Rite of Passage

I want to step through a threshold into a new space that reflects the person I’ve become over the last year.

Hi again. Thanks for being here.

Everything is opening up around us: trees are bursting into green, blossoms are unfurling on shrubs, and bulbs are heaving their bright shoots out of the soggy ground. Our world, too, is re-opening as vaccines become more widely available, warmer and longer days allow more outdoor gatherings again, and restrictions ease in public spaces. Maybe you’re ready to burst forth as earnestly as the bright forsythia flooding the back of my yard with color, or maybe you’re more reluctant, like the bulbs that are still huddled up underground, waiting for their season.

In my last post, I talked about liminal space. Liminal space can also be seen as a part of a rite of passage, which is a ritualized demonstration of transformation. Many societies used rites of passage to mark the transition from childhood or adolescence into adulthood. I believe that collectively we are in a rite of passage as a society; we have the chance to be transformed by this pandemic experience we’ve lived through (and are living through). It’s a threshold experience, a time when we let go of one way of being and enter into a different one.

Interestingly, rites of passage traditionally have phases based around enactments of separation, transition, and re-incorporation into the community. Think about how aptly those terms apply to our situation over the last year! We separated—from one another and from what was. We’re transitioning into something different. And we now have the opportunity to re-incorporate into our communities, hopefully in more mature, more insightful, transformed ways.

Rites of passage help make a transition conscious, intentional. So that’s my invitation for each of us to think about today: How can we make our own transitions—whatever they entail—more conscious?

My therapist reminds me that I don’t have to resume everything that was a part of my life before the pandemic. I get to be conscious about what I want to invite back into my life and what I don’t. There is a sense of empowerment and sovereignty in that that I like and that I want to embrace.

I want to step through a threshold into a new space that reflects the person I’ve become over the last year, that reflects the need I have for more solitude than I’d been allowing myself before the pandemic. To do this, I have to tune-in deeply to myself to discern what my deepest needs and desires are as I’m re-emerging from one way of life and co-creating another one. In the next post, I’m going to share a specific strategy that can help with this.