The Trough
We are a few weeks shy of spring beginning and winter ending. Those weeks when in Central Park the daffodils are beginning to poke up and show their buds. They brace for a final frost and wonder if, after weeks of nourishment in the blackness of possibility, they will no longer bloom in the transition out of winter. This is the space in between — the liminal space. The space in between an ending and a beginning.
Sometimes the space in between is marked by a calendar or the Farmers’ Almanac. Other times by a visible event — a long-term relationship ending or a change in leadership. Many times, there’s just that feeling in your gut that you are in the middle of something ending and something beginning —and you just are not yet sure what it is.
I find myself in that moment — the space in between feeling the heaviness of the space in between relentless attacks against racial equity and the possibility I see and know in my community for all of us to thrive. I feel it in my curiosity and wonderment as I walk the park and tap into creative expression to wipe my legacy vision clean again and start over again.
Over the last several months, I’ve been in and out of many spaces in between. And the only constant has been the presence of water in the face of change. The space in between the waves.
There is a trough in waves, a low spot
where horizon disappears and only sky
and water
are our company.
And there we lose our way
unless
we rest, knowing the wave will bring us to its crest again.
There we may drown
if we let fear
hold us in its grip and shake us
side to side,
and leave us flailing, torn, disoriented. But if we rest there
in the trough,
in silence,
being in the low part of the wave, keeping our energy and
noticing the shape of things,
the flow,
then time alone
will bring us to another
place
where we can see
horizon, see land again,
regain our sense
of where
we are,
and where we need to swim.
“The Trough” by Judy Brown
I do not think it is just happenstance that I gravitate towards water when I’m seeking clarity, reconnection with my inner self, and peace. I head to the Highland to celebrate how far I’ve come, rejuvenate, and leverage its elevation to give me perspective. But the water is different — it is a place where I feel held in the space in between endings and beginnings. The space of not always having the answer, but knowing something is possible. The space that can sometimes feel like a free fall. The space in between grief and joy.
My first experience with water and the space in between was as a child. I grew up next door to Lochearn Community Pool (Go Monsters!). It is where I first learned to swim, joined swim team…and promptly left swim team because I hated the cold morning swims in early summer! But it was and still is a place that’s more than a neighborhood pool.
The great oak trees, red clay decks, and water of Lochearn carry its history of being founded as one of the first integrated pools in Baltimore. I remember feeling seen and never “the only” as I played in the pool and made clover crowns with friends. It is where my sisters and I learned the values of community and inclusivity. It is where we practiced love. It is where we spent countless hours creating our own worlds with friends under the sun. It is where everyone - everyone! - fell in love with swimming. It is where you could hear my Dad daily sneeze so loud you could hear him from Liberty Road in between his elephant joke that never seemed to get old - but was cheesy as hell!
Lochearn was this magical space in between not just the extremes of the seasons, but also the space in between everything our community represented vs. the mainstream community on the other side of the oak trees that surrounded Lochearn’s water. It was a space where for three months or so our of each year, the water protected the humanity and imagination of each kid. It gave us the space and the place to be childlike and explore who we were becoming.
As we grew up and moved away, my space and place of the pool’s water would shape-shift. From oceans to creeks to lakes to hotel pools — the feeling of nostalgia and deep trust in the water during times of complexity, uncertainty, and endings remained every time I allowed my body to fall back onto the waves to be held.
Over each month of this winter season, I returned to the water. I began in December playing in between the waves with my friend and husband. Each time, our behaviors becoming more and more childlike. Splashing water on one another. Sitting in the sand giggling as we allowed the waves to crash on us. Swimming aimlessly for hours. The space in between embraced play and removed the pressure of having the answer about what would come next in the schedule or in the new year. The space allowed our inner child to reemerge and teach us how to daydream again.
“We thank you for being the wild and beautiful ocean that you are. One that dwells in between the shore of what was and what will be. One that connects us all to the place of our Ancestors and the source of our future.” - Octavia Raheem, Pause, Rest, Be
As January unfolded with joy and celebration, in between each week were reminders of the retrenchment that is happening back into old ways of exclusion, the uncertainty of the presidential election, and the mounting of multiple humanitarian crises. I would return to the ocean, this time floating in its troughs looking for encouragement and courage. Frankly, I was looking for a sign.…And frankly, I didn’t receive “a sign.” I left the troughs of the last few months with more questions than answers! Perhaps that’s the point of the space in between.
If we believe the only constant is change, then there will always be beginnings and endings. We will always be in many liminal spaces. So it becomes not about leaving with “the answer,” but perhaps it is about the process of slowing down, seeking nourishment, and finding our anchors. Perhaps it is like wintering — it is a time “for putting your house in order. Doing these deeply unfashionable things — slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting — is a radical act now, but it’s essential.”
Rebecca May continues to write on wintering, “Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through.” If we have this orientation to the liminal space, then it can be a place healing, expansion, shedding, and wonder. Like the water, we do not have to stay rigid in the face of constant beginnings and endings. As A Beautiful Chorus sings, “empty your mind. Be shapeless, formless, like water. If can flow or it can crash and we design the waves we give.” We, too, can evolve our shape like the water.
We are just two months into the new year and all of us have experienced so many endings and beginnings. Some full of joy and possibility. Others heavy with grief and fear. There are beginnings and endings we do not yet know the results of yet. And, the year is still just getting started. I feel my own body and the bodies of my community bracing as we sit in the space in between the Presidential election.
I do not know about you, but I want to release the rigid feeling of bracing for the unknown. I want to find comfort back in the trough. I want to get my house in order and find my anchors — old and new — to hold me steady through the uncertainty. Through the endings and beginnings.
As I listen to A Beautiful Chorus, my hunch is that navigating the liminal spaces of 2024 and beyond will take employing different tactics and practices to cope, heal, and evolve. To see possibility. To find our way again. Like those days back at Lochearn, it will take a willingness to just play. To just be. Or like the moments splashing one another in the ocean - it will require a willingness to just sit in moments of joy over grief. A willingness to be still. A willingness to be curious about the lessons nature can teach up about weathering change and its beginnings and endings.
Over the next few months, we’ll explore the space in between the waves and more. This year is all about expanding our possibilities of and for nourishment as we feel intensifying headwinds and continue to relentlessly build our legacy visions full of joy and opportunity. Will you join me there, at the space in between the waves?
Grab your walking shoes and let’s go.
In still of the space in between,
Gabrielle
