The Gifts of Being In Between

I paused for a minute to look at the chicory flowers on the side of the trail by the creek, so vibrant during my maternity photo shoot a couple months ago. Now, they were starting to wilt. Signalling summer was coming to an end. My maternity leave was coming to an end. The reality had been settling in. Yet, “going back to work” didn’t fit me any longer. I sighed and could feel my daughter twitch as she slept on my chest.

“Welcome back!” A colleague greeted me in the hallway on my first day back at work.

“Oh, you’re back! I have some questions for you!” Another colleague ran after me as I walked to my desk.

“Wait, you’re leaving?” She gave a look of surprise, “What are you going to do next?”

“Be a mother,” I said. I shrunk. It didn’t feel like enough somehow.

“Good for you! I could never do that,” she smiled.

“I didn’t think I would either,” I replied, “But I couldn’t know before.”

I always thought of myself as ‘career focused.’ It was hard to admit that my previous life didn’t fit any longer. I no longer knew what fit.

Leaving without a plan of what would do next (and I am a planner!) was really scary. But it’s what was best for my family and me.

I knew I was not the only one who had faced this dilemma but I had no idea how shockingly prevalent and how much a part of the societal landscape my decision was. That “an estimated 43% of highly skilled women leave the workforce after becoming mothers,” as the Mom Project states.

My Career In Between

I thought the part-time career I wanted existed out in the world and I simply had to find it. That if I looked in the right places, I would. What I discovered is: that’s not the case. The structures aren’t in place yet. Seedlings have started to sprout but it has a long way to go to bloom.

Ultimately, I discovered I would need to create the career, the life, that is so important to me. I would need to find my own way. It felt daunting.

“I love that you didn’t know what you would do next when you left your job,” A coach shared with me. I wasn’t as confident as the coach that I would find what I was seeking.

Honor the In between

“Honor the space between no longer and not yet,” Nancy Levin writes, Master Coach and Author of Jump…And Your Life will Appear.

As Levin states, this is the time when you have “jumped” — left your old life — but aren’t yet living in your new life. A “transitional time.” The space during this time is where the opportunity lies, if you open to it, to “integrate… everything you’ve experienced, and what you desire to create.”

Being in between also means sitting in the uncomfortableness of not knowing what will come next. That can make it tempting to try to avoid the space, to quickly jump from one thing to the next without a break.

Yet, in that space of the unknown is the place of possibility. The place where something new can emerge. That’s where the gifts are.

Starting Out

I had made progress, and then, the pandemic hit. Within a week, most of my work was put on hold or cancelled. I was thrown back into the uncomfortableness of being in between that I had recently come out of. I panicked. I resisted. I was scared for the state of the world. Suddenly, it felt like everything I had been working towards disappeared!

Once the initial shock subsided, I sat with the difficult feelings that arose. The feelings I had avoided.

That’s when a space opened up.

I became curious. I began asking myself: what is most important to me? What do I want to contribute? What do I want to create? I came back to those questions again and again.

The gift of possibility arose in this space.

Out of possibility came clarity about what I desire to create.

And out of clarity came my next step.

Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero’s Journey, said it well, “If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take.”

I needed an unexpected pause to re-evaluate what’s true for me. To re-commit to what’s most important in my life.

I needed to be in between again. In it, I found the space to explore what it is I really want to create next. It turns out that’s what I was I was seeking all along.