Liminal Becoming

Belonging by Lucy Pierce

I am really struggling to know myself right now. Struggling to locate myself in the world, to meet its insatiable ask. I feel like I want to curl inside a cocoon and wait until I know who I really am, what I really have to give, how it matters that I give that, how to be known for who I am, how to ever be enough. I want to sleep and dream and become something truer, but the asks of mothering and working and of having a personhood, feel daunting and relentless. I am struggling to meet the upside, outside world.

It is not a broken place I find myself in, though I've known my share of those. The felt sense is one of gloaming, where the sensing of what is lost and past is still more pregnant, than that of what is yet to come. There is a tension sometimes, in holding to the unknown spaces, the in between places, that speak of mystery and disintegration and rebirth, in a culture that can so often cling to the known and the certain. It is a practice, to keep letting ourselves die, when it is death that is being asked.

I want to remember a slower, more expressive self, that felt she had something to offer, of image to the void, of word to the silence, of heartfullness to the darkness. But I cannot turn back to her, I must move forward into the unknown of me, however uncomfortable the ask. Right now I feel empty and lost, and unable to belong to a world that is oblivious to the nuances of our time and in that oblivion, feels dangerous, but I remain unknowing of what it might mean to belong in a way that feels true and nourishing to something greater, something that is more fitting and embodied and sustainable and real. 

Sometimes it'
s hard to trust what we thought was growth, when it is in the deathing stage and all the trees have been stripped of their fertile leaves. Hard to trust the journey when it leads us into the brittle, frozen lands of the psyche, trusting that the enlivening thaw will happen, however painful the cold, however slow the turning of that wheel, watching for the drip of the melting ice, trusting that spring will return, that dawn will come again for us, one day. I have lost a layer of false protection and am yet to grow a reciprocal response to the new aliveness that feels almost unbearable, raw and newborn and laid bare to the elements. 

With you as my witness, I invite breath and stillness and courage and deep succour to this inbetween self, that knows not what it means to matter to this world as it stands, what it looks like to live a life that can make a difference, that is a fitting response to the real experience of this life at this time. Not knowing whether to rise or to fall, to fight or to surrender, to cling or to let go, I poise here, softly listening, heartbeat as timekeeper, in breath and out breath as wayshower.

Text and Image Copyright Lucy Pierce 2021