purpose, devolving into the lump of clay.
YIKES.
And yet… even in this cow pie of directionless-ness there is an opening. A new doorway we’ve never noticed before inviting us inward.
Limbo is the opportunity to see who you are when you aren’t chasing something. When you’re not distracted by action, carried away by momentum. The compass must be held still to direct with accuracy. You have to find what brings you fulfillment when not striding towards some future goal, but sitting still in the present moment.
I’ve never been in a float tank, but I can imagine it’s similarly unnerving.
Rather than relaxed, I could see how one could feel tense, untrusting of the stillness… and what they might discover in it.
Rather than at peace, one could be impatient, doubting that this present moment is worth their time (as if there was another timeline they could abandon it for instead).
Rather than absorbing the nourishment of rest, one could be distracted, mind desperately searching for something to accomplish, to prove, to earn.
Yet, our honest reactions are perfect. Exactly what we need. Not to be avoided (point for Tolle). Because we’re seeing that we haven’t just been running towards things — diplomas, promotions, vacations — we’ve been running away too. And this is the moment to break the pattern, redefine the self, and reimagine the future.
The tween times are when we’re most moldable. Soft and squishy. So much has ended that there is ample space for the new — even a new version of new. A future self that is bigger than anything you could have imagined while physically and mentally hemmed in by the deep ruts of the old.
Not to brag or anything, but during my grief tween era, I transformed from Sue the Hard Changer to Sue, President of the Feeling Your Feelings Club. I turned a scattering of friends into a life-supporting network of priceless connections. I felt awe that made me literally cry for the first time ever. I even discovered my freaking life purpose (which I thought was a myth comparable to the Tooth Fairy before this).
In other words, how we acknowledge, accept, and navigate leaving behind who we were defines us more than all our victory laps, award ceremonies, and celebratory gatherings combined.
At the end of our liminal phases, we don’t walk out with the secret to happiness or eternal joy or whatever. Rather, we find a kind of equilibrium, a foundation built on the rock bottom (and undeniable truth) of our being. We have integrated and reconfigured our values and priorities. We have let the changes sink into our core so we can evolve from our core too. (Yes, there’s an obvious cocoon metaphor here… but how many metaphors is too many metaphors?)
We step forward as a more refined version of that marble statue — one step closer to who we really are.
In my humble opinion, this is no consolation prize. This is what it's all about, what we are all here for, why we exist.
After Kendall’s ceremony,
we all gathered for a reception on the oval quad in front of her school. I wandered around to see a few people I wanted to thank — the dean of academics who shepherded her through some tough times offered, “Thank you for sharing her with us!” Her senior math teacher was crisply matter of fact, “See, it all worked out!” as if he’d never had a doubt.
I finally found Kendall deep in hugs with her friends. “Mommy!” she shouted, enveloping me in a sweaty, rose-scented hug. “Oh, Kendall, I just realized I had not thought of daddy all morning!” I blurted.
I was truly shocked. Mike had not crossed my mind at all. At no moment had “he should be here” inserted itself into the occasion. And it wasn’t upsetting (because I’ve learned to trust forgetting is a good thing), it was enlivening. Limbo had slid behind me like the fading pink clouds of dawn, replaced with dazzling sunlight.
“Well, he’s with us, so of course you don’t miss him,” she declared in her best ‘mom, you are a moron’ voice. She was right obviously. Mike is so deeply integrated in the way we live now that he’s not a separate entity to miss.
I didn’t know I would ever end up here. That we, a bereaved family, would ever be so lucky. But looking back, it makes sense. Because in that liminal moment after Mike’s death, I gave myself the time to pause and reflect. I took six weeks off work (and am privileged enough to be able to take six weeks off work) and sat with my grief… First like a ghost that wouldn’t stop haunting me, then like the stray cat that hangs around because you fed it once, and finally like another member of the family — totally comfortable in its idiosyncratic presence.
Through the tween/lump of clay/crucible/float tank/compass/cocoon process, with loads of support from so many family and friends, I evolved into something that blows my own mind.
If I could offer one last analogy… Kendall’s high school mascot is the snail (“Go, go, escargot!”). Always carrying its shell, its home, its reprieve, its support on its back. By forcing us into ourselves, the liminal space helps us find our own shells, which have always been there but we haven’t had to rely on before. We explore the dark twists and turns of our inner worlds to discover they’re not so frightening. And actually hold a lot of empowerment and confidence once we decide to work with them, rather than against them.
And from that place, the restfulness of self-knowing, the needle of our compass can settle. Then we know, without a doubt, that we are headed in the right direction. Until the next little death comes and we do it all over again.
Trusting the process,
Sue
I am totally ready! Both for Connor in L.A. and Kendall's world domination. Bring it!!! Such a beautiful post, Sue. Congratulations, all. xo
another excellent post. Congratulations to Kendall!