We have moved!
The boxes are not quite tamed yet, but we are making progress! The kettle has claimed her rightful place. The walls – kind, quiet witnesses – are delighted to be lightened and brightened by our brilliant painter, Jimmy.
As many of you know, we’ve just moved house after 25 years of living very happily in our last home. We moved mainly because the house had four floors and more rooms than we needed, but more than that, because our advancing years made it prudent to move while we are still able, and it’s by choice rather than circumstance. We have both come through a challenging health period and are currently in good form.
Life from the doorway
In my journalling, I’ve been contemplating how in many ways I find myself in a Liminal place, not where I was, not where I will be, in terms of life span, home, work, and relationships, but in an in between space. What was, has gone, and the next is not here yet.
Alan and I have lived very happily together for nearly thirty years. We are growing old together on purpose – still curious, still learning, deliberately cultivating a conscious, generative relationship. Less performance, more daily craftsmanship: listening properly, apologising promptly, laughing often, choosing tenderness over being right. More aware of our ageing status. Work worth doing.
I’m lovingly engaged with my younger son and my daughter, and revelling in a teenage granddaughter who brings all the thunder and sunshine of becoming herself. As the school holidays come to an end, we have just spent a couple of days in London, making memories, aware that these days will never come again.
And there is this: with my oldest son, I find myself in a liminal place. We are estranged. Naming it is part of the truth-telling that liminality requires. Acceptance – of where we both are, without rush or rescue – has become a sacred transformation in me. It has nudged me deeper into studying the wisdom of the in-between and how to cultivate it across all areas of life. I keep an inner chair empty – the place set for reconciliation – and I don’t stare at it all day. Love widens; coercion stops. The work now is presence, integrity, and a heart that stays warm.
What liminality really asks
People romanticise thresholds until they’re standing on one. The real thing is draughty. It’s 3 a.m. honesty: you are no longer who you were, and you don’t yet know who you’re becoming. But the in-between is not punishment; it’s a workshop. In it, life quietly checks your pockets for what you cannot carry forward and slips a new key into your hand.
I’ve made a small “threshold corner” in the new house: a candle, photos of people I love and Christ the King. I sit there each morning and ask three questions that never fail me:
What is ending? What wants to be born? What needs witnessing?
Sometimes the answers are practical – phone the plumber, order new door handles. Often, they’re soul-sized – bless the season I’m leaving, forgive my younger self, ask for help before I need it.
On retirement (or re-tyring)
The question of when I retire comes up again (as it did when I was approaching 70, ten years ago) because people keep asking when I’m going to do it. “Retire” sounds like a cliff edge. I prefer re-tyring – fitting tyres that suit the road ahead. This in-between space allows me to experiment with seasons instead of verdicts: a sabbatical season from roles that no longer fit, a harvest season for work that still inspires me, and a mentoring season where I offer distilled wisdom without carrying the whole field.
If you’re considering retirement, try a time-limited threshold season. Let a few months of honest days show you what wants to stay.
Learning the elder rhythm
There’s a grace that arrives when you stop sprinting to prove you can. The elder rhythm asks for fewer things done with more presence. It is not passive; it is potent, the difference between light and laser. What helps here is simple and unglamorous: ritual, containers, prototypes.
Ritual for endings. Write the goodbye letter I might never send. Bless the keys before I hand them in. Name the chapter I’m releasing.
Containers for the in-between. A weekly hour with no decisions, just listening. A small circle that hears my experiments and holds me kindly accountable.
Prototypes for beginnings. One class taught. One neighbour befriended. One morning a week is given to the new over-50s exercise class, and a new Art class is signed up for.
Keeping company with the dead
Many of my peers are dying, and I’ve discovered all the ambiguous loss in life, of dear friends who have Alzheimer’s or are coping with partners who have it. They have lost their partners before losing them. Like the estranged parent/child, this is a socially uncategorised group.
So, some mornings grief sits at the breakfast table uninvited and still gets a cup of tea. Saying their names in my Threshold corner has become a practice. Memory, handled gently, is not a trap but a bridge.
Each Sunday, I ask: “If this were my last ordinary week, what would I gladly have done?” Then I do one glad thing. That single choice can alter the entire weather pattern of a week. Last week, I went to London with my daughter and granddaughter for two days, and we got to know each other a bit better at the stage of life we’re at. We decided to make a girls’ trip a bi-monthly event.
This week, Alan and I have so much work going on in the house, so we have decided to run away one day to some lovely place yet to be decided
The body keeps becoming
Ageing is an initiation, not an indictment. The body speaks a new dialect—sometimes complaint, sometimes hymn. Meet it as a teacher. The curriculum is tenderness: move, rest, nourish, simplify. Purpose helps. You don’t need a study to know that doing what matters makes you more alive. Choose one purposeful action your future self would thank you for—record a story, or teach the thing only you can.
A simple contract with the threshold
If you take only one thing from this newsletter, take this:
- One ending to honour. Name it properly; bless it. Leaving my old home.
- One discomfort to befriend. Uncertainty, quiet, not knowing—decide when and where you’ll sit with it. Accepting the situation with my older son with love.
- One tiny experiment. Not a grand gesture; a faithful step. Taking up Art classes.
- One witness. A person or circle who will hold you to your becoming without hurrying you. You know who you are ☺
Pin it to the fridge. Read it over tea. Adjust as needed.
From our conscious kitchen table
What’s saving us lately: early coffee and a Daily Temperature Reading; a weekly “business meeting” for the home where we plan, laugh, and tell the truth; and the unglamorous holiness of tidying one small area a day. These humble stitches hold the larger fabric.
What delights me: the visits from my younger son, bearing gifts of Fish and Chips and taking us to see The Thursday Murder Club at the cinema.
A friendly invitation
If you’re in your own liminal stretch – new home, changing work, a relationship shifting shape, a season of caring or letting go – do keep in touch and tell me one ending you’re honouring and one experiment you’re trying. I’ll read every note. Perhaps we’ll weave a little communitas here: a fellowship of ordinary thresholds, bravely walked. 🏠
With kettle-warm love from my new doorstep,
Grace xx
Psychotherapist, lifelong learner, wife of thirty years, and woman standing cheerfully in the doorway of what’s next
P.S. I’m itching to get my books reinstated in my Therapy room☺