The Old, the Now and the Not Yet...

I'm struck by the beauty of dry and dead leaves hanging on branches of oak and beech at the end of winter.

These sculptured, crumpled, dry remnants of last summer cause me to ponder. Life in them long gone as they lightly and sparsely adorn bare branches, most leaves returned to the earth. The sap is rising and life is returning to the branch tips. Buds are forming. New leaves will soon burst through, to soak up the sunshine and paint the trees a thousand shades of green.

Yet still a few dead brown leaves remain... hanging by a thread...

I kindly and curiously investigate when things stand out like this. What do I have to learn here? What is the gift?

And for each person, the answer would be different.

For me the feelings that surface were of both delight and sadness. Grief and gratitude. Excitement and fear. This quote from Judith Orloff MD, a therapist who works with empaths and highly sensitives stood out:

'I'm in an uncomfortable stage of my life, where my old self is gone, but my new self isn't fully born yet. I'm in the midst of transformation'.

And that was it. The trees gently affirming me, for they understood what it is to be amidst transformation. To be in process. Not what we were, not what we will be but whole and complete all the same.

Liminal spaces, that is being on the threshold of something new but not quite there yet, is often a time of waiting... wrestling... reckoning, shifting and sifting, and can be deeply uncomfortable. But I am grateful for the love around me that enables me to just be with the vulnerability, in the uncertainty whilst also knowing that I will emerge out the other side. Growth involves change, and change can be scary. It can also be

exciting and freeing. To the old I say thank you and goodbye, you no longer define me. To the not yet I say welcome, I am ready when the time is right. And to the now, I say I am here, I am whole, I am amidst transformation, I am just where I am supposed to be.