A week ago, my mum forwarded me an email newsletter from an American spiritual writer she follows named Richard Rohr. With the subject line reading ‘Between Two Worlds’, the note went on to describe the concept of liminal space as the following:
Liminal space is an inner state and sometimes an outer situation where we can begin to think and act in new ways. It is where we are betwixt and between, having left one room or stage of life but not yet entered the next. We usually enter liminal space when our former way of being is challenged or changed—perhaps when we lose a job or a loved one, during illness, at the birth of a child, or a major relocation. It is a graced time, but often does not feel “graced” in any way. In such space, we are not certain or in control.
A few months into my second maternity leave, with my baby girl only just 12 weeks old, I felt quite familiar with being in a liminal state. And yet with half my baby’s life having been lived amidst the lockdown rules of a global pandemic, this leave period had begun to feel like something else entirely. Since the start of the year, I had been percolating on the new insights, tangents and realizations that naturally emerge from the shift in focus required to successfully keep a baby alive in its early weeks, and which inevitably extend to becoming a more expansive (and sometimes very reactionary) exploration of what is needed to help our family thrive.
Outside of this somewhat self-involved pondering, and through the escalation of the global COVID-19 situation, emerged some much bigger questions about what matters and what is valuable, both to me personally and more existentially. My mind was racing with emergent thoughts and ideas, some connected and others as seemingly disconnected as they could be. My fingers were itching to document and summarise before the threads were lost, and yet none of these thoughts felt…finished.
In his newsletter, Rohr continues,
The very vulnerability and openness of liminal space allows room for something genuinely new to happen. We are empty and receptive—erased tablets waiting for new words. Liminal space is where we are most teachable, often because we are most humbled. Liminality keeps us in an ongoing state of shadowboxing instead of ego-confirmation, struggling with the hidden side of things, and calling so-called normalcy into creative question.
In a few brief phrases, I was handed both an understanding of why I have previously found it difficult to start, let alone maintain, a writing habit, as well as the perfect framing to finally kick one off. Interestingly, the very next day, Harvard Business Review published an article about the art of a career change amidst the coronavirus crisis, encouraging an embrace of the ‘liminal’ period and saying, “this fraught stage is a necessary part of the journey, because it allows you to process a lot of complex emotions and conflicting desires, and ultimately prevents you from shutting down prematurely and missing better options that still lie ahead.”
(Fun fact: it seems the concept of liminal space is having a moment more generally - after a quick Google Trends search, it appears interest in the topic had almost doubled by mid-May since its all-time high in mid-February.)
In that vein, these thoughts and words belong in this liminal space of mine - half-formed, lightly-held yet strongly felt. Specifically, my life experience and career to date has me constantly oscillating across three broad areas: Technology, the Economy ( broadly defined) and the Human Condition (as broad as it gets).
Technology - on a day-to-day basis I am immersed in the world of technology, high-growth startups and the capital and other inputs that drive them forward. It’s an exciting place - but it’s not all good. I’m interested in tech that creates positive systemic and behavioural change, in holistic purpose-driven founders and in the ecosystem players that propel these things forward.
The Economy - In a past life, I worked at the epicentre of the sharing economy movement between 2010-2015 (more on that in the future no doubt, but here is a related read if interested), and am fascinated by socio-economic trends, and tech’s relationship to them of course. But I like to define the economy more holistically to include the system it sits within - the environment and our planet.
The Human Condition - Get stuck talking to me at a dinner party and you will find yourself in a deep vortex of exploration about how and why we are the way we are. Not for everyone, but unfortunately I can’t help myself. Archetypes, psychometric tests, astrological forces… give them to me.
Somewhere in this web of strands of inquiry and threads of interest, there is a context that I hope will be better off shared - for the connections it might result in, for the relationships sparked and, at the very least, for the forward steps finally taken in pressing publish.
Liminal Space will be where I collect and collate these threads and interests, filtered through my particular lens, in the hope of building on them further. Ultimately this is an invitation to sit with things, and not produce a thesis, a statement, a hard-coded belief. Instead, to invite further layers and broader perspectives to be added into the mix, because right now the world needs new approaches and paradigms if we are to emerge from this place with a sense of freedom and possibility. I look forward to hearing where these thoughts take you.
TECH
Last week, Blackbird Ventures ran a collection of webinars across the week under the banner of the Giants Conference. One of the sessions I tuned into was a Q & A with Brianne Kimmel, a San Francisco-based investor I really admire
One of the insights I took away from her conversation was her observation that enterprise or B2B focused startups are increasingly being started by founders with consumer-side experience, meaning that they bring a real rigour around product design and a bottom-up approach to growth. Brianne has been on the money with WorkLife Ventures and her newsletter WFH is definitely one to follow.
THE ECONOMY
I’ve long been a fan of the Small Giants team and the things they produce and give life to, from Dumbo Feather to the Australian B Corp movement to The School of Life and more. I was super excited to see one of Small Giants’ founders, Berry Liberman, launch a new podcast covering all my favourite things: Myths, Morals and Money. It addresses the fact that our economy needs a new narrative, one that replaces the ‘extraction’ story that prevails.
It’s also fascinating as the recording took place during, and was very much inspired by, Australia’s horrendous bushfire season this past summer, and now has been released into the world amidst COVID-19, making it a more poignant discussion than I imagine Berry had even hoped possible.
These COVID/mat leave days in a small apartment in Sydney’s eastern beach suburbs have had us dreaming of ‘the simple life’. We watched The Biggest Little Farm the other night, the story of a small family’s eight-year long journey to rehabilitate a (humongous) tract of land just outside of LA. One of the most honest and awe-inspiring documentaries of its kind that I’ve seen, it is also the most beautifully shot and edited - think David Attenborough, but make it Old McDonald’s Farm - due to the fact the husband was also a wildlife cinematographer before he tried his hand at farming.
RELATED: Pre-COVID lockdown madness, I had signed up to do Milkwood’s Permaculture Living 12-week online course. More on this in a future post, but six weeks in and it has been transformative, at least for the little garden bed below our apartment.
THE HUMAN CONDITION
I’m currently pursuing a tangent around the science and (perhaps more aptly) philosophy of child development and educational models (let’s call it immersive learning…). Reading the The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson, I realized understanding how your child’s brain develops naturally gives you an understanding of your own brain function too (and again proving parenting is more about learning than teaching).
An analogy from the book that seems particularly relevant amidst the current crisis relates to mental health. The author describes mental health as being like floating down the middle of the ‘river of wellbeing’. The left bank represents rigidity and control, and the right bank represents chaos and turbulence - coming too close to either bank will affect a person’s sense of wellbeing, and in fact what can often happen is that we find ourselves ricocheting between the two.
With uncertainty across the board globally at an all time high, we’ve all been forced too close to the right bank of chaos, having collectively lost the sense of structure and order that helps us to feel well. A natural reaction might be to pull hard left and over-engineer life or relationships to compensate, but that will create problems of its own.
Perhaps the best we can all do right now is observe and accept the chaos, while acknowledging the small little things we can do each day (whether getting up at the same time each day, getting dressed as if for work or just going outside to breathe) that help us have some control over how we experience it.
BONUS ROUND
Other than Brianne’s WFH newsletter mentioned earlier, jump in and subscribe to the some other awesome people doing great work:
Jax Vullinghs Making Connections
Joan Westenberg Pizza Party (Special thanks to Joan for helping me to kick my ass over the Publish line.)
Nick Crocker Branches
Great article. Keep writing
Dr Seuss called this luminal space ‘the waiting room’.... where all life’s next adventures begin :). Loved reading this - thank you! (Katie)