FSB Media Article: Rite of Passage: A Time of Liminality

FSB Author Article

Rite of Passage: A Time of Liminality
By Charlotte Mathes
Author of And A Sword Shall Pierce Your Heart

Throughout the world, rituals of rites of passage are performed at every major transition in a person's life. First the initiate is separated from the community because she is entering a new phase. Then she lives, along with other initiates, in a so-called "liminal" period, meaning time "on a doorstep," a time of ambiguity that has few of the attributes of her past life and only a glimmer of her life ahead. After the liminal period, she is reincorporated into the community but with a different status.

The period of liminality is a marginal phase, a period when we cannot go back in time and we cannot move forward. It is an emotionally chaotic time, but also a time for self-reflection; a time of isolation coupled with a need to reach out to others; a time of lamentation but the beginning of acceptance. Barely perceptible changes begin to take place. Borders between the conscious and unconscious realm become permeable, and we have greater connection to the spiritual world. We mothers are able to access intuitive and imaginative powers.

Liminal time is paramount for grief work. It is the period when we work our way through grief rather than busying ourselves to avoid its pain. Naturally, it can be a long period, some of it lived in recurring snatches of days and months. This transitional time is when we have lost our innocence and remain at the threshold which, when passed, eventually brings renewed life:

I have taken the bite of the apple and have been thrown out of paradise and that is true to the marrow of my bones. I still think Eve may have a good place to live, but it won't be paradise anymore. Before I lost Andrew, it was paradise.

Kate

Symbols of the liminal phases of her mourning can be seen in the memorial that Rheba created just after her son died. She purchased two photographs taken in a Venice cemetery by Sandra Russell Clark. She named the photograph of the woman weeping at the tomb "Despair," and she called the photograph of the angel "Hope." Placing these pictures side by side in a quiet place in her home, she would go to meditate there. Her poem beautifully expresses her struggle.

I felt a little piece
Of myself fall away
As I climbed the rocky
Craggy face of Mammoth

It was a treacherous climb
Ambition was my holding cleat
Survival my pickax.

The Struggle became so great
The gear so heavy
I knew myself to be weak
Faint of heart and spirit

No fierce rapture came
My soul dark, pulling
Upward toward the heights

I felt no lightness as
I moved into the first
Resting Place.

Rheba realizes she has reached only the first resting place. Her heart is still heavy as she continues her climb.

The time of liminality is a time for working one's way through such recurring themes and phases as:

weeping
searching
solitude and incubation
nursing and compassion
dismemberment and separation
reconstruction

Author
Charlotte M. Mathes, LCSW, Ph.D., is a certified Jungian analyst, a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. She received her doctoral degree in psychoanalysis from the Union Graduate School in Cincinnati and is a clinical member of the American Association of Marriage and Family Counselors as well as a board certified supervisor for clinical social workers. Dr. Mathes has been in private practice in New Orleans for twenty years. She lectures and leads seminars in Jungian psychology, family therapy, and bereavement.

For more information, please visit www.charlottemathes.com.