8.23.2020

The Liminal Space

I took this photo a week before quarantine started, three days after my 40th birthday. I didn’t know then that this image would come to symbolize for me what Richard Rohr calls “the liminal space,” which he describes as the state of being “betwixt and between the familiar and the completely unknown.” COVID has thrust many of us into a liminal space for reasons obvious and subtle, mundane and mysterious, simple and wildly complex. It’s been a period of intense creativity and deep connection for me, but also of malaise and boredom and loneliness. It’s reminded me, perhaps more than anything else, that writing is absolutely essential to my well being. As I told a friend the other day, writing saves my life every day. In case it might also save yours, I’m going to start sharing more about my process and what it’s like to live the writer’s life, which is an altogether different thing than just being a person who writes. If any of it’s helpful, great. Most of it probably won’t be because writing is such a personal experience and, ultimately, a solitary exercise. But here is what I know for sure: we writers need each other. And we are all writers whether we know it or not.