The Space Between No Longer and Not Yet

By Donna Marie Marino, LMFT

A few weeks ago, I wrote about knowing when a chapter of our lives is complete.

At the time, I was thinking about my house. Sixteen years of raising children, building a business, going back to school, sending kids off to college, welcoming them home again, and eventually realizing that the home that had held that season of my life so beautifully was ready for someone else’s story.

I knew I was ready for the next chapter.

What I didn’t know was exactly when it would begin.

And that, I’m realizing, may be the harder part.

We talk a lot about endings. We talk a lot about beginnings.

We don’t talk nearly enough about the space in between.

There’s a phrase from author and life coach Nancy Levin I’ve carried with me for years: honor the space between no longer and not yet.

That space has a name. It’s called the liminal space.

You’re no longer where you were, but you aren’t yet where you’re going.

And for those of us who like a plan, who are used to solving problems, achieving goals, and figuring things out, that can be an incredibly uncomfortable place to sit.

When the Next Chapter Hasn’t Revealed Itself Yet

This morning, I was out walking and thinking about what I wanted to write this month.

I kept coming back to chapters.

When I got home, I sat down in my office, which has been considerably cleared out as I prepare to move, and looked at the bookshelf.

There, somehow still sitting on the shelf after I had packed so many other books away, was a book called Chapters by Candice Carpenter.

I bought it in 2006.

That stopped me.

January 31, 2006 was the day I left a corporate career that had been a huge part of my identity for nearly twenty-five years. I had no real plan for what came next.

And apparently, somewhere in that uncertainty, I bought a book about knowing when to shift gears, navigating major life changes, reinventing yourself, and moving into a new chapter.

I hadn’t thought about that book in years.

As I picked it up and began reading passages I had underlined nearly twenty years ago, I got emotional.

Because suddenly I could see the woman who bought it.

She had no idea what was coming.

And I wanted to tell her:

You’ll do it.

You’ll figure it out.

Not all at once. Certainly not perfectly.

But you will.

Sometimes the Middle Is Messy

When we picture transformation, we tend to picture the butterfly.

We don’t spend much time thinking about what happens before it becomes one.

A caterpillar doesn’t simply sprout wings.

Inside the chrysalis, much of its body quite literally breaks down before reorganizing into something entirely different.

There is a middle stage where it is no longer what it was and very much not yet what it is becoming.

That feels like a pretty accurate metaphor for life sometimes.

We like the before-and-after pictures.

The new job.

The healed relationship.

The thriving business.

The new home.

The graduation.

The person standing on the other side saying, “I’m so glad I did it.”

But there is almost always a middle.

And the middle can feel like mush.

Right now, my house is a wonderful example.

It’s still my home, but it doesn’t quite look like my home anymore. I’ve packed boxes. I’ve cleared shelves. I’ve moved furniture. As I jokingly say, I’ve been “de-Donna-fying” it so another family can more easily imagine themselves living here.

Meanwhile, I can picture the home I’m hoping to move into. I can picture the water. I can picture the dock. I can picture my children coming home and, someday perhaps, grandchildren running around Nona’s house.

I can see the possibility.

I’m simply not there yet.

So I wait.

And waiting is its own work.

The Courage to Do Nothing

When I left corporate all those years ago, people naturally asked me what I was going to do next.

I didn’t know.

I remember telling people that I was going to get my kids to the bus stop, work out, take a long walk, watch the Today show, and then…

I didn’t know.

No grand announcement.

No immediate reinvention.

No perfectly mapped five-year plan.

For a high achiever, that can feel almost irresponsible.

We are rewarded our entire lives for doing.

For accomplishing.

For solving.

For taking the next step.

And now we live with devices that make it possible to fill almost every empty second with something. A message. A headline. A podcast. A video. An email.

We have gotten very good at avoiding nothingness.

There’s an Italian phrase I love: il dolce far niente — the sweetness of doing nothing.

I think we’ve lost some of that.

Sometimes clarity arrives while I’m walking. Sometimes when I’m driving. Sometimes when I’m standing in the shower. Sometimes it really is just sitting and staring out the window for a while.

Nothing productive appears to be happening.

But something is.

Our minds are settling.

Our bodies are catching up.

Something we’ve been trying to force into focus begins to reveal itself.

I see how difficult this can be with clients, too. Especially people who are very capable and accustomed to making things happen.

The unknown feels like a problem to solve.

Sometimes it isn’t.

Sometimes it’s a place to stay for a little while.

Therapy and the Chapters We’re Invited Into

I realized years ago that one of the reasons I love being a therapist is that the work itself feels a little like reading a book.

When someone walks into my office for the first time, I may only get the title.

Maybe I get a glimpse of the prologue.

Maybe they share enough that I can begin to see some chapter headings.

Then, session by session, they allow me further into the story.

That is an extraordinary privilege.

I don’t get to choose the book.

I don’t get to write the ending.

I get invited in.

Sometimes I meet someone during a chapter they desperately want to close. Sometimes they are standing right in the middle of that “no longer, not yet” space. Sometimes they know exactly what they’re leaving and have absolutely no idea what they’re moving toward.

The work is often less about handing them an answer and more about helping them stay present long enough to hear their own.

And sometimes, after enough chapters, our work together ends.

The book goes back on the shelf.

Which made finding my own book from 2006 this month feel even more meaningful.

Twenty years later, an old chapter had something to say to me again.

Different Transitions, Similar Questions

At Armonía, each of us works with people moving through these in-between spaces in different ways.

Colleen often works with people rebuilding themselves after narcissistic or emotionally abusive relationships. In those transitions, the old chapter may have shaped someone’s sense of identity, confidence, or ability to trust their own perceptions. Healing involves letting some of that go while slowly discovering who they are when they are no longer organizing themselves around someone else’s needs, reactions, or expectations. That process takes time, and the person emerging on the other side is often both familiar and entirely new.

Christina sees transition through the eyes of children, teens, and young adults. Back-to-school season alone can hold enormous change: new routines, friendships, expectations, greater independence, and, this year in Indiana, a very different relationship with technology during the school day. Christina’s work gives young people space to process those shifts through conversation, creativity, and art, especially when they don’t yet have the language to explain everything happening inside them.

In my own work with adults and couples, I see the same questions appearing in different forms.

Who am I now?

What do I take with me?

What am I ready to leave behind?

What happens if I don’t know what comes next?

There may not be one universal answer.

But I do think there is a universal experience in asking.

Trusting Yourself in the Unknown

When someone is deeply anxious about an uncertain future, I will sometimes ask them to go all the way to the place their mind is already trying to avoid.

What is the realistic worst-case scenario?

Then what?

And then what?

If the business struggled, what would you do?

If the plan changed, what would you do?

If you had to rebuild, could you?

Usually, when we keep following the fear instead of stopping at the first frightening thought, something interesting happens.

People begin remembering their own resourcefulness.

They remember other chapters.

The job they found.

The heartbreak they survived.

The money they rebuilt.

The move they figured out.

The grief they learned to carry.

The life they created after another version of life ended.

I remember a period after leaving corporate when money was incredibly tight. Once, an automatic phone payment came out of my account while I was standing in the grocery store, and I knew I needed that money for groceries.

I remember how frightening moments like that felt.

I also know what happened next.

I figured it out.

Again and again.

I’m not interested in romanticizing difficult times. Some chapters are genuinely painful.

But enough experiences of falling, recovering, adjusting, and rebuilding eventually give us something very valuable:

Evidence.

Evidence that we can trust ourselves.

Maybe We Don’t Need to Know Yet

I think that is what this chapter of my life is asking of me right now:

To know what I know.

To trust what I don’t know yet.

To prepare where I can.

And to leave enough empty space for the rest to unfold.

I spent much of my life believing that movement meant progress.

Sometimes it does.

But I’m learning that stillness can be movement, too.

There are times when the next chapter needs to be planned.

And there are times when it needs to be allowed.

So if you are somewhere between no longer and not yet right now, perhaps you don’t need to hurry through it.

You don’t have to have the title of the next chapter yet.

You may not even know what kind of book you’re writing.

Give yourself enough quiet to find out.

Twenty years ago, I stood in one of the biggest liminal spaces of my life without any idea where it would lead.

This month, an old book reminded me just how much life happened because I stayed long enough to find out.

And maybe that’s the invitation in the unknown.

Stay.

Listen.

Let the next chapter reveal itself.