Standing in the Between: The Sacred Unfairness of Becoming

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When You’re Between Who You Were and Who You’re Becoming — Especially After Enmeshment

For women disentangling from enmeshment and toxic family dynamics, this liminal space can feel especially disorienting.

There is a space between leaving what is killing you and arriving at who you’re meant to be.

It’s uncomfortable. It’s sacred. And it’s profoundly unfair.

I’m standing in it right now.

This space doesn’t have a name most of the time. We talk about “healing” or “breakthrough” or “freedom,” but we rarely talk about the between — the place where you’ve already said no to what was harming you, but you haven’t yet discovered what comes next.

It’s not departure. It’s not arrival. It’s the liminal space — and it carries a peculiar weight.

The Liminal Space Between Enmeshment and Freedom

The liminal space is the place between what you know you must move away from and what you don’t yet know how to move toward.

It’s the space after the truth has landed but before identity has re-formed.

For women disentangling from enmeshment — from toxic family dynamics, from false responsibility, from identities shaped by survival — this space can feel especially disorienting. You’re no longer who you were, but you’re not yet grounded in who you’re becoming.

And because there’s no clear script for this stage, many people rush through it.

They fill it with activity.

They numb it.

They spiritualize it away.

They run back to what’s familiar just to escape the discomfort.

But this space matters.

Most people live here longer than they admit. They just don’t name it. And when a space goes unnamed, it often becomes unbearable.

What the Liminal Space Feels Like

There are contradictions in this space that are hard to hold all at once.

It’s uncomfortable and promising.

Sad and redemptive.

Sacred and deeply hard.

There is grief here — not only for what was lost, but for what never should have been required of you in the first place.

For me, standing here also feels unfair.

Unfair that I have to do this work at all. Unfair that this transformation must be borne with an adult mind instead of a more malleable one. Unfair that clarity came after so much cost.

This isn’t a sense of being “late.” It’s a sense of why.

Why did I have to become this strong just to survive? Why now? Why did this responsibility fall to me?

These questions don’t mean you lack faith. They mean you’re telling the truth.

And telling the truth is often the first real act of freedom.

What This Space Requires

What I’m learning — slowly, reluctantly — is that this space doesn’t respond to striving.

It doesn’t open under pressure. It doesn’t yield to hustle. It doesn’t soften when you try to control it.

Stillness has become my companion here.

Not stillness as passivity. Stillness as presence.

Standing instead of rushing. Listening instead of explaining. Letting the silence teach me who I am without my old roles.

I believe that if I stand here long enough, this space will begin to look beautiful.

Not because it was easy. Not because it was chosen. But because God meets us in between places.

Scripture is full of them.

The wilderness.

The waiting room.

The exile.

The tomb before the resurrection.

Transformation, it seems, almost always requires a sacred pause — a place where the old identity dies before the new one takes breath.

I pray that gratitude will be born here.

Not forced gratitude. Not premature gratitude.

But the kind that comes after truth has been honored.

I believe that gratitude precedes beauty — not the other way around.

Standing Here Anyway

I don’t know how long this space will last.

I don’t know when the beauty will become obvious or when the new identity will feel solid under my feet.

But I’m choosing to stand here anyway.

I’m choosing not to rush my becoming. Not to betray myself for relief. Not to return to what was familiar just to escape the ache of the unknown.

If you’re standing in your own liminal space — between enmeshment and freedom, between who you were and who you’re becoming — I want you to know this:

You’re not doing it wrong.

The discomfort doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It means you’ve told the truth.

And truth-telling always creates a space before it creates a structure.

You’re not alone in this between.

And if you’re here — still standing — it’s because something holy is already at work, even if you can’t fully see it yet.

With Love & Respect,

Natalie Amey

Writer, Artist, Storyteller

Exploring faith, identity, and becoming