Holding What's Ending and What's Beginning

This morning brought a coolness that wasn't there yesterday, a quality of light that hinted autumn. The leaves haven't started changing colour or falling yet. The days are still long. But something has shifted; subtly yet undeniable. We're in that in-between place where one season is ending and another is beginning, and neither has fully arrived or departed.

I stood outside feeling this threshold, and noticed my body's slight discomfort. Not with the temperature or the light, but with the uncertainty itself. The not-knowing. The being neither here nor there. I also noticed some expectation and not being ready for the colder seasons.

The Body Resists Thresholds

The body doesn't like thresholds. It wants to be safely on one side or the other, for example either fully in summer or clearly in autumn. It craves certainty, definition, solid ground. This liminal space, where things are uncertain and transitional, feels dangerous to a nervous system shaped by trauma.

Here's why: thresholds mean change is happening, and change once meant threat. In-between spaces mean it is more difficult to predict what's coming, and unpredictability once meant danger. Transitions mean we're neither in the familiar past nor the known future, and that vulnerability once meant we were exposed, unprotected, at risk.

So the body does what it learned to do: it tries to rush through the threshold. Land somewhere solid, somewhere certain or familiar, somewhere it can orient and prepare. The body says: I don't want to be in-between. Tell me which side I'm on so I know how to be safe.

But healing doesn't work that way. Healing asks us to live in these threshold spaces more than we'd like. Between who we were and who we're becoming. Between the pain we know and the peace we're learning to trust. Between the old patterns that kept us alive and the new ones we're practicing. Between the trauma that shaped us and living our life from the place of who we truly are.

We don't get to skip the in-between. We have to live there, sometimes for longer than feels bearable.

The Gift Hidden in Liminal Spaces

Here's what the threshold actually offers. Though the traumatised nervous system can't see it at first: in the in-between, both realities exist at once. Summer and autumn. Who we were and who we're becoming. The pain and the peace. The ending and the beginning.

This can be terrifying to a body that learned it could only hold one truth at a time; either safe or unsafe, either okay or not okay, either surviving or not. But it's also where healing lives: in the capacity to hold two truths simultaneously without fragmenting.

The transition between seasons teaches this. Right now, summer hasn't ended and autumn hasn't begun, yet both are present. The warm afternoon sun and the cool morning air. The long days and the earlier dusk. The green leaves and the quality of light that hints change is coming.

If nature can hold this paradox, so can we! Here are some practices you may like to try out.

Three Practices for Recognising and Being With Transitions

Practice One: Threshold Observation

This week, identify three daily thresholds you usually move through without noticing, for example:
   - Waking to sleeping (or sleeping to waking)
   - Inside to outside (or outside to inside)
   - Alone to with others (or others to alone)
   - Work to rest (or rest to work)

Choose one. Instead of rushing through it, pause in the threshold itself. Stand in the doorway. Sit on the edge of the bed. Notice the moment between states.

What does your body do in this in-between space? Does it speed up, trying to get to the other side? Does it hold its breath? Does it feel uncomfortable, unsafe, anxious? Maybe it feels pleasant.

You might like to say to yourself: "I'm in the threshold. Neither here nor there. This is okay." Take three breaths right there, in the transition and notice what you feel in your body. What is it like to consciously make transitions?

Practice Two: Dawn or Dusk Witness

Choose one morning and/or one evening this week. Go outside during the actual transition between night and day, or day and night.

Take your time with this. We are not glancing at it...We are witnessing it. Watch the light change. Feel the temperature shift. Notice the quality of air, the sounds, the way the world transforms from one state to another. What are you feeling in your body as you are fully present to this in-between.

You may like to acknowledge your experience by saying to yourself: "Right now, it's neither day nor night. Both are here. I can hold both."

Notice what happens in your body when you stay present in the in-between instead of rushing to what comes next.

Practice Three: Tracking Your Transition Response

For three days, notice when you're in an in-between space in your healing:

   - Between triggered and calm
   - Between wanting to talk and needing silence
   - Between capacity and overwhelm
   - Between old pattern and new response
   - Between knowing what to do and uncertainty

When you recognise you're in transition, not firmly on either side, pause and say aloud: "I'm in the middle of change. I don't have to rush to the next thing." Take three conscious breaths right there in the in-between. Then ask: "What does this threshold need from me?" Not what you need to do to get through it faster, but what it needs from you to be here fully. Sometimes the answer is: just stay. Don't rush. Let me be in-between.

Reflection: Comprehending Your Relationship to Thresholds

*Where in your life are you currently in-between?* Not where you were, not yet where you're going. Name the specific transition.

*What does your body do when it recognises it's in a threshold space?* Does it fill with sensations? Rush? Freeze? Try to force certainty? Get curious about your pattern? Maybe even breathe out?

*When in your past were thresholds dangerous?* When did being in-between mean being vulnerable, exposed, unsafe? If your body is resistant to transitions, that means it learned they weren't safe and it is warning you it may not be safe now.

*Can you remember a transition you moved through that turned out okay?* A threshold you survived, even thrived in? What did that teach you?

*What would it mean to trust the in-between, even for five minutes?* Not forever. Just for the length of a few breaths. What becomes possible when you're not rushing to the next solid ground?

Learning to Live in the Liminal

Your body wants certainty because uncertainty once meant danger. That's loyal protection and is not wrong...although it may not be needed now. Now, that same need for certainty may keep you from fully experiencing the richness of transition, the fullness of change, the gifts hidden in the in-between.

Healing happens in these uncertain spaces where we learn we can hold what's ending and what's beginning at the same time. Where we practice being neither here nor there without fragmenting. Where we discover that thresholds aren't traps, they're transformations.

The edge of autumn teaches this. Summer hasn't ended. Autumn hasn't begun. Both exist simultaneously in the cool morning air and the warm afternoon sun. Neither has fully arrived or departed. And the world doesn't collapse from holding this paradox. Neither will you.

Let me know what you think.

May you be well, may you be happy and may you have inner peace.

Linda