There is a particular kind of loneliness that comes with thresholds.
When something ends.
When something begins.
When you cannot return to what was - and you cannot yet see what is ahead.
I have sat in many of those spaces in my life.
The end of a marriage.
The unraveling of identities.
Moments when what I believed about myself no longer fit.
For a long time, I thought navigating those passages meant figuring them out.
Understanding the psychology.
Tracing the wound.
Finding clarity.
Making sense of it.
I believed if I could just see it clearly enough, I could move through it.
But something shifted.
Not because I found a better method.
Not because I learned a more powerful technique.
What changed was this:
I stopped carrying it as if it were mine alone.
The first time I truly placed something heavy into the hands of the earth, I felt the difference.
Not metaphorically.
Not symbolically.
Physically.
Hands pressed into soil.
Breath uneven.
A weight in my chest I could not think my way out of.
And instead of trying to solve it, I placed my palms on the ground and asked,
“Will you receive what I am carrying?”
Not because the earth needed my words.
But because relationship begins with asking.
There was no lightning.
No grand revelation.
But something softened.
The pressure to hold it alone eased.
The ground did not analyze.
The trees did not judge.
The stones did not require explanation.
They received.
And in that receiving, something in me reorganized.
We are often taught that transitions are internal events.
Emotional.
Psychological.
Something to process and manage.
And yes - there is inner work in every threshold.
But what if that isn’t the whole story?
What if thresholds are not just personal transitions,
but passages within a living web?
What if the river, the wind, the soil, the unseen currents of life
are already participating in your becoming?
Not as tools.
Not as symbols.
But as relatives.
The river does not resist its bend.
The trees do not panic when leaves fall.
The horizon holds both night and dawn without conflict.
The earth understands transition.
And she is not separate from you.
When I began relating to thresholds this way, something in me relaxed.
I no longer felt like I had to generate all the strength myself.
I no longer believed clarity had to come from my mind alone.
I began to sit with trees during confusion.
To carry a stone through difficult passages.
To mark endings with water poured onto the ground.
Not as superstition.
Not as performance.
But as participation.
Because relationship is not one-way.
You can ask - and you can also offer.
You can release what is heavy —
and you can give gratitude in return.
Not as payment.
As reciprocity.
If you are in a threshold right now - whether you can name it or not - perhaps you might try something simple.
Sit at the edge of something: a shoreline, a forest edge, even the meeting of light and shadow at dusk. Let the outer threshold remind you that in-between is natural.
Place your hands on the ground and say, quietly,
“Earth, will you receive what I no longer need to carry?”
Then stay long enough to notice.
And when you rise, offer something in return - a breath of gratitude, a pour of water, a quiet acknowledgment. Not because you owe. Because you belong.
Carry a stone through this passage.
Not because it holds power for you -
but because you are choosing to walk with something that has endured.
Let it witness you.
Speak to the tree outside your window.
Not to extract wisdom -
but to enter conversation.
There is relief in remembering you are not navigating change in isolation.
The next time you find yourself in between -
not who you were,
not yet who you are becoming -
remember this:
The earth is listening.
The stones are receiving.
The wind is carrying more than air.
You are not standing on the land.
You are standing within a living field of relationship.
And you were never meant to cross thresholds as a separate being.
My work meets people in these in-between spaces, supporting the shifts at the roots, where real change begins.
With love and blessings,
Susan