The Space Between: Where We Lose and Find Ourselves

How do you know something’s ending—before the new has arrived?

Not in your mind.
Not on your calendar.
But in your body.

Sometimes it feels like buzzy legs and spinning thoughts.
Sometimes it’s a lump in your throat or a heart that won’t stop pounding.
Sometimes it’s just an ache—a quiet knowing that you’re no longer who you were, and not yet who you’re becoming.

These are transitions.
Not the big, dramatic ones the world celebrates or notices.
But the internal ones—the ones that stir old memories, break our routines, and ask us to feel things we’d rather avoid.

Ohio Weather and the Mess of Becoming

This spring has felt particularly wobbly.
Maybe because I’m navigating an entirely new career…
Or maybe because the weather here in Cleveland, Ohio has been the perfect mirror for what transition really feels like.

It begins slowly.
30 degrees becomes 40. Then 50.
We think: Yes, this is it! Growth is happening!

Wouldn’t it be nice if we got to grow like that?
Gradually. Gently. One degree at a time.

But that’s not how it goes.

Here in Cleveland, it might hit 70 degrees and then drop back into the 50s.
It rains for days. The skies go gray.
Then suddenly, it's 80 and we’re at the pool… only to wake up two days later freezing at a little league game.

It’s disorienting. It’s frustrating.
And it’s exactly what transition feels like inside a human body.

We inch forward—then snap back.
We feel ready—and then we collapse.
We think we’ve arrived—and then the cold front hits.

Nature shows us, again and again, that transitions are rarely linear.
They’re chaotic. Circular. Sometimes wild.

And just like the spring-to-summer wobble, our internal seasons don’t follow a perfect pattern.
Sometimes, we skip right over the soft landing we wanted.
Sometimes, we don’t even realize a transition has happened until we’re in a full-on identity shift—socks mismatched, jackets and swimsuits both on the floor, and nothing that fits anymore.

The Mess Before the Becoming

This time of year always messes with me.

I thrive on rhythm, order, and a clean, grounded home.
But transitional seasons throw everything into disarray.
My kids have outgrown last year’s clothes. The laundry piles with sweaters and swimsuits. Nothing is where it should be. And everything still kinda fits—but not really.

We lose ourselves here.

Not just in the clutter, but in the questions.
Is the next thing really coming?
What if this isn’t the transition I wanted?
What if I can’t hold it all?

And yet… this exact moment—where nothing quite fits and everything is shifting—is a portal.

It’s the crack before the becoming.
The chaos before the clarity.

This is where something new prepares to land.
But first, we feel everything that’s still holding on.

Crossover Days and Cracked-Open Hearts

If you menstruate, you already experience this kind of transition monthly—whether you realize it or not.

In Wild Power by Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer, they introduce the concept of crossover days—the hormonal and energetic shifts between the four inner seasons of the menstrual cycle: spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

But the most potent days of the cycle aren’t the seasons themselves.
They’re the transitions between them.

“The crossover days are void moments. They potentially expose you to emptiness, a subtle sensation of the metaphorical ground giving way under you, which can create an emotional wobble or unease.”
— Wild Power

These are the moments where the old season is gone and the new hasn’t landed.
Where your system is neither here nor there.
And everything—emotionally, physically, spiritually—rises to the surface.

Even if you don’t menstruate, you know this feeling.
You’ve lived it.
In breakups, job changes, spiritual reawakenings, and quiet Tuesdays when something inside you suddenly no longer fits.

These crossover days remind us that transition isn’t just circumstantial—it’s cyclical.
And learning to recognize these internal shifts helps us hold ourselves with more grace.
We stop fighting the wobble.
We start making space for what’s coming.

Finding Ourselves in the Space Between

Transition is where the old story unravels, and the new one hasn’t yet arrived.
It’s not failure. It’s not regression.
It’s the body saying: something is shifting—stay close.

This is the space where we lose and find ourselves.

Where we’re forced to slow down.
To listen.
To sort through the layers of what no longer fits—physically, emotionally, spiritually—and begin to clear space.

Just like packing away the winter boots and finding new shorts that finally fit,
we reorganize what we’re holding… and let go of what we no longer need.

Not all at once.
But piece by piece.
Breath by breath.

This is how we find ourselves.
Not by rushing to the next season—
but by honoring the beautiful, brutal, breathtaking space between.