The Threshold: A Life Transition Turning Point

The threshold is the part of the spiral everybody wants to get to.

After everything that’s come before, the descent, the liminal space, all that uncertainty and not knowing, you can feel it starting to shift. Something is different. There are little signals starting to emerge. A sense of direction, even if it’s faint. A feeling that you might actually be ready to move into something new…

And honestly? It can be a really hopeful place to be.

But here’s the thing. In my own experience, and in working with other women going through this, I don’t think we’re really meant to make a clean cross. There’s a lot of shuffling backwards and forwards. You think you’re moving towards the threshold and then you feel pulled back again into the darkness of not knowing. That’s not failure. That’s just how it tends to go.

We also have this very human idea of how long it’s going to take. And it’s always quicker in our heads than it is in reality.

The readiness that comes at the threshold isn’t the same as the readiness our culture talks about, where you decide you’re ready for something and you crack on and do it. It’s slower than that. More embodied. And it looks different for everyone. For some people it’s fairly clean and quick. For others it’s messier, with a lot more backwards and forwards. Neither is wrong.

What I find really useful at this stage, whether working with myself or with other women, is not trying to race ahead but taking stock of where you are. Acknowledging everything that has come before. You don’t have to go back and relive all of it, especially if it’s been painful or there’s been a lot of grief. But just that look over your shoulder, acknowledging what’s happened, without being pulled back into it as your current lived experience.

The other thing that trips people up at this stage, and I know this one so well in myself because I’m quite an impatient person, is that when you start to see those little signals of what might be coming next, you want to run off and get to them. Your brain goes straight into planning mode. Where am I now? Where do I want to be? How do I get there? Let’s set some goals.

But that’s not quite where you are yet.

The threshold asks you to stay present with where you are right now. Not who you were, not who you could potentially be. Just who you are now, in this moment. And the more you can stay grounded in that presence, the more solid your crossing will be.

It’s also worth marking the threshold in some way, even simply. We do this instinctively with some of life’s bigger transitions, a rite of passage, a ceremony, a gathering. But even the quieter, more internal ones deserve acknowledgement. A simple ritual, a moment to look back at what you’ve been through and then consciously turn to face what’s coming. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. It just needs to be intentional.

You’ve come a long way to get here.

If you want to get a clearer sense of where you are on the Wild Rose Spiral right now, my free workshop Finding Your Footing After a Life Transition walks through each stage in more depth and includes a short guided meditation to help you orientate yourself.

This is one stage within the Wild Rose Spiral, a way of mapping the different phases we move through when life is changing.

The previous post in this series looks at the liminal space, that uncomfortable in-between stage before the threshold arrives.

You can read it here: The Liminal Space: How to Live When You’re Between Two Lives

The next post in the series will explore integration and rebuilding, what begins to take shape once you’ve crossed.