When life pulls the rug
The In-Between Times — Issue 1
You didn’t necessarily see it coming. Or perhaps you did, and knowing it was coming didn’t make it any easier to land.
Either way, something has shifted. A relationship, a role, a place, a version of yourself you’d grown comfortable inhabiting. And now you’re in that strange suspended space — the old thing gone or going, the new thing not yet here.
This is a transition. And transitions are not problems to solve. They are passages to move through.
The difficulty is that we live in a culture with very little patience for passages. We want the before and the after. The in-between is just the bit to get through as quickly as possible. Which is, unfortunately, exactly the wrong approach — because the in-between is where the important work actually happens.
For your body
The body keeps score of transitions whether you ask it to or not. Disrupted sleep, a low hum of tension, appetite that’s gone quiet or become insistent — these are not signs that something is wrong with you. They are signs that your nervous system is working hard to recalibrate.
One thing that helps: rhythm. Not a rigid routine, just small anchors of predictability in the day. The same cup of tea at the same time. A short walk before anything else demands your attention. The body finds its footing again through repetition, not willpower.
For your mind
The mind in transition tends toward two unhelpful habits: replaying the past to find the moment things went wrong, and projecting into a future it’s trying to control before it arrives.
Neither is useful. Both are understandable.
A simple redirect: when you notice the mind doing either, ask it one question. What do I actually know to be true right now, today? Not tomorrow. Not six months ago. Today. It’s a smaller question than the ones your mind is busy with, and that’s precisely the point.
For your emotions
Transitions carry grief, even when they’re chosen. Even when they’re welcome. You are leaving something behind — a self, a story, a set of assumptions about how life was going to go. That deserves acknowledgement.
You don’t have to name it precisely or understand it fully. You just have to let it be there without rushing it toward resolution. Grief that gets hurried tends to resurface later, with interest.
Give it a little room. It won’t stay forever.
Next issue: when your nervous system won’t switch off.
If this landed, forward it to someone who’s in the middle of something.