Liminal Spaces
The week between Christmas and the New Year’s Day feels like one big liminal space where we are betwixt and between with many endings and beginnings as we say good-bye and hello.
I like liminal spaces. When I think of a liminal space, I imagine images of ancient rock passages where travelers pass over a threshold from a known space to a space they may see beyond but know nothing about.
In liminal spaces, I welcome walking out of a space that no longer fits, a place I have moved beyond because I know I am ready to explore what lies beyond.
As a Colorado mountain girl, I have no illusions about exploring new paths. I know that if I have encountered a rocky path to get to where I am when on a walk or a hike, I will most likely continue to find a rocky path as I move forward. The path might get even rockier, but I also know I will learn more about myself as I keep on trekking on.
The past has taught me, I have both the vision and the courage to walk through a new doorway.
When this year ends, I will bid good-bye to the year where I turned eighty. I will be fully entering into my years as an octogenarian. As I pass through the milestone that marks fully living in my ninth decade of life, I find I need links to the past, reminders of what was behind to give me courage and strength to walk into the unknown even as I am grateful, ready, and curious to see what lies ahead.
I carry with me images of ancient rock walls built by generations before me because they speak to me of the legacy my ancestors left me that they once also walked the same path I am walking, and along the way they built strong, solid spaces to provide safety along the way.
There is a tension in aging. A physical, cognitive, and emotional tension between staying in a safe contained space, while also wishing to venture out to experience new spaces where one can continue to learn what is still out there to explore.
I’m grateful to end this year feeling very grounded in place where I am. I’m grateful that I am deeply connected to the roots from which I sprang. I live within miles of where I was born and spent my childhood. I live near places where my grandparents on both sides lived, loved, and explored. These deep connections to the past truly ground me, providing for me a known, safe landing space, but I find I am very much not done with exploring more spaces that may be more expansive as I long to keep growing and learning.
I am also very much reluctant to give up the safe, solid, steady, landing space I have created for myself and those I love. I call this wisdom speaking, but I do not want to stifle the desire I have to live more fully beyond my own four walls, literally and figuratively, as much as I can.
Ending 2025 and Beginning 2026
2025 proved to be one the very most challenging years of my life. I wrote those same words in my journal as 2024 ended. My daughter had become seriously ill just as 2023 ended and 2024 began. By the midpoint in the year, she would need both a kidney and liver transplant to keep on living. By what I will always call a miracle, she received both in September of 2024, and by the end of the year was thriving.
Then, in mid-2025, her husband became seriously ill, and he needed a liver transplant. How can this even be? He ended up having two liver transplants and multiple complications, yet again, miracle of miracles, he is also still with us and gaining his health back. He will need a kidney transplant in the coming year, and we are hopeful a live donor will come forth very soon.
We spent Christmas Day with them in their home. It was a beautiful, fun, and festive celebration. You can be sure of that! Amy brings so much fun to everything.
During 2025, as is my practice, I journaled nearly every single day. All my fears, prayers, joys, sorrows, worries, joys, experiences, were not captured, but most were. I filled up three journals writing 600 pages by hand. How many words is that?
Still I have no words for the year except to say by the grace of God we all have made it to this day and are moving into the next year with fresh hope for continued good health and restoration for all the one I love most because they too have had their challenges, their hardships, their pivots, their joys, their victories and their new beginnings that have come, some by choice, some not by choice.
When 2024 ended, I wrote that my word for the year was presence. In my journal I wrote I was tired of living in my head, and I said I was going forward asking an essential question that I found in a quote by Henri Nouwen: “…am I taking my wounds to my head or to my heart?”
The question came as I thought of the memoir I have worked on in spurts for years. I knew I could not move forward in writing of it if it was to remain just a recounting of sequences, stories, events, experiences. If a memoir is to be finally written and completed by me, it must be work of the heart. I wanted whatever my story has to say to be an expressed with words that express emotion, not just thoughts. That is a hard task for me.
Learning to be fully present to everything in my life was a goal for 2025. Be careful what you ask for. As Kate Bowlers says, Everything happened.
John O’Donohue gave me inspiration for my word of the year for 2025:
The glory of human presence is the divine longing fully alive.
Journaling helped me to be more present to my life as it really was and how I was choosing to live it. Reminding myself to be present with and to others helped me overcome my need to fix everything for everyone whether they wanted me to or not.
I overmom (new word: I am momming everything and everyone. I am mom. I will fix that. I will do that. I will mom. I will tell you what to do and how to do it. Mom is a verb.) My kids (grown ass adults) may disagree, but I feel like I was better at not momming all the time this year. I feel like I was better at being present and being supportive without feeling like I was responsible to do anything except be there with the kind of ear, shoulder, resource, or prayer that was needed and asked for before I offered.
I’m proud of how I learned to be present and practice presence this year. I still have more to learn.
I’m moving into 2026 with a new word: trust. That will be a challenge to do! More on that later.
In this liminal space, as I close out 2025 and enter 2026, I’m leaning into a blessing written by John O’Donohue which was my prayer for year. I think I’ll need it again as I move forward, so I’m going to copy it here for you and for me. 1
May you awaken to the mystery of being hear and enter
the quiet immensity of your own presence.
May you have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
May you receive great encouragement when new frontiers
beckon.
May you respond to the call of your gift and find the
courage to follow its path.
May the flame of anger free you from falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame and may
anxiety never linger about you.
May outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of the soul.
May you take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that
seek no attention.
May you be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven
around a heart of wonder.
I love every line, every word of this blessing and truly hope to see it lived out in my life.
Happy New Year!
Thanks for being here in 2025. May your new year be full of blessing of love, joy, and peace. May divisions be healed. May we strive towards equality and justice for all. May we encourage and support each other along the way. Take heart. We are all in this together.
XO
Sally
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from Eternal Echoes - Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong by John O’Donohue, p. 97.
What a year it was! We keep saying that, don't we? I don't dare tempt fate by even coming up with an intention or word for 2026. Instead, I'll walk into the new year with an open heart.
I’m a fellow over-doer. My word for the year is “enough”. I’ve done enough.