The Ugly Truth - Liminal Space

Sarah of Amor y Queso shared these words in January 2020: So I know the holidays aren't known for stillness, or quiet, or introspection. Rather, the hallmark of the holiday season is business and bustle, parties and ceremony and family time. 

Unless you're sick as fuck. 

I had a lot of time to think and introspect over our holiday break, as it were. The last in my house to catch the flu, the most affected. I was in a state of 'un-wellness' for literally TWO WEEKS. I spent the first week surviving on bravado and a misplaced sense of duty. That was stupid because the second week was far worse. I have never been so ill, so weak, so absolutely sick. So I changed gears and I made myself REST. I asked for help, and accepted it without guilt or shame. I spent hours doing nothing at all (which is a privilege, I'm aware.) There were some dark days in there, ya'll. Fever dreams that showed me other worlds' versions of me. Hours to weigh my existence, my work, my regrets. I know it sounds dramatic as fuck, but it felt so much like something nearing the end of something else. (Spoiler - it was.) Like the world was closing in around me, like I couldn't even begin to imagine ever feeling right ever again. And boy did that make me THINK. It was like everything I had ever taken for granted was suddenly in question. Because wellness and living got to feeling distant.

Of course, the virus ran its course and I did in fact get well. But in that darkness, in that liminal space, I found a lesson and understanding of where I am in my journey. I, Sarah, am afraid of leaving no legacy outside of my children. Of never having made a wave in the world I live in. 

You know those tapes you play in your head? The little catchphrases that get stuck on repeat and mess with your self views? I'm gonna share a couple of mine, since we're here. 

"I'm so lazy." "I'm too busy being a mother to work." "I contribute nothing." (I literally wrote something to that effect in my journal today, holy shit.) "Why don't I give a fuck about anything?" Or, in my Gemininity... "You've done plenty. Rest." "You deserve a break."

WHEW. It feels like half the time I'm making excuses for myself and the other half I'm beating myself up for it. Fucking brutal?! What it leads to is MORE OF THE SAME. A vicious cycle of self deprecation, resentment, and stagnancy brought into being by the spells I chant in my mind. There's much exercise to be done in erasing those tapes, in moving out of stagnancy and into liminality so that eventually we can move into the next incarnation. 

The difference between stagnancy and liminal space is the TRAJECTORY. In stagnancy, there is wallowing, lingering and the expectation that something is bound to happen even though you aren't doing anything to bring it about. In liminality you're moving through a passage, you're somewhere in the process of becoming something else. There is waiting, but it's intentional. It's convalescence, it's regeneration. 

Liminal space is a bridge, even when it feels like quick sand. It's the passage into a new version of you. It's part of the healing process, it's the darkest point before the dawn. The light is just there, on the other end of this corridor of self care and work. We're photos in the darkroom, developing in the dim and quiet into a clearer and more focused self. 

So, dear Sage woman, what is transforming inside you? What is the lesson that visits you in your liminal spaces, pushing you to shed your old shit and emerge as the next version of yourself?

UPDATE: Sarah started her charcuterie biz amidst the Covid 19 lockdown in 2020 from her kitchen. She now is accepting orders for her gorgeous grazing boards in her Dallas shop in Deep Ellum as of December 2020. Write down your fears and then let them go for something bigger. Go getcha some, babes. 

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