Stories are Maps for Liminality

What does it take to move through the betwixt and between?

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work,

and when we no longer know which way to go

we have begun our real journey.”

— Poem VI, Standing by Words, Wendell Berry

Sometimes we find ourselves in an in-between place. Where the lessons from the past no longer seem adequate on their own for a future that is emerging just in front of us. These liminal seasons are familiar: entering adulthood, graduation, the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, a job change, a midlife crisis, a divorce, an election, retirement. They are the thresholds that shape our lives.

The word liminal comes from the Latin limen, meaning threshold. It describes that hovering state between one identity and the next, one way of being and the untested possibility that follows. This borderland is where the road that carried you here begins to fade, and the path ahead stretches into a fog you cannot yet see. It’s marked by ambiguity, disorientation, and a strange sense of temporal suspension. It can be deeply uncomfortable, but it is also a space ripe for transformation.

We often enter liminality through what Jack Mezirow called a disorienting dilemma: an event that cracks the lens through which we’ve made sense of our lives. These disruptions might be personal like loss, transition, failure or collective like war or a pandemic. When the roles, beliefs, and structures we relied on no longer hold, we feel blinded, stuck, or lost.

As much as these thresholds are disorienting, they are also invitations. They ask us to look honestly at how we arrived at this place between places, to surface realizations that were hidden from us before, and to build a new map forward that is wiser and truer.

But many of us can’t see when we’ve crossed a threshold at all. We keep repeating old patterns, hoping something will change. We can lunge forward blindly, only to hit a wall. We can wait passively for change, only to watch nothing arrive. Or we numb out, refusing to feel our own stuckness. Without awareness, we can’t begin to move.

In liminal seasons, the logic of our old world no longer applies. Our potential actions don’t yet make sense because while anything is possible we’re stuck in place. Fortunately, the map through liminality does have a loose structure. It’s called a story.

Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces describes the archetypal journey of a hero that appears common across nearly all myths. In his chapter on the call to adventure he writes, “The familiar life horizon has been outgrown; the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand.” He’s describing a threshold.

Take, for instance, the common fairy tales that tell of these moments of being lost in a dark wood, crawling through a wardrobe, falling down a rabbit hole, or of a mist suddenly enveloping the main character. In those thresholds, the heroes can’t see the path forward. The rules of the former world no longer apply.

When we cannot see the road ahead, we are taken off of the linear, rationalized, determined path, and left floating, not sure if we will fall or which direction will end up being up.

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” asked Alice. “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

Maybe the unknown can illuminate deeper truths, introduce us to new tools, and lead us to discover new paths forward. The sideways light of liminality can help us discover what was underneath the past but not noticed. What if our fall down the rabbit hole is an invitation to embark on a quest to learn uncomfortable but necessary truths?

What does it take to move through the betwixt and between? First of all it requires that we acknowledge that, despite the discomfort, liminality is part of the story - not a detour. By accepting the moment we find ourselves in, we take the first step in the adventure ahead of us.

Sometimes the only thing we can do is to have hope. Trusting that there’s a storied pattern, knowing that difficult things might happen, but believing that better can unfold. And, too, letting hope fuel a creative path forward. Besides, if heroes did not have hope, there would be no epics.

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Sarah Gallivan is a design leader with 15+ years of experience focusing on the place where people and products meet across a wide range of industries including healthcare, finance, automotive, media, and e-commerce. She’s also a pretty big sci-fi fan, dreams of our SolarPunk future, and is always willing to dig deep into discussions about new discoveries, relationship science, and the way to work toward a kinder, more connected evolution of All This.