“I feel so weird,” I told my teacher. “I can’t even describe it. It’s just…weird.”

It was two years ago, and I was in the middle of some monumental shifts in my life. My teacher took in my words, paused, then offered, “Let’s try some more precise language—having the words to describe how you’re feeling is everything. You’re in a liminal state. Do you know the word ‘liminality’?”

I didn’t, so she defined it for me. Liminality, from the Latin limen meaning “threshold,” is the state of being in-between. It’s the point at which you realize that you’ve left one shore, but you haven’t yet arrived at the next. Nothing is as it was before, but it isn’t as it will be. So by definition, it’s a period that is indeterminate and ambiguous. And yes, it can feel weird.  

We are all, my friends—everyone across the globe—currently in a state of liminality. This pandemic has necessitated changes in our daily lives that just a short time ago were unimaginable. Nothing is as it was before—the ways we connected with others, the ease with which we moved from place to place, the availability of simple basic goods—nothing. Our day-to-day routines have abruptly changed, and we are being asked to adapt to ever-evolving new ways of doing “normal.”

And we have no idea how long the state of suspension from “Before” will last, nor what “After” may look like. 

Liminality is the state of the chrysalis—no longer a caterpillar and not yet a butterfly. (I’ll share my poem about this next time.) One dictionary definition calls the chrysalis a “quiescent insect pupa,” but what is going on inside that tiny hardened pupa is anything but dormancy. The caterpillar’s body is whisked into a liquid as cells reorganize themselves into new, aerodynamic organs that will eventually lift the creature skyward. Everything the butterfly needs is hiding inside the caterpillar’s body, just waiting to Become.

I have imagined being inside that chrysalis. What must it be like? Is the caterpillar aware of the changes happening to its body, or is its consciousness turned to jelly, too? Does it feel frightened? Is it able to feel at all? Is it dark? What does it sound like? Does it have any knowing that it will emerge and be able to fly?

In our current state of liminality, we, too, have had to withdraw into a bubble. We, too, have had our old ways of being melted into a primordial soup and are rearranging our lives into new shapes. But possibly unlike the caterpillar-not-yet-butterfly, we are aware that we’re in the middle of a transition, and we feel—well—weird. How many times have you heard or said, “I never would have thought…”? And yet, here we are.

I’ve witnessed people having a whole spectrum of reactions to our new communal reality. Some have shifted into high gear, asking themselves what they can do to help. Our healthcare workers have answered their call and are on the front lines to care for those who are stricken with the most severe cases of coronavirus. Others have realized that they can help by sewing masks and distributing them to the community, thereby reducing the number of new infections. (Last week, urged by my daughter to do so, I entered this corps of volunteers and have made dozens of masks so far.) Still others are finding new ways to get much-needed food into the hands of food-insecure folks in our midst.

At the other end of the spectrum, I’ve seen panic and fear cause people to hoard supplies, as if stockpiling canned food and toilet paper will shield them from having to modify their lives. I’ve seen people in denial—which is also a fear response. They go about as if nothing has altered, unable to accept or adapt to a rapidly-changing landscape—possibly spreading the contagion. And I’ve seen politicians issuing false hopes, refusing to issue safer-at-home orders or declaring that we’ll be back to normal by Easter.

I don’t think that telling people that this will all be over by a particular date is helpful. Yes, I believe that we need hope, but nobody can know when things will be “back to normal”—and we don’t know what “normal” will be. So specifying a date and having people cling to that is a way of infantilizing them, as if they can’t handle the reality of the current situation. “Normal by Easter” seems so much easier than “We don’t know.” But it isn’t honest, and it takes away people’s power.

When my kids were little and had to go to the doctor, they hated getting shots. What kid doesn’t hate shots? Heck, most adults don’t like them either. But adults know that the brief sting of an injection can prevent future illness or help us to recover from a current one, and so we tolerate it. I didn’t lie to my kids and tell them, “This won’t hurt.” I was honest with them and said, “This will hurt a little, but I know you can take it.” Instead of denying their reality by making it about how much the shot did or didn’t hurt, I tried to make it about their capacity to be resilient.

We ARE resilient. That is our power. We can, and will, come back from this pandemic. The terrain will have changed, for sure, but we will adapt to the “new normal” of whatever is After. We’ll carry some ways of being from the past into the new landscape, and we’ll jettison other ways as no longer serving us. Our job right now is to discern what serves and what no longer serves. What and whom do we most value? How do we act from that place of our highest values? What matters?

May you, Dear Reader, wisely use this time of liminality to reflect on what is truly important to you so that you may carry it with you into After. Your life may feel as if it has been churned into goo—I get that. But know this: you can take it. You already have within you everything you need. You are just like the miracle of the chrysalis—somehow, from that tiny sphere of ooze emerges a delicate thing that slowly fans its wings… and flies.    

Until next time,