The In-Between: Tips for Being with Someone in a Liminal Space
People who are giving birth, dying, or going through other transitional experiences often have similar ways of acting, thinking, communicating—they exist in what we might call a “liminal space” which is different than everyday life. A liminal space is like standing in a doorway, you’re not quite in one room or the other, you’re a little bit in both and a little bit in neither. Although bodies in liminal spaces instinctively know how to navigate them, if you are a visitor to a liminal space and don’t know what to do (sitting with someone who’s dying or giving birth, for instance), this month’s zine offers some ideas.
A few months ago my g-ma started hospice care. It’s been a griefy, exhausting, sometimes confusing time for me in a lot of ways (knowing when / how to communicate with different family members, navigating boundaries, witnessing other people’s ways of coping, parsing out what is grief and what is guilt, etc.) but one thing that hasn’t felt complicated are the times when I’ve been able to visit and just sit with her, one on one. When I say not-complicated I don’t mean easy—I sob in the car afterwards, I need multiple days to recharge, I’ve bumped up my therapy schedule—but I’m not confused about what to do while I’m there, and I really credit that to all the births I’ve sat through over the years.
Of course it’s a little different every time, but my general outline for a visit looks like this: I try to set an intention before I enter the space, what am I bringing, what am I leaving at the door. When I enter the room I tend to my body first (get the camping chair set up, make sure my water bottle is full, check my own temperature / layers). I let myself orient to the space, noticing what’s in the room (physically & energetically) and what I can notice about my g-ma (her energy, facial expression, position of her body, etc.). I try to really listen, both with my ears and also my mammal body—what is my nervous system picking up on right away? What happens if I just sit and settle? I let her know i’m there (even if she’s not awake). Sometimes I’ll brush her teeth for her, brush her hair, massage her hands, crack a window open, adjust the pillows, refill the diffuser. Sometimes we chat, sometimes we just sit silently with music playing in the background.
It’s not a complicated template, but it’s one that I had to learn. or, I should say, re-learn. It’s really my belief that we all know how to be doulas, we all know how to sit with another person who’s going through something, we all know how to support a body. it’s something our ancestors did forever… but it’s something that our current world set-up doesn’t really initiate us into very well. Instead of watching our mamas and grandmamas and aunties and friends tend to each other and learning from experience, many of our elders (or, at least my elders, maybe you have a different community who has taught you these things) now feel lost in these spaces and have passed on that confusion. BUT! Fear not, you probably already know more than you think, and it’s easy to re-learn. The zine can help!
If receiving a little 1:1 guidance would feel supportive in your own re-learning process, then let’s connect!
Such a big part of this work is the ability to tune into our own bodies and nervous systems, which is exactly the work I love supporting people with!
If you’re curious about somatic support, set up a free consult and we’ll chat more about if these sessions are a good fit for you. Generally, when someone schedules a first sessions with me they look pretty similar—we go through some of the logistics of this work (confidentiality, sliding scale, what to expect) and some of the stories & history that you’re bringing. I love teaching people about how the nervous system works, so we also spend some time chatting about fight / flight / freeze and how those patterns might show up in your own life. We also start working with orienting practices, which is a very simple but profound way to check in with our bodies & surroundings, and is something we return to again and again in somatic sessions.