Navigating The Space Between Stories

Ever since things started opening back up again after the pandemic, I’m very aware of how much change we’re all facing. We are definitely in the “space between stories,” when one story is definitely in its death throes, and the next story has not yet made itself crystal clear. This space between, the liminal space of not knowing, is a tender time, a time to treat with kid gloves, a time for self compassion.

Personally, I’m dealing with quite a few transitions of my own. I have very newly acquired empty nest, so new that it still makes me tear up a bit when I write those words- “empty nest.” As she should, my 18 year old daughter graduated from high school and flew out of the nest to Pratt Institute for summer school before embarking upon a gap year in Europe, prior to attending Pratt full time next fall.

I’m also dealing with the welcome but challenging transition of my partner Jeff moving to California full time after we’ve spent three years living bi-coastally and dealing with the challenges of a long distance relationship.

Like many physicians, especially since Covid, he’s dealing with the transition of leaving his full time job as medical director at Harvard’s McLean Hospital because of burnout and moral injury. And he’s waiting for inspiration to hit to figure out what’s next. I can remember that feeling, since I left my full time hospital job as an OB/GYN in 2007 and was essentially without an income, living off the income from selling my house, for four years before I figured out how to pay the bills next.

*If you’re a health care provider or therapist in transition, Jeff and I are hosting a live event in Mill Valley, CA- Transitions & Transformation. We’d love to support you on the same kind of journey we’ve both navigated ourselves in a broken health care system that has broken our hearts. Learn more and register here.

The father of my child, my ex, is also transitioning away from our life in California and moving to Europe on a digital nomad visa.  He’s lived next door to me since our divorce ten years ago, co-parenting our daughter. So our family didn’t really separate, even though he and I did. That made it easier for all of us. He’s been a wonderful father and friend. We’ve all taken care of each other all these years, so I also feel some loss knowing he’s leaving, along with my daughter.

The one creature that isn’t leaving is my dog, the one we’ve all cared for but is now my full time responsibility. So my dog and I are also in transition, as our family rearranges and we figure out how to care for her when Jeff and I travel for work, as we’re doing now, while I’m teaching in various places away from California. My best friends are all in transition as well. One of my dearest therapist friends is facing the transition of her husband to the other side of the veil, and another dear therapist friend is about to get married for the first time.

Maybe the people in my inner circle are not representative of the rest of you. Maybe I’m just projecting, as I’m apt to do. But even when I talk to clients, it feels like so many of us are rumbling with change. Which is understandable, given what all of us just went through, and what we’re still dealing with in the aftermath of the kind of worldwide event most of us alive today have no reference for.

It’s also not surprising that big waves of change are also sweeping across the planet. These shifts and transitions seem to be fractal in nature. My country is in a state of massive transition as we prepare for what is likely to be a tumultuous election cycle in November of this year, and the US isn’t the only country fighting between needed change and those who resist change. Even our planet is in transition as everything changes in response to our human impact on the global ecosystem.

Some of the changes are welcome changes for many. For others, change means losing something, like white privilege, male privilege, or other unearned privileges some are reluctant to lose.

We’re rumbling with power and those who abuse it via #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter. We’re rumbling with political divisions and hatred between factions of neighbors, the likes of which our country hasn’t known since the times of slavery, the likes of which the Western world hasn’t known since World War 2. We’re no longer tolerating things that have been tolerated for way too many years because of white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and other oppressive systems that harm the marginalized. And that’s a good thing. But it also means things they are a-changin’. And there’s backlash from those who don’t want change.

All of this uncertainty has got me thinking about change, about transition, and about how change impacts our “parts” inside. I know, for me, change often lands as frightening, because change rides shotgun with uncertainty.  When you don’t know what the future holds, some of our parts tend to feel wobbly, even as other parts might be excited or full of healthy anticipation.

It also got me thinking about what helps during times of transition. It made me reflect, as I often do, on something Charles Eisenstein wrote a long time ago. As I explained here in an essay that resulted in his publishers writing this Disavowing Disinformation piece here, I can no longer support what Charles has been writing and teaching about since the Covid pandemic. But I still really love this bit from his book The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible.

“The old world falls apart, but the new has not emerged. Everything that once seemed permanent and real is revealed as a kind of hallucination. You don’t know what to think, what to do; you don’t know what anything means anymore. The life trajectory you had plotted out seems absurd, and you can’t imagine another one. Everything is uncertain. Your time frame shrinks from years to this month, this week, today, maybe even to the present moment. Without the mirages of order that once seemed to protect you and filter reality, you feel naked and vulnerable, but also a kind of freedom.

Possibilities that didn’t even exist in the old story lie before you, even if you have no idea how to get there. The challenge in our culture is to allow yourself to be in that space, to trust that the next story will emerge when the time in between has ended, and that you will recognize it. Our culture wants us to move on, to do. The old story we leave behind, which is usually part of the consensus Story of the People, releases us with great reluctance.

So please, if you are in the sacred space between stories, allow yourself to be there. It is frightening to lose the old structures of security, but you will find that even as you might lose things that were unthinkable to lose, you will be okay. There is a kind of grace that protects us in the space between stories. It is not that you won’t lose your marriage, your money, your job, or your health. In fact, it is very likely that you will lose one of these things. It is that you will discover that even having lost that, you are still okay. You will find yourself in closer contact to something much more precious, something that fires cannot burn and thieves cannot steal, something that no one can take and cannot be lost. We might lose sight of it sometimes, but it is always there waiting for us. This is the resting place we return to when the old story falls apart. Clear of its fog, we can now receive a true vision of the next world, the next story, the next phase of life. From the marriage of this vision and this emptiness, a great power is born.”

If you’re a health care provider or therapist and you’re in the space between stories, we invite you to join me, my partner Dr. Jeffrey Rediger, and others navigating the space between stories for TRANSITIONS & TRANSFORMATION, a live, in person retreat in Mill Valley, CA. We’ll be engaging in lively discussion, writing, movement practices, ritual, and creative visioning with intuitive exercises intended to help you find your way through the space between stories toward whatever’s next.

We welcome you to TRANSITIONS & TRANSFORMATION! Learn more and register here.

What helps you? What supports your Self-leadership in times of transition?