Living in the In-Between
I’ve been thinking a lot this past week about limitations and life’s interruptions. In our conversation with Lisa Closner on last week’s podcast, she shared about her desire to walk a virtual Camino here in her hometown of Portland, and her literal and emotional journey in trying to complete it. Spoiler: Lisa ended up completing her 500-mile virtual Camino but it took a lot longer than she had planned due to… well… life.
Life interrupts our plans a lot. We can prepare and organize and plan with all of the best intentions and things can still just refuse to happen in the manner in which we had hoped. Even if we have all of our ducks in a row and do everything right.
Whether it’s a divorce, or being laid-off, or a global pandemic, we are constantly being reminded we aren’t in control.
Illness is one of those massive, all-consuming things that can interrupt our plans in a terrifying way. I just finished reading an incredible memoir by a young woman named Suleika Jaouad called “Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted.”
Suleika shares how at the age of 22 she was diagnosed with Leukemia and spent the next 4 years desperately trying to achieve one goal - to survive cancer. She chronicles the pilgrimage of her illness from a few months before her diagnosis through the painful years of treatment and hospitalization to the slow and confusing journey of recovery.
You know how sometimes the right book falls into your lap at just the right time?
I have shared several times with our Pilgrim Lost community that I have been struggling with significant back pain for over a year now; many days being unable to sit or walk for very long, living in fear of a stabbing nerve pain that comes and goes with no warning. I have also entered peri-menopause which is apparently to blame for painful inflammation in my hips and my hands, the former which prevents me from sitting and the latter which prevents me from being able to hold a paintbrush or a pen for very long without discomfort.
Long-distance trekking and art are two of the things that lifted me out of the heartbreak and depression of my divorce (my first major life interrupted moment) and gave me a new identity and more importantly, it gave me a way forward. I believe that movement (emotional and physical) of any fashion helps facilitate healing, and my journey on the Camino and the birth of my journal art practice was absolutely central to my ability to re-enter my life with purpose again. I know in my logical mind that art and trekking do not define me - they aren’t what gives me value as a human being, but as I feel like I am losing the ability to do these things, I feel like I am losing myself.
As I have struggled with this pain and discomfort, I have good days and bad days. The bad days usher in the voices that whisper defeat in my ears. “You’ll never hike again. You should stop trying to paint. Why are you even trying to get better? It’s useless. You will always be this way - broken.”
I know that’s not true, but some days it’s really hard to root these lies out of my head and my heart. Many days I have struggled to even get out of bed, preferring to retreat from my mind and its litany of accusations by sleeping.
Reading Suleika’s story has been profound in many ways. First, it has given me perspective. Immersing myself into the heart-rending details of a woman fighting for her life definitely puts things into perspective. But more importantly, Suleika talks about the aftermath and her journey towards true recovery. Not just having a healed body, but having a whole and healed heart. She shares about learning to live in an in-between space - between the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. She first fights to survive the onslaught of cancer, but then, after she is deemed ‘cured,’ she struggles to learn to accept who she is after the fighting is through; how she will always live in the in-between space.
After finishing her book yesterday, I wanted to hear more. I googled her and watched her Ted talk which was filmed in 2019, before she even published her book.
I wrote down what she shared at the end of that talk:
“I learned to accept my body and its limitations - In the end - that’s the trick - to stop seeing our health as binary. Between sick and healthy, well and unwell, whole and broken. To stop thinking that there’s some beautiful state of wellness to strive for and to quit living in a constant state of dissatisfaction until we reach it. Every single one of us will have our life interrupted. We need to find ways to live in the in-between place managing whatever body and mind we currently have.”
Read that again.
How do we find peace in whatever in-between space we find ourselves in? How do we give grace to our bodies and minds despite the limitations that may have interrupted our plans? Suleika thinks that it is acceptance of exactly who we are in the moment we are in. For someone who has been through hell and back, this is not stated lightly. It is a decision that one must make every day, and some days, every moment.
Thankfully, I am starting to find some relief with some alternative health treatments. Yesterday I went hiking for the second time in a row without significant pain. This has not occurred since January of 2020 so every time this happens now, I celebrate. In the midst of feeling hope, I still struggle to avoid a binary interpretation of my life. Not just in terms of my health but in all areas - work, love, family, weight, friendships… the list goes on and on. I want to label myself either broken or whole, but I am neither.
Thank you, Suleika, for your words and for sharing your journey. Your memoir profoundly reminds me we only have this moment here in front of us. We have no idea what the future will bring. Life will always interrupt us. Our limitations and our struggles can illuminate the beauty in the things we once took for granted - if we are able to see it. You are helping me find that there can be peace when we live in the in-between.
