Embracing a liminal space.

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I used to hate winter. The lack of sunlight. The cold gloomy days that seem to last into eternity. As a summer sun-sign, I am very much powered by the light.  But the last couple years I’ve been taking a different approach, and this year I think I’m wintering better than ever (collective collapse aside, but read through for more on that).  

My ability to lean into winter in recent years has been a combination of Radical Acceptance (I’ll probably share more about this deeply misunderstood concept soon), as well as actually coming to value what this time is nature-intended for – hibernation and rest.

Winter goes against everything in Western Culture – slowing, lack of growth, darkness, stillness and composting death (vs. obsessing youth). Winter almost feels like an offense to the industrialism and capitalism that has been baked into our fascia ‘Produce! Produce! Produce!’ or ‘Get More! More! More!’  Nevermind that it is quite literally killing us, flooding our bodies with stress, maximizing competition, increasing violence and cannibalizing our own earth-body for resources. We have no concept of cyclical living in Western Culture. No value for sustainable living.  

As I’ve been cocooned in hibernation, mostly staying home – reading, writing fantasy novels, coloring mandalas, playing piano – I’ve been contemplating the concept of De-Growth.  In wellbeing economies and environmentalist circles, the idea of de-growth is not scary.  In fact, it is life-sustaining.  

It’s clear that our current economic model (which ties to work, which then ties to your nervous system btw) is not sustainable. It demands constant, ever increasing growth to even prop itself up (‘pay less, charge more, extract more, produce more!’). It’s either constant growth or collapse, and ironically non-stop growth will end in collapse no matter what 

(When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten, and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money – Cree Proverb). 

When the last bit of your hard-working energy has been extracted from your body, when you’ve been ‘optimized so hard’ that there is no ounce of rest, play or boredom left, maybe there will be no need for forests then.

De-Growth is the radical idea that maybe, just maybe we don’t need ‘more’.  Maybe, what we need is to create a sense of sufficiency within ourselves. Maybe, we need to learn how to find inner contentment rather than thinking it can only be found in accumulating more, more, more.  This concept is talked about at length in the book ‘Soul of Money’ by Lynne Twist, so if it seems diabolical and maybe even a little scary, give it a read. It’s too much to unpack here.
De-Growth is Winter.  De-growth is frozen soil that cannot grow, which is not a problem, because it’s not supposed to be growing.  De-growth is saying, ‘I’m OK with less progress, less movement, less energy, less SCALE EVERYTHING.’  De-growth is allowing your soft body to cozy in and notice the sufficiency all around you – the ‘enough-ness’. (Yes, people need to have their basic needs met, and yes this can be used no matter what your income bracket is – just… go read that book, but maybe don’t buy it from Amazon.)

I’ve also been a bit frozen about everything happening in the United States and world at large right now. There is no doubt we are in a time of extreme change, collapse and transition.  We are in an age of COMPOSTING.  I’ve seen many of my favorite teachers using this analogy, and you should really go follow @ajhawkinsx on IG if you’re wondering where you might fit in to the composting ecosystem.

For those of you who have never lived on or near a farm, composting stinks – badly, you want to vomit.  It rots, fungus sprouts and breaks apart the organic matter, gasses release.  Nobody wants to go sit by a compost pile, but they are a rich part of CYCLE.

The world is in a phase of crisis – we are in a liminal space collectively.  And I’m also feeling it personally.  Maybe you feel it too?  How can we not in this interconnected world? There is so much urgency, pain and violence – so much WILLFUL ignorance.  

What is my role? How do I want to show up? Where am I most effective? Do I even want to have a public facing role outside of my full time clinical work with clients? Or is it just a dumpster fire of yelling voices that drown out any subtlety, nuance or wisdom? Even activists and healers bickering amongst themselves and attacking each other about the best approach. As a white woman with loads of privilege, do I need to sit down and shut up for a while? Or do I need to lead the charge? Is it helpful for someone like me to be teaching nervous system regulation, or does it lead to misunderstandings and stereotypes of passivity and inaction?  Do I just want to focus on my small part of the work with my clients within my community? …I don’t know.  I’m in a liminal space.  There is no clarity right now.  And I’m learning – thanks to a significant deepening of my own mindfulness practice this year with my Zen teacher – that’s OK.

‘Do no harm’ is an oath that those of us in healthcare take even though we know that it’s impossible in perfect practice.  I’ve been feeling like no matter what I do in a public facing role right now, some harm will be done.  Speaking with justified anger and directness will trigger and polarize many. Speaking of rest and regulation, will trigger others. No matter what you say online, it won’t be appropriate advice or direction for everyone.  It is a very OPEN container vs. private client work that is closed and nuanced.

While some people need to hear the message of stepping back, pausing and regulating their nervous systems, other people need the message to step up, pay attention, activate more, engage in the difficult work that needs to be done collectively. No matter what you share, it’s a win-lose, zero sum.  It will help someone, and cause fracture for someone else who takes it in the wrong way or at the wrong time.  

Either way I am less and less convinced that social media is where real change happens for people.  And being successful getting a message to people on social media is THE ACTUAL capitalist framework damaging us all: ‘More! More! Faster! Faster! Scale! Scale!’  It’s not natural, and it’s not healthy for my nervous system any more than it is the forest.

And so, de-growth.  

Where can I find sufficiency in the work I’ve done throughout my career without needing to be a social media public figure that has to SCALE SCALE SCALE? Where can I find a sense of sufficiency – of ‘enoughness’? Where can I listen to my nervous systems capacity and not force it like the industrial machine has indoctrinated me to? Like the puritanism tells me will measure my human worth and value.  How can I allow myself to be in this liminal season of dormancy and freeze?  How can I manage my own nervous system reactions most effectively as the collective reels from collapse and compost?  

When the tears come, when anger grips my belly and I want to attack ignorance and cruelty, when I wake at night unable to sleep, when I see the trauma being perpetuated and laughed at … How can I BE with that as a grounded witness, and not a reactive fist shaker that wants to tear everyone supporting this apart? Something I know with my inner wisdom is the easiest (perhaps laziest) yet least effective approach. This is where my lion fire sign’s protective fierceness, can really use the coolness of winter. And this won’t be perfect.

Winter is no longer my enemy. Winter is my balm.

The answer to all of those questions: I don’t know.  That’s the definition of liminal. That’s what winters are for.  Letting go of the urge to force growth, force Spring, force CHANGE, when there has not yet been enough TIME for the compost.  I don’t know if you’ve ever tried, but you can’t really force something to rot faster – there’s a bit of trusting alchemy.

You may also be feeling the unbearable uncertainty of floating in a liminal space.  All the historical experts I’ve been tuning into are saying – this might be a while – as much as we want an immediate resolution at mid-terms or even the next election. But what the world is currently transitioning through is bigger than that, and it’s likely to be a period we look back in history on with waves of crisis and collapse, and waves of hope and progress.  So how do we cope?

Right now, I’m learning to winter.  I’m learning to embrace the cycles. Do what you can with the capacity that you have, however small, in your field of immediate control; and allow yourself to winter when your animal body says ‘enough.’  Fire the capitalist CEO that has been embedded in your nervous system, because survival will require new regenerative ways of relating to yourself and to life.  It will require us to subvert the system, more than fight it. (This article is from 2022 but I highly suggest reading it for expert guidance here – the dude is obviously versed in dialectical thinking, my jam 😏 ).

‘You can’t fight an old system using the same tools.’ – Audrey Lorde

What else can we do? As my Sensei tells me each week when I see him, ‘Meditate, Meditate, Meditate.’ A couple weeks ago he said to me (he’s from Japan), ‘If more Americans could just do a little more meditation…’ Then he shook his head and we laughed. And I’ve got to be honest, I’ve rationally known, taught and practiced mindfulness for over a decade with life changing results (for me and others), but I hadn’t really done all that much sitting practice – consistently, for long periods – until this year. It’s a different kind of integration.

After six months of meditating more than I EVER have in my life, something’s slowly starting to shift in my ability to sit with the chaos (and hopefully take action with more wisdom, more often). I think we often resist and hate meditation because it is also ‘winter’ energy. And very few of us in Western Culture were ever taught how to winter.

With that being said I offer you this metta:

May you be well, may you be at peace, may you be free from suffering,

And may our practice of Mindfulness be a benefit to all beings on this planet.

May all beings be free, may all beings be safe, may all beings be at peace.

Xo,

Katy