Living In The In-Between
I haven’t talked about this, but I’ve been working with a coach for the past six months and we’ve been doing some hard but really exciting work to take my speaking business to the next level. I’m excited, but as you can imagine, it has surfaced so many things in my own heart.
Expansion does that.
And when I’m in seasons of expansion, when I no longer resonate with who I once was but the new me that I’m learning to embody hasn’t yet fully taken shape and I’m in that in-between space, nothing feels like home to me—and it’s easy for me to feel disconnected.
Disconnected from myself, my vision or purpose and even the geographical location that I call home. The dynamics of friendships inevitably change and I often find myself coping with my loneliness in these seasons with one too many heavy pours of my favorite whiskey.
And when I look back at my life, this feeling of disconnection used to activate and mobilize me in a way where I would frantically search for someone or something to help me figure out my life.
I would throw a hundred things on the wall to see what would stick—start a podcast, start a group program, create a course—anything to help me move beyond this place of the in-between and figure out this thing called life.
And when my anxious attachment to life in these seasons—when running as fast as I can, for as long as I can—would eventually leave my heart out of breathe, I would find myself sinking in quicksand full of despair with no fight left. And, I would disappear—sometimes for days—sometimes for weeks.
But, now I know there’s another way.
My work, our work, in these seasons of expansion, is about doing everything I can to regulate my system in this vulnerable place and to teach my system that I am safe—I am safe in my body and in my life—here and now.
And I’ve began to experience that the more I’m anchored to this sense of safety, the more I feel safely held. Knowing that my life is held is the ultimate expansion that I’ve been looking for—and it’s been with me this entire time.