The Liminal

...exploring language, life, draíocht and what’s in-between

Céad mile fáilte romhat—you are very welcome here.  Literally, in Irish, as Gaeilge, this means a hundred thousand welcomes are before you!

I see Substack as a space where I can stretch my wings and breathe deeply and I am hoping we can do that together. I am a writer, musician, and singer-songwriter. I also have a background in applied linguistics, classical and modern rhetoric, critical and narrative theory, and (Irish) cultural studies.  I have been teaching Nonviolent Communication full time for the last twenty years and also am a certified life coach.

My current passion is around learning the Irish language. This learning has been surprisingly transformational—befuddling and delighting me in turns. I want to share what I am learning from/by learning Irish: about language, the world, and what we see in the world—and don’t.

Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash

Liminality is central to indigenous Irish culture.  We see this liminality in samhain, now most commonly known as Halloween, where the two worlds—the seen and unseen—are so close (the veils between them so thin) that they literally collide. But throughout the year there is a persistent awareness in indigenous Irish culture about these two worlds, the seen and the unseen, how/that they co-exist, and how easily we can fall from one into the other. As Kerri Ní Dochartaigh writes, sometimes “the veil between worlds… is as thin as a moth’s wing.”¹

Learning a language is also a kind of threshold: another way of entering a liminal (and sometimes uncomfortable) space.

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I have been living in a liminal space myself the last few years. In mid-2000, I decided to move back to Ireland: a major undertaking, involving breaking down and selling a two-family house I’d lived in fourteen years, moving three cats (including one feral), shifting two thriving businesses and jumping continents with a partner who'd not lived in Ireland before and is not of European descent. Eighteen months ago we arrived in Dublin with our three jet-lagged and bewildered cats.

One reason I moved back to Ireland is that I was craving more beauty and awe—more draíocht. Draíocht, like triple spirals and the three faces of the Goddess, has three meanings embedded in it:  magic, wonder, and awe. I found all that was going on in the world was like that scene from Star Wars where Luke and Han Solo fall into a garbage compactor and the walls are literally pushing in around them. Butterflies and insects disappearing, the Vaquita porpoise getting caught in illegal nets (literal and metaphorical), forest fires burning out of control, US politics (another kind of fire) and then the pandemic and now two wars…it’s not easy being a human right now. Jon Batiste's band on The Late Show was called Stay Human. How do we stay human in the midst of all this?

We are clearly living in/through liminal times. 

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“Liminal space is the uncertain transition between where you've been and where you're going physically, emotionally, or metaphorically. To be in a liminal space means to be on the precipice of something new but not quite there yet. The word "liminal" comes from the Latin word “limen,” which means threshold.”²

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I find liminality persistently there in the background: a white noise while I go through my busy days. I have blogged about not-knowing and living with not-knowing in the context of staying with process in resolving conflict. I remind myself that it’s not the first time. What was it like to live through the second world war? And to slowly become aware of the Holocaust? Or survive the Black plague? 

I work with my coach, go to Breathwork sessions, and look out for my younger parts (who are unsettled even at the best of times). And now in my head I hear the Indigo Girls:

Went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line.
And the less I seek my source for some definitive,
Closer I am to fine.  

But there is something about this current liminality that rubs me like sandpaper—that’s not fine—no matter how I try to cozy up with it. When truly in a liminal space, there is nothing definitive or comfortable.

I want to embrace liminality. I want to explore it and understand it, turning it in my hand like a piece of worn glass that can catch the light from different angles.

I hope you will join me.

I post essays twice monthly (on Wednesdays), Poetry Sundae once a month (on a Sunday), and Notes in between. I also look forward to hearing your thoughts and comments. Along the way I’ll share some personal stories and music and maybe even videos.  Substack feels like a big sandbox and I am ready to jump in and play! Come join me!

Photo by Abbie Bernet on Unsplash

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It’s like that old story about stone soup. If each person puts something in the pot, we’ll have a big delicious meal together—sitting around the fire, warming our hands and having a chat. I hope you’ll join me!

So let’s now begin. Tús maith, leath na hoibre. “A good start is half the work.”

Dian, as Baile Átha Cliath (Dublin)

P.S. Here’s the small print if you’re interested, about that list of passions I shared at the start of this post. I have a B.A. in English from Rutgers University where I studied applied linguistics (theory of the English language), classical and modern rhetoric, and rhetorical theory plus some literature courses. During that time, I also completed a certificate in teaching English as a second language at the Princeton-in-Asia program at Princeton University. I then did an M.Phil. in Anglo-Irish Literature in Socio-Historical Contexts at Trinity College, Dublin. My Trinity thesis was on Jonathan Swift as a rhetorical man, inspired by the work of rhetorical theorist Richard Lanham.

For my PhD, I mostly studied critical and narrative theory and cultural studies. My doctoral dissertation focused on the construction of Irish national identity in the context of British colonialism and emigration, and included oral histories with Irish emigrants as well as close readings of diverse texts, including government documents, advertisements, and films. During that time, I also wrote and published about the St Patrick’s Day parade disputes, including in The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review. I worked as a contributing writer for a Village Voice owned alternative paper, published some poetry and fiction (winning one fiction prize) and wrote and performed music, finishing first place in two Appalachian dulcimer competitions.  I've worked as a union organizer (for the National Writers Union/ UAW 1981) and mostly focused in the last twenty years on sharing Nonviolent Communication (NVC), including Somatic-Based Empathy, a practice I developed based on NVC.

I hope to bring aspects of all this experience into what I share here. Fáilte—welcome!

1. Thin Places by Kerri Ní Dochartaigh, pp. xi-xii

2. The Psychology behind Liminal Space: A Transitional Place or Time That Can Feel Unsettling https://www.verywellmind.com/the-impact-of-liminal-space-on-your-mental-health-5204371