No Matter How Painful the Events Precipitating a Transition, Hope Emerges

The first outbreak of the coronavirus in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, marked a moment of transition. At that point most of us were oblivious. By March 2020, the onset of the global pandemic left everyone feeling betwixt and between, the beginning of a period of liminality.

Thrown into isolation, the orders to shelter in place disrupted normality. Life as we knew it changed. Three years later, the initial impact hangs over us as a memory. We cannot bring back those who died, magically alter the long-term impact, or pretend that nothing has changed. What we make of the future is what matters.

A period of liminality is not the same thing as clinical depression, although moments of despair may alter our lives. Derived from the word “limen,” Latin for threshold, it refers to the process of transitioning across psychological boundaries or borders. As Covid spread we were forced to leave the familiar, a separation. This first phase of a rite of passage challenged us to transition, the second phase. Think about the challenge to survive this time of testing, learning, and hopefully growing. In a traditional rite, the third phase is reintegration, a return to the tribe or the world. As powerful as the word liminality is when referring to a global event, it offers a context for thinking about difficult moments in our lives.

What do victims (of drunk driving and homicide), detainees at Cook County Jail, those who seek therapy, and family members from prominent families have in common? While it is easy to call out the differences, every one of them has experienced a period of feeling disoriented. Some have turned these moments into the beginning of significant transitions in their lives. Of course, some stay stuck.

We can’t turn back the clock. The 6.5 million people who died globally because of Covid-19 are gone. It is hard to imagine the pain of those who have lost children for any reason but so much harder because of the recklessness or malice of others. Even those I met at Cook County Jail who were charged with a crime cannot turn back the clock. Some have committed the crime while others deserve to be presumed innocent. Of course, their actions have consequences, but some use this time for reconsideration of their lives. Even those who met me as a therapist or a business consultant, showed up because something happened. They can’t change what happened. Business transition, inheritance, divorce—the list of disruptive events is long. All of these were moments that could lead to finding different outcomes.

Liminality begins with events that we can’t change.

Having worked with all the populations listed above, it has been important to find the string, the similarities, that ties them all together. How we get stuck as well as how we transition is what connects these diverse challenges together.

What has intrigued me is how some rise above and some remain stuck. Rishi was fired by his Indian father by email. He wallowed for a couple of months in self-pity. During the two years that followed, he broke off conversations with his parents. On the verge of a new career, a life that pulled together what he learned from his family and his experiences of the world, he felt the need to go knock on his parent’s door. Met by his father, who was filled with emotions. Rishi’s action created the bridge. His father admitted he wouldn’t have crossed if Rishi didn’t take the first step.

Business families that emerge from one generation to become multi-generational families, inheritors who use the opportunity to build purposeful lives, as well as those who move beyond the pain of a divorce, all move through periods of liminality to rise above the pain they experience. They don’t forget what happened, they make the best of what happened and move forward. It is important to remember.

• We are thrown into periods of liminality when events cause disruption, a break.
• No matter how painful the events that precipitate a transition, our hope emerges through handling the future.
• Even if we can’t find any reason to explain or justify catastrophic moments, our challenge is to find meaning and purpose in our response.

Victor Frankl, a holocaust survivor, notes, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."