There is a particular kind of threshold many people arrive at quietly.
Not through loss.
Not through collapse.
Not because something has gone terribly wrong.
It arrives when you know what you want.
Love.
A child.
Peace in your relationship.
Financial stability.
A life that feels nourishing rather than endured.
You know the desire clearly. And yet, you find yourself standing in an in-between place—doing all the things, taking all the steps, trying to move life forward—while something inside still feels heavy.
From the outside, it looks like progress.
Appointments. Dating apps. Applications. New strategies. New plans.
And none of these are wrong.
But inside, the same ache remains.
The same waiting.
The same quiet question beneath it all:
What if this never comes?
When Effort Doesn’t Open the Door
When we want something deeply, the mind naturally steps in and asks,
How do I make this happen?
So we try.
Trying gives hope.
Trying gives a sense of control.
Trying reassures us that we’re not giving up.
This is understandable. And often necessary.
But for many people, over time, trying slowly becomes a way to manage fear—fear of waiting, fear of not knowing, fear of imagining a life where the thing we long for never arrives.
When that happens, the body tightens.
The nervous system stays alert.
The heart braces around timelines and outcomes.
The doorway doesn’t open—not because anything is being done wrong—but because the system never softens enough to receive.
This is where people begin to feel like they’re walking in a circle.
“I’m doing everything I can.”
“I don’t know what else to try.”
“I feel tired, but I can’t stop.”
This Is a Threshold, Not a Failure
What many people don’t realize is that this space is not a personal failure.
It’s a threshold.
Not the kind that comes with dramatic endings, but one that arrives quietly—when life looks active on the outside and unresolved on the inside.
Thresholds like this are deeply uncomfortable for the mind because they don’t offer clear answers or timelines. They ask us to stand in uncertainty without immediately turning longing into a problem to solve.
At this kind of threshold, life isn’t asking, How do I get what I want?
It’s asking something much quieter:
Who am I becoming while I wait?
What part of me doesn’t feel safe to rest?
What am I afraid will happen if I stop gripping the outcome?
These aren’t questions meant to be answered quickly. They are meant to be listened to.
When Longing Turns Inward
For many people, the longing itself becomes unbearable.
So it gets managed. Optimized. Strategized.
But longing is not a problem.
It’s information.
When longing isn’t met with presence, it often turns inward—into heaviness, numbness, isolation. This is where people can quietly slip toward depression, not because something is wrong with them, but because they’ve been holding the ache alone.
There is grief in wanting something deeply.
There is vulnerability in not knowing if or how it will arrive.
And there is a particular exhaustion that comes from carrying hope and fear at the same time.
This is not weakness. It is a human response to waiting without support.
A Different Way of Standing in the Doorway
This threshold doesn’t ask you to stop taking action.
It asks you to change your relationship to action.
To notice:
Am I moving from alignment, or from urgency?
From trust, or from fear?
From openness, or from bracing?
Sometimes the most important movement isn’t forward.
It’s inward.
There is a way to stand in this doorway without disappearing—without collapsing into despair, without abandoning yourself, without turning your desire into something to fix about who you are.
It begins by letting the body speak.
By allowing the longing to be felt, rather than solved.
By giving yourself permission to not know what comes next.
This isn’t passivity.
It’s a different kind of strength.
Holding the Threshold With Care
If you find yourself here, I want to say this clearly:
You are not behind.
You are not failing.
You are not broken.
Some thresholds don’t open because we push them open.
They open because we learn how to stand there—present, honest, and still connected to ourselves.
This is tender work. And it isn’t meant to be done alone.
When longing is witnessed rather than managed, something begins to shift. Not always in the way the mind expects—but often in the way the soul needs.
Sometimes what’s changing first isn’t the outer circumstance, but the way we inhabit ourselves while we wait.
And that, too, is movement.
With love and blessings,
Susan