Giving into the threshold
and the bolstering of familiarity
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Do you know the feeling where life gets constricted down to the specific threshold you are moving through, and all else seems to fade to the background? The way it feels like everything you knew disappears within the bigness you are tending to in front of you? Do you ever wonder if parts of yourself and your life will ever return when they feel far away? If you’ll ever feel like yourself in your life again? Or like the intensity of a season can be easily mistaken as the whole of being here?
The familiarity of my life even one month ago feels far away these days. The amount of energy I’m pouring into this particular threshold leaves little leftover for other areas. If I’m not careful, I can forget those other areas still exist — that those other parts of me are still alive, even when they can’t be tended to so intentionally. It’s been a season of less output, less creating in ways that are measurable, less spaciousness, less pouring outside of my own household. It’s been a season of new experiences, of being the new person in an unknown place, of holding my child’s big emotions while navigating my own. It’s been a season of saying goodbye to what was and hello to what is. Of trusting what will emerge from change. Of being nudged in different directions I don’t yet have my footing in. Of listening for what wants to become itself and making room, which has also required a shedding and setting down. A necessary defamiliarizing. A lingering in the goo. A stepping out of old skin and walking exposed while new skin forms. An un-knowing. It’s been a season of needing to constrict certain parts in order to allow expansion in others. This rhythm I can forget is just a rhythm, part of the fluid cycle of things, a straying and returning. Not personal, but human. Not in the way, but the way.
The discomfort of it all at times makes me feel like I’m crawling back toward something that no longer exists. I find myself clinging to my old life as it slips away. A desperation for something known rises. So I go for a familiar drive to a familiar trail, and I walk. I listen to the osprey and stellar’s jays overhead and wonder what they might be saying, if they hear me, too. I notice the pink sweet peas scattering the sides of the trail, their brightness contrasted with the ground I walk on. I let the sound of water move what feels stagnant inside, feel solidity turn to flow, feel the way everything really does change eventually. I see the foxgloves that were blooming the last time I was there now decaying, giving into their own cycle of change. I look up at the splotches of white strewn about the brightening blue sky, a clearness blending with fog.
I feel my own inner fog blend with rising clarity. Beauty can come from what dies, from what changes, from beginnings, I remember. Newness can bring gifts, not just what my fear imagines. Thresholds can place us into more of ourselves, more of our life. Fresh skin can reveal the truth more readily. Different paths can invite in different ways of being, of seeing. Change can widen our aliveness.
I pick up my CSA box and pop bright orange cherry tomatoes into my mouth, little bursts of presence. I read a book I’ve read countless times and notice how it feels as though I’ve never read it before, because I am reading it as a person I don’t quite know yet, in a life that is different. I see old friends, do the laundry, listen to Rilo Kiley like I did in 2004. I feel the soft relief of these little moments of recognition, these sparks of knowing amid the haze, these nudges toward remembering all the parts of this life that haven’t disappeared but are ready to be picked back up when I am. I look out at an uncertain future, at rising unraveling all around, and I turn toward this remembrance. Toward this ripe pluot. Toward the pasta water boiling. Toward my daughter’s laugh, my husband’s joke, my friend’s warmth. Toward the trail, the book, the voice, the path. I let familiarity wrap itself around my heart and feel a bolstering to face the new, the unknown, the beginning.
There is solid ground to be found amid the wobbly season.
There are knowns within the unknown.
There is patience available when traversing new paths, new selves.
There is beauty to be companioned alongside the fear.
There is possibility bursting forth in the places that hold decay.
There is wisdom in being a beginner, over and over again.
There is guidance all around, waiting to be heard.
There is a path back toward all that will remain unchanged.
There is relief in remembering what hasn’t yet been rearranged.
There is the familiar book, the familiar voice, the familiar trail.
There is a gift in opening to it all.
Thanks, as always, for being here.
△ A stellar new collection of poems
△ On the pleasures of being “in” and “out” of the discourse
△ I See My Father in the Fathers Killed by ICE
△ An evening meeting with awe
With care,
Lisa
Thank you for reading. Everything I share comes from my own heart; this publication, and all I do, is created without the use of AI.
💜 how you find the words! Today, for me, the standout is "lingering in the goo" oh goodness yes. The unknown ahead. And the grounding of the known still here too. Wonderful post Lisa. Thank you.
Your words flow into this welcoming space, inside. Understanding, inner laughter, images, memories. Sweet reflections on what humans confront facing outside and inside changes, transitions. Thank you 😊