Living in the Space Between: What Liminal Space Can Teach Us
By Stef Dunn, LPC · New Hope, PA
There is a moment at dusk when it is no longer day and not yet night. The light changes. The birds go quiet. For a few minutes, everything seems to hold its breath.
I have always been drawn to moments like this. The pause at the top of a breath. The stillness just before sleep. The doorway between one room and the next. They are easy to rush past, and yet they carry something I have come to trust.
There is a word for these in-between places. Liminal.
In short: Liminal space is the threshold between what has ended and what hasn't yet begun. In psychology, it describes the uncertain middle of any life transition, a time Carl Jung saw as rich with meaning.
What does liminal mean?
Liminal comes from the Latin limen, which means threshold. It describes the space between what was and what will be.
In 1909, the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep studied rites of passage across many cultures and noticed they followed a similar pattern. First, a person separates from their old role or identity. Then comes a middle stage, the liminal stage, when they are no longer who they were and not yet who they are becoming. Finally, they return to their community changed.
That middle stage is the one we tend to fear. It is also where the change actually happens.
What is a liminal space in life?
Most of us don't go through formal rites of passage anymore. But we still cross thresholds. A relationship ends. A child leaves home. A career that once fit no longer does. A diagnosis changes everything. Sometimes nothing outward changes at all, and yet a quiet question begins to grow: is there more to life than this?
These are liminal times. The old way of being has fallen away, and the new one hasn't arrived yet.
In my work, I often meet people right at this point. Many of them want to get through it as quickly as possible. That makes sense. Not knowing is uncomfortable. But I have come to believe that the threshold is not only something to get past. It can be a place to learn from, if we are willing to stay a while.
What did Jung learn in his own liminal period?
Carl Jung knew this kind of time well. After his break with Freud in 1913, he entered a long period of inner uncertainty. Instead of turning away from it, he turned toward it. He paid close attention to his dreams and the images that came to him, and he recorded them in what later became The Red Book.
Jung later said that the years he spent with those inner images were the most important of his life, and that everything he did afterward grew out of them.
I find that hopeful. It suggests that the times when we feel most unsure can also be the times when something deeper is trying to reach us. When the familiar map stops working, the psyche often begins to speak in another language: through dreams, symbols, the body, and the stirrings Jung connected to the collective unconscious.
What other ways of knowing can help?
One of the gifts of liminal space is that it loosens our usual ways of understanding. The thinking mind wants answers. But on a threshold, other ways of knowing often have more to offer.
The body notices what the mind hasn't named yet. Nature reminds us that every season ends and every season returns. Dreams bring images we didn't choose. Intuition offers a quiet sense of direction before we can explain it.
None of these replaces careful thought. They sit beside it. I've come to see psychology and spirituality as two languages describing the same inner landscape, and I think we lose something when we insist on speaking only one of them.
Why is Samhain a threshold?
October 31 is Samhain, an old Celtic festival marking the end of the harvest and the beginning of the dark half of the year. It was traditionally understood as a time when the veil between worlds grows thin, when the boundary between the seen and the unseen feels a little more open.
Whatever you believe about that, Samhain is a threshold. One season is ending. The next has not fully begun. It's a natural moment to pause, notice what is falling away, and wonder what might be waiting on the other side.
How can you move through a liminal time?
If you find yourself in a space between right now, here are a few small ways to be with it rather than rush through it.
Name what is ending. Write it down, even if it's only a few words. Endings we never acknowledge tend to follow us.
Step outside at dusk. Spend a few minutes watching the light change. Notice what you feel as the day lets go.
Keep a notebook by your bed. Write down any dream, image or feeling you wake with. You don't need to interpret it yet.
Ask a question and let it stay open. Instead of "What should I do?", try "What is asking for my attention?" Then listen over the next few days.
Let your body have a say. Before a decision, notice where you feel open and where you feel tight. The body often knows first.
Frequently asked questions
Is a liminal space a bad thing? No. It can feel uncomfortable because the old way has ended and the new one isn't clear yet. But it is often where real change and new understanding begin.
How long does a liminal period last? There's no set length. Some thresholds pass in weeks, while others, like grief or a major life change, unfold over months or years.
What is the difference between liminal and transitional? A transition is the whole process of change. The liminal stage is the middle of it, after something has ended and before the new has fully begun.
An invitation
For a long time, I've wanted to create a space where people could explore these ways of knowing together, slowly and with depth, over the course of a year.
That space is LIMINAL. It's a twelve-month journey through psychology, nature, intuition and spirit, moving through Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Spirit. We'll meet once a month to learn, practice and reflect, in a small circle where questions are welcome and no one is asked to believe anything they don't.
Applications open today, on Samhain. If something in you is curious, I'd love for you to take a look. Enter the Portal.
Wherever you are standing right now, at the beginning of something, the end of something, or somewhere in the quiet between, I hope you'll give yourself permission to pause there.
You don't have to arrive with certainty.
Warmly, Stef
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