i think i used to believe that, at some point, i would be “done” with healing. and then i could move on with my life. LOL. 

in the winter of 2023, i opened up the pattern app to find that i was predicted to embark on a new two-year cycle of deep healing. my instinctive response was “WTF?!?! what exactly have i been doing for the last eight years?!”

and to be honest, i felt a little (or a lot) nervous. because up until that point, the initiatory experiences that had prompted much of my healing work had been on the “my life has imploded yet again” end of the richter scale. so much so that i had begun to equate healing–and the thresholds we cross on that journey–with getting knocked on my ass. perhaps underscoring my desire to be “done”.

maybe not coincidentally, the preceding fall, i had registered for a nervous system healing and expansion program. i knew i was stuck in certain elements of my life. and all of the tools, strategies and mindset shifts i had learned so far weren’t moving the needle. 

part of me was so so grateful not to be living my entire life at the extreme ends of the nervous system spectrum–aka never stop moving alternated with total collapse and sometimes a mix of those two states; which in my body felt like revving an engine with the parking brake on.

but there was another part of me who wondered if “comfortably  numb and mostly ambivalent” was the best it could be for me. the program started in the winter of 2023, and i did indeed enter into a two-year journey of deeper healing. 

when i use the word “healing” now, i am describing the process of reclaiming my embodied, authentic, whole self.

what is a threshold?

By definition, a threshold is:  

the place of entering or beginning

the point at which an effect begins to be produced

the level or point above which something is true or will take place and before which it is not or will not

what is your desire (or fear)?

in my experience, a threshold is often preceded by a wish. a desire for something that we cannot always fully name. i can look back at my life and see the threads of certain questions and desires: 

what if i am capable of more than other people’s perceptions of me

i don’t want to live in fear anymore

the chain of generational trauma ends with me

i did all the things i was “supposed” to do, why don’t i feel happy, content, or safe

is the goodness (light, potential) i see in and for other people available for me too

is comfortably numb as good as it gets

who was i before the world and my caregivers got their hands on me

the threshold is an invitation

a few years ago, i started to view thresholds as invitations as opposed to a moral indictment, a “test”, or a not so subtle indicator that somehow i was doing life “wrong” (and that if i could just figure out how to do it “right”, everything would click into place).

if your soul is always calling you back to your essence–which i believe it is–then the threshold is an invitation to step into the version of you who has the capacity to create, receive, experience and hold the thing that you desire. and re-integrating your fractures is part of the rsvp.

there are a lot of reasons why choosing to step into “healing” might seem like a terrible idea. because it interrupts the status quo (inside of ourselves and the world around us). it feels disorienting and downright scary to come face to face with the parts of us we left behind or the things we have learned to accept that are quite unacceptable. it isn’t “efficient”. there’s no timeline. and we don’t actually know in advance who we will be on the other side.

what if healing doesn’t have to be “hard”?

in the last several years, as i have started to be more present to my experience before my body sits me down or before i erupt in a temper tantrum (it doesn’t happen often but it does happen), i have found that the process of healing can be more gentle. 

as i have learned to give myself space to move slowly and to resource myself through seasons of internal and/or external change, i have learned that the process can be more easeful.  

as i have examined and repatterned the beliefs and stories i inherited from my caregivers, i have been able to navigate thresholds from a place of more self-compassion and tenderness.

as i have deepened in nervous system repatterning, i have learned that my experience (and my response) can shift quite dramatically without months of laborious examination. 

and even more recently, i have at least considered what it could be like to (re)frame portals as scavenger hunts. what new discovery could i make about myself, my soul’s light, or my own joy and thriving on the other side of this threshold?

i am not suggesting that thresholds don’t come with their fair share of grief, loss and disruption. as we are making space for our next becoming, it is almost always true, if not always true, that we have to let certain things go. but not all thresholds are demonstrative and loud.

threshold moments are everywhere

sometimes thresholds choose us. but we still have a choice. will you leave this job? this relationship? will you actually ask for what you need? or keep stuffing it all down? will you go along with the crowd or step out and claim your own story? will you choose to honor your fear and/or your grief without letting it control you? will you release your grip on the thing that isn’t working anymore? with you speak your truth with your trembling voice because to do otherwise would stifle or fracture your soul? will you perpetuate the generational traumas and stories you inherited or say “this ends with me”? what will you hold and spark and cultivate and nourish in this moment when it seems like nothing matters and everything matters all at once. 

we are always becoming

if we claim wholeness instead of fracture, it turns out that the journey of becoming is never “done”. and how beautiful is that really? that there is so much possibility that is yet to be explored? and that the person we become on the other side of our threshold moments could be someone who feels even more like home? 

what is your soul’s whisper?

sometimes the soul’s whisper is an ache. sometimes a “not this”. it could be a “what if” or a “is there all there is?” what is your soul’s whisper? what is the threshold that is beckoning to you? what is the threshold you are in right now? who could you be on the other side?

i created Thresholds to help hold you in these questions. in the space in between the now and not yet. in your becoming. in your journey back home. 

More information on Thresholds is below. If you have any questions not answered there, please let me know.

Love, Booth