top of page
Search

Threads of Healing: Navigating the Liminal Spaces of Life

Julia Stolk

It’s as if I’ve been asleep, waking from a long, ambiguous slumber—not entirely restful but not wholly restless either. It’s a kind of waking, from a dream I mistook for waking life, a liminal space where dreams and reality blur.


Does this resonate with you? Have you ever found yourself in a moment, not quite sure how you arrived there, yet feeling the weight of the journey within your body? That’s the kind of feeling I’m speaking of—a remembering that doesn’t fully remember, but rather a somatic, felt sense of an experience walked through.


After walking the Camino with my 18-year-old son, I plunged right back into life—work, household duties, and saying goodbye to my love as he returned home to spend time with family and friends. That was October. And now, suddenly, I find myself here, recognizing how much has shifted—within my body, my heart, and my spirit. The rhythm of daily life has transformed, subtle yet profound, as layers of healing unfolded in ways I couldn’t have foreseen. There’s been so much healing work. A sense of almost a dark night, though not quite of the soul, but of the body. And perhaps, yes, they are the same. Or maybe they’re not. From my experience, I might suggest they’re different.


I first encountered a dark night in 2018. My brain had shifted back into awareness after a traumatic brain injury, and I realized the life I had known was no longer mine. Everything I had created was erased in a single moment when my car was struck by an armoured truck in 2016. That recognition sent my brain into a frenzy. It felt like a caged animal, pacing frantically in a dark, confined space, clawing at invisible walls, desperate for a crack of light or an opening to freedom. Every corner turned only deepened the sense of entrapment, yet the relentless drive to escape refused to waver. I remember clearly the endless hours of scrolling online, seeking someone or something that could help, that could free me from this cage called brain injury.


I admire the resilience I showed during that time—the sheer determination that said, “Do not give up.” But it wasn’t pretty. That period was marked by incessant searching, a sense of madness, a belief that there had to be a way out, even as everything seemed hopeless.

So much was stripped away then—my sense of identity, the career I had worked so hard to build, and even the trust in my own body’s capacity to heal. Without guidance or markers, I felt profoundly alone. Rumi’s words capture the essence of that journey: “To see without eyes, to hear without ears, and to walk without feet.” That encapsulates the profundity of navigating a dark night. Yet, through trust and surrender, I survived. There were moments when even that felt uncertain.


As I call myself back to this moment and acknowledge the journey I’ve undertaken—mind, body, and soul—there is a deep sigh. A recognition that yet another plunge has been taken, and once again, I’ve returned to the surface.


So, what do I want to share or remember in this moment? That this journey of life is miraculous but not easy. Our culture often tells us that if we follow the steps, do the work, or heed the experts, we’ll reach a breakthrough, achieving enlightenment and ease. Yet, I’ve found through my own story that this narrative can oversimplify the complexity of healing and transformation. I believe each of us comes into this life with a thread - a challenge or wound - that we’ve agreed to meet and heal. Some do, and some don’t; that thread often carries the weight of deficiency—of not mattering, of wrongness, of unworthiness. And when we meet one layer, there’s respite… until we’re triggered again, and the next layer asks to be met. And so continues the journey to heal. This is life: a journey to wholeness.


We step in, to step through.

We step through, to step in.

This is love.

This is the journey.

The return to wholeness.


11 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


Post: Blog2_Post

©2021 by Julia Stolk.

bottom of page