Standing on the Threshold — learning liminality from lichen

To be here is something intangible, nearly impossible to define. Perhaps to be here is to be fully present, aware and in our bodies. And yet, most of us find ourselves not fully here. I often find myself not fully present—dissociating or experiencing flashbacks. To be here requires a degree of feeling safe and comfortable in our bodies and when we have been repeatedly shown that being fully present in our bodies in the here and now—is not, we leave.

Most of my encounters of healing have encouraged the return to be present, the return to be here and now. A homecoming of sorts. But what if our body no longer feels like home? Will we always be in a place of in-between? Liminality is the space between two places—not quite here and not really there. It is the threshold of what was and what could be. It is the trauma that ties our present bodies to our remembered pasts.

They are the strings that hold us back and also the ones that we have learned how to weave ourselves back together with. There is discomfort of feeling the tug of these strings, back to our stories when we are no longer there. They make us remember the things we wish to no longer remember over & over & over. When I feel the pull of the strings I know that they are pieces of myself asking for the things I did not have. My life has been fragmented. There are parts of me lost in a different time and when they call upon me now, it takes me away from being here.

I’ve been struggling on how to grasp with this state of being. To both be in different times and places, all simultaneously. To be in a near perpetual state of liminality. I have left but I haven’t yet arrived. In this journey of returning to home within myself, I have been listening to the world around me and found myself drawn to lichen.

Lichen is a unique species on this Earth, as it is a symbiotic relationship of a fungus and a cyanobacteria. It is both but it is also neither. It cannot exist without either one but it is not a fungus, nor a moss, nor a plant, nor a bacteria: it is simply lichen. It is also one of the oldest beings on this Earth and one of the slowest growing. It grows in some of the harshest conditions through its ability to adapt to its surrounding conditions such as in tundras, deserts, and even atop of rocks. They are abundant on this Earth and considered to be a keystone species in many parts of the world. Without them, many other species in their ecosystem would collapse.

Tending to the stories of lichen has allowed me to see my own strengths of being both and yet neither. There is strength in the adaptability to our harsh conditions and to continue growing, despite the lack of fertile ground. We may not have roots but our ecosystems depend upon us in the web of reciprocity. I believe if there was an ecological manifestation of trauma survivors, it would be lichen. Adaptable, wise, liminal.

Lichen does not apologize for not being a fungus nor an algae, or for taking its time in growing. It simply goes at its own pace, adjusting as it needs. It is a part of creating a world it can survive in and is important as it is. It has learned how to be comfortable with liminality.

Just as how the sun rises and sets, it is not quite day or night. The space between the two is blurred—an unknown place between two points of here and there. However, many of us can appreciate the beauty that appears in this moment. So why is it so hard to witness the own beauty of our own liminality? Perhaps it is because there is discomfort in not knowing what is next. That the space between here and there is much longer than a sunset. Perhaps this space even calls upon us to do things we did not think possible.

If you find yourself in the discomfort of your own liminality, perhaps it is time to turn to lichen. It is okay to be slow. It is okay to not be this or that, or to not quite be here even if you’re not quite there. So much is written and expressed about blooming in our own time just as the flowers do, but what if instead of blooming, we become lichen? To create a world that you can live in.

———

Back then, what did I know?
The names of subway lines, busses.
How long it took to walk 20 blocks.

Uptown and downtown.
Not north, not south, not you.

When I saw you, later, seaweed reefed in the air,
you were grey-green, incomprehensible, old.
What you clung to, hung from: old.
Trees looking half-dead, stones.

Marriage of fungi and algae,
chemists of air,
changers of nitrogen-unusable into nitrogen-usable.

Like those nameless ones
who kept painting, shaping, engraving,
unseen, unread, unremembered.
Not caring if they were no good, if they were past it.

Rock wools, water fans, earth scale, mouse ears, dust,
ash-of-the-woods.
Transformers unvalued, uncounted.
Cell by cell, word by word, making a world they could live in.

Jane Hirschfield