On February 27, 2020, I left my home in Panama to visit my family in New York for what I thought would be three weeks. I had just left my job teaching yoga at a private island resort for a year, and my new job in another part of Panama was set to begin on March 30, 2020. Since I had a few weeks between jobs, I thought March 2020 would be the perfect time to visit my family.
I obviously never went back to Panama. They shut their borders on March 16th with only 24 hours’ notice. I had a fever that day, so I was stuck in NY with no way back. My whole life flipped upside down overnight (as did everyone else’s around the world). In Feb 2020, I had all these plans that I thought were set in stone: assisting the retreat manager at a surf/ yoga resort, teaching yoga with an ocean view, moving in with my boyfriend, and learning to surf while continuing to live a slow & quiet barefoot life on the beach in the jungle. It was a version of my dream life I had carefully curated. Panama was supposed to be my home for the foreseeable future.
That three-week stay at my mom’s turned into me living with her for a year and three months.
Within the first few months, I watched as each and every part of my life fell apart one by one. When Panama finally reopened its borders in mid-October of 2020 and my whole body and soul refused to go back, I knew deep down that this chapter of my life was officially over. Little did I know, that wasn’t even the hardest part.
For the next eight months or so, I entered into a very uncomfortable, long-lasting liminal space. The in-between where I had absolutely no idea what was going to be next. The ending had already occurred, but there was no beginning in sight.
Liminal Space: The space between spaces. The waiting. The in-between. The uncertainty. The unknown. Whatever you want to call it, it is NOT easy.
When one chapter has ended, but the next has yet to begin.
It’s extremely uncomfortable to sit in that unknown and let it be without trying to move to make things known again. It is when we often try to figure everything out before it is figure-outable. When we often try to force the next thing, grasp for something, anything, just to settle that uneasy feeling in our bellies when there is so much uncertainty.
But this process cannot be rushed and more things are revealed if we can wait and sit with the discomfort.
So, how the hell does one actually do that? When nothing is happening for weeks, months, on end, and we are just stewing in the unknown.
How can we surrender in these moments?
And what about daily life? We are just supposed to just chill out and wait? Do nothing? Sit on the couch with our feet up, eating bonbons (as my mom would say) and twiddling our thumbs. Waiting for the world to save us? This goes against everything we’ve ever been taught.
During those eight months of liminal space living at my mom’s, I learned that surrender does not mean doing nothing, it does not mean giving up. I learned it means taking aligned action when it feels right. I learned, really learned in my body, to trust myself that I would know the next step when I needed to know.
Don’t get me wrong, stomaching that uncertainty for those eight months felt like forever. I would often meltdown, cry, and feel like I was failing at life. I would feel stressed, heartbroken, frustrated, overwhelmed, and lost. Those same old thoughts that I wasn’t doing enough, that I wasn’t enough, kept sneaking back into my mind when I least expected it, putting all those years of studying yoga philosophy to the test.
It was time to weave mindfulness, spirituality, and surrender into daily life.
The off-the-mat kind of yoga (aka just yoga).
But, what does that that mean?
It means that when my brain would start to spin all the usual worries, doubt, and fear, and I would hear my thoughts panicking that I hadn’t figured it out, I would do one simple thing.
I would catch myself and take a deep breath.
I would wiggle out my jaw, massage out my forehead, soften my shoulders, and breathe deep into my belly again and slowly exhale. I would come back to the present, look around, and remind myself that right now, right here, in this very moment, I am okay. Over and over again.
It means being compassionate with myself by reminding myself that it is NORMAL to feel these things, it is human. It means reminding myself that for the rest of my life, those feelings and thoughts will come and they will go, so I might as well get used to it now and stop running.
It means reminding myself, that yes, this is hard, but the most loving thing I can do for myself right now is to learn to breathe and sit with and acknowledge my feelings and discomfort because deep down I know that I don’t want to rush into something that doesn’t feel right. I do not want to grab the closest solution to momentarily numb the uncertainty again (because I could write a whole book about times I’ve done that).
It means that as many times as I could, I reminded myself to trust myself because moments of inspiration, energy, and motivation to take aligned action do come eventually (often after I’ve given myself ample time and space to rest and just be).
And after those lonnggggggg eight months, it finally hit me, and I knew exactly what to do next. In June 2021, I moved back to NYC and embraced my community. It was about damn time.