Embrace Renewal This New Year- Powerful Liminal Thresholds
Dear
A very happy and blessed New Year to you! As I sit on this first day of the New Year, I’m reflecting on my experiences of 2023, and present to the transformational opportunity that comes from both endings and beginnings. It seems that our lives are a series of cycles, not just in the events of a year, but the large cycles of moving from childhood to adolescence to adulthood; we change jobs, some of us have children who hopefully become adults and move on. We start and end jobs, careers and relationships. People die, babies are born.
Cycles have an ending, a transition period, and a new beginning. Many things can be thought of as cycles, including Mondays, birthdays, and the turn of a new year. I think about each of these moments as the end of a cycle, which means that a new beginning awaits us, such as today.
And in between the ending of a cycle and a new beginning is a threshold, a doorway in which we stand waiting for whatever is new. This is the liminal space, the unknown. We can stand in the unknown for a minute, an hour, or for years. My mom waited 23 years to fall in love and be married again after her divorce from my dad. I waited four years between one dog dying, and welcoming the next. We are often uncomfortable with this unknown. We want to know what’s next, how to prepare, what to expect. In some circles, including the Jungian world, these are also thought of as Initiations.
What are some of your endings and beginnings right now, beyond even the new year? And if you think of them as initiations, what does that open up for you? If you can reframe the unknown as the threshold, or liminal space, how does that shift your experience?
If we can think about this liminal time as initiatory, as part of our profound growth and development, as the opportunity for an unknown archetype or self-knowledge to come forth, we can relax into this period knowing that it will change and transform, as everything does. When we can invite stillness and being into this space instead of anxiously pushing and doing, we lose the opportunity for another aspect of our being or personality to come forth, something to serve us in our next cycle.
As you all know, in 2023, I lost both my parents within 19 days of each other, and my beloved Strider among other shattering changes. When I stopped to look at the why, what is happening in my life, why are there so many changes at once, I was led to recognize that this year is deeply initiatory for me.
I’ve been standing in the threshold now. The beginning isn’t clear yet, but I know it’s around the corner. When I forget that, and an unhealthy part of my ego takes over, I approach the threshold with trepidation. Then I remember that I’ve spent the last two years, with you at my side at some point, familiarizing myself with the archetype of the Queen, who can walk by my side and illuminate my path during these times of change.
I’m so grateful to have walked this path with you, and you with me. It’s been beyond a privilege to be able to contextualize my own growth, and to be witness to yours. Thank you for your willingness, openness and trust, and thank you also for the gift you’ve given to yourselves!
May you know in your heart of hearts, that as you stand in the doorway, at the threshold of whatever cycle you’re in, that you are loved and supported, seen and known for the greatest expression of who you are. If and when you falter, see yourself through the eyes of your Queen tribe and remember the essence of who you are: sovereign, connected, loved, and all of the things that you uniquely you, my Queen.
May 2024 be a blessing, may there be peace in your heart and in your world.
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