Here’s my truth about transitions. The way we describe them seems… unsatisfactory.

The crying, denying, reviving, reworking, regrounding, removing- the constant, continuous, seemingly never-ending expansion that feels like the glass ceiling is made of titanium.

The confusion. Am I in alignment? Why am I questioning that if I am? Losing people, making space, grieving, losing, growing. Then comes, “Am I experiencing psychosis?” Really thinking and questioning… am I losing myself?

We often talk about how a new life, a new identity, a new job, how… new… is at the expense of the old. The past, the was, the has been. That to receive new you must let go of the old.

But so little do I hear people talking about the limbo, the falling off of old identities, the shedding of past lives, expectations, ideals, morals, experiences; it almost starts to feel like you yourself are falling away.

Like a rock smoothed out by the rash waves of life, sometimes you feel… unknown to yourself, and not lost, simply… lessened.

Like color is dull, and smell is quiet.

And not depressed, but… apathetic, like you don’t know what the next best thing to do is, and doing nothing feels about as good as doing something, and vice versa.

A few things inspired this article.

Back to our Perception article, based on the incredible book Opening the Doors of Perception by Anthony Peake, we understand that “I” is the core of our experience and that, for you to be anything, you first have to be you. “I am hungry” is just hunger if you are not there; hence, you are an intrinsic part of your experiences. In Buddhist teachings, it’s understood that the “I” is interconnected with all elements of life, and that there is no separation between who we are and what we experience.

With both of these things in mind, how we talk about healing not being linear, transitions aren't binary. Transitioning is fluid, so while I may be in a space to be less me, I’m simultaneously more earth, more peace, more existence, more life.

So yes, we “change,” but I think, more than changing, we recalibrate to where life is most present, a path of least resistance. If I feel less myself through transition, I probably am. Because then, when we incorporate the limbo, we understand that we are indeed less, less of the past, of what we were and could’ve been, and more of what is, and when we don’t know what that is, we become what is known, the elements around us, the unchanging pillars, water, air, fire, earth, spirit. And through this, we’re “filled” with raw element, raw energy, so if we allow ourselves to be… nothing, we can use the energy then (when we know the path forward, or are ready to be on it) to be something.

Because transitions aren’t start this-end that, be in limbo. They’re living spaces, where we are complete, just in different ways, where the cracks of our shifting identity are filled with experience, with life itself, non-attached, always moving but never truly changing, far from who we are. And when our identity is shifting, “hunger” is enough; the “I am” is nonessential.