When you can't see what's coming next...

I wrote this in June after I’d been largely alone in my little home for, oh, maybe 60 days. I decided to take a road trip to California before I went mad. It still feels relevant and like I’m getting closer to that next vine, finally. Maybe you too...

I spent one quarter at Pacifica Graduate Institute instead of the intended five years.

I had already spent 20 plus years as a student. It was something I knew how to do well.

To be honest, being a traditional student doesn’t require a ton of creativity. There are syllabi and structures and roadmaps to follow. With diligence, you can usually do quite good in school.

I liked that feeling. Knowing I could succeed. Knowing I’d have instructions to follow.

But very quickly into that first quarter, I knew I didn’t want to be there.

Everything about this new course already felt heavy.

Endings are heavy. But beginnings? When sheer enthusiasm and excitement should carry you through? This wasn’t a good sign.

I went over to my boyfriend’s house after a long weekend of classes really not wanting to deliver my feelings. I had so gallantly declared this new path to him. And here I was, ready to throw in the towel after a measly month.

Somehow I got the words out. “I don’t think I want to do this program. It just doesn’t feel right. It feels heavy.”

I was ready to fire off more reasons to prove my case, sure he’d follow up with a speech that went something like, “You can do this, Jamie.”

But the speech didn’t come…

Instead, he walked over to his holy white board, the resting place for all his ideas and visions. He wiped it clean, picked up some markers and, in black, wrote “SCHOOL.”

Then, right on top, in red, he wrote “FUCK!”

“FUCK SCHOOL!”

Permission.

He looked at me and said, “Ok, so tell me what you really want to do.”

I laughed out loud, thrilled by his response. Why couldn’t I give myself that kind of permission?

I began to express ideas and subjects that truly lit me up:

Astrology

Ayurveda

Plant Medicine

He asked me the amount of time and the financial investment each interest would require. And visually, he showed me I could embrace my heart’s plan for a quarter of the money and in half the time.

The Liminal

I don’t remember much about my quarter at Pacifica back in 2015, but I do remember one concept that stood out to me. This idea of a space called The Liminal.

My professor explained the liminal as the space in between. When something has ended and you are yet to find a new beginning.

Think of Tarzan swinging from vine to vine. He lets go of one vine and floats in the air, hanging freely in space before grabbing the next.

That giddy, anxious, disorienting and liberating state of free-falling? That’s the liminal.

It is a completely necessary part of the journey, and yet, I think it’s fair to say most of us would prefer to avoid the naked and uncomfortable feeling of, “But who am I now?”

Who am I?

“I just don’t fucking know.”

These are the words that play on repeat in the background of my life these days.

May 2020.

My days are spent largely inside the walls of this 800 square foot home.

I’ve used one tank of gas in the last 2.5 months.

My boyfriend and I broke up in February, tired of constantly battling one another over our differences.

And that same week I’d quit working at the restaurant that had come to feel like my community and home in Austin.

Space. So much empty space. All at once. With no vine to grab and hold.

In March, “I don’t know what’s next” would come and I’d follow it enthusiastically with phrases like, “You go girl! You don’t have to know! Fuck knowing,” reveling in my little rebellion against boyfriends and boxes and plans.

And then April came, and I’d follow the same “I don’t know” with a bit calmer, “Ok, I hear you. You don’t know. You’re allowed to not know. I’m here. I support you.”

And then May. “I don’t know.” I’m admittedly antsy now. I want to be okay with “I don’t know.” I really do. I want to accept and love myself just as I am. Just where I am, but...

shouldn’t I know?

I mean, I’ve been diligently sitting in the nothingness for months now. Give me something. A hint? A freakin bone?

I’m ready to know. The nakedness has shifted from liberating to vulnerable...tender...exposed.

I want to know what’s next. I want to know what I’m supposed to be doing now. I want a path to follow, damnit.

“Fine,” I think. “Enough of this waiting around. If the next path won’t reveal itself, I’ll make a path.”

I plan a road trip to California.

Movement. A change of scenery. Hell, I’ll even throw on the audiobook Eat, Pray, Love.

If this doesn’t spell the perfect recipe for inspiration to strike, I don’t know what does.

I get on the road, and it does feel beautiful. Promising. I experience a more hopeful experience of space: spaciousness. Trees and towns I’ve never seen. Charming Airbnbs. Liz Gilbert’s voice is soothing.

I have a destination. Finally, somewhere I know I’m going. It feels reassuring.

When I land in Phoenix, after two long days of driving, I run a bath. I’ve driven 15 hours and listened to at least 7 hours of Liz Gilbert. In some way, I feel I am owed clarity now. It would be unthinkable to not receive some type of guidance in this clawfoot tub.

I get in, ready to be enlightened.

Five minutes later... 

“I don’t know.”

I was listening to author Danielle LaPorte speak with Dr. Michael Beckwith the other day.

They were asking questions about each others’ experiences during quarantine. 

Danielle said (I’m paraphrasing here):

“I am surfing. Riding the wave and going deep.

Every dream I’ve had, I’ve held it up to say, ‘Is this still appropriate?’ No? Ok.

‘This one? Can I still desire this?’ Ok. We’re gonna refine that.

My city is just starting to open up. I feel more in tune with my body than ever. I’m not ready to emerge, and it’s not from a place of fear.

It was just my birthday this weekend and people are like, ‘Let’s do dinner’ and I’m like ‘NO.’

I’m gonna juice this for a few more weeks. 

This is a passage to where we’re heading, but in order to get there, we have to throw some stuff overboard.

We can’t have a healthy world unless we have healthy people. 

This is death.

I mean, from the beginning of this, I have been thinking about death in a way I’ve never thought about it.

What do I need to let go of in order to be ready to die clean, clear, and full-hearted? To have a metaphorical rebirth?

And just in really practical terms, if this was a situation that took my life, have I really fully showed up? Have I set things up? 

What do people do on their deathbeds? They say they’re sorry. They let it go. They decide to live more. 

I feel the planet is in hospice. We are nearing hospice now. And you let go of everything that’s not contributing. You get your affairs in order. And you get over a lot of shit.

I have been cooking food for my ex-husband. It’s a miracle.”

Exhale.

I think my body sinks a foot into the mattress upon hearing this.

This space I’m in. This space so many of us are in.

The “I don’t know.” The liminal. The floating in space without a vine or frickin bone…

It’s death.

Metaphorical. Transformational. And absolutely necessary.

But no one said death was fun.

Saying sorry. Saying No. Letting go.

Cleaning house and getting down to the bare bones of a life?

It’s liberating. It’s expansive. And, it’s hard work.

We’ve put a lot of time and effort into our identities. We wear them like ribbons that show the world and ourselves we’re enough. That we’ve got it figured out. 

We all want to find the period at the end of the sentence.

And, we want it to stay there.

We want it to stay there so we can proudly declare, “This is who I am, and this is my life.”

But the period is simply a pause, a temporary resting space.

Soon, the period becomes a comma.

A fucking comma. I love the comma. And I hate the comma.

The comma is uncomfortable.

So uncomfortable that we start grasping at things like Pacifica and ex-boyfriends and road trips because we want the next set of words already.

But the liminal has gifts too. 

Release. Space. Nourishment. Rest.

A time to clean things up, juice things up, not speed things up.

When the comma arrives, we go inward. When intermission comes, we pause and prepare.

But so often, we don’t.

We don’t see the comma as necessary.

We don’t believe there will ever be another vine.

We’re so busy looking backwards and forwards that we miss the invitation. To be here now. To go inward and tend to our business. To forgive. To grieve. To die so we can become something new. To become something new so a different kind of vine can arrive altogether.

During my stay in California, I found myself watching a documentary on Garth Brooks. I’m not typically a country fan, but for some reason I felt drawn to watch and hear his story.

At the end of the documentary, they showed him singing in a recording studio.

The words he sang?

“Sometimes you’ve got to die to live again.”

My stubborn, impatient self turned my eyes up toward The Something that is greater than I will ever understand and chuckled.

“Ok, I get it.”

It’s not always my timeline.

What I’m going through, even if it feels impossibly long, is part of me living again.

I think back to my boyfriend and the words he so confidently wrote in black and red.

What would I write on that holy white board today?

“GRASPING”

“FUCK!”

“FUCK GRASPING!”

Because I’m tired of missing the invitation.

And because the next vine will come, right on painfully slow time.

And, usually, the hardest part is believing it will.

But it will.

It does.

It always does.