Welcome to The Liminality Journal

Welcome to The Liminality Journal!

If you’re receiving this, it means you believe in me, in the work of using words to speak to our human condition, and I am so grateful. If you’re new to my writing, let me take a sec to introduce myself: I’m Kaitlin. I’m an essayist, poet, award-winning author, dog owner, mom, partner, and all-around layered and nuanced human being. I love to write on spirituality, everyday life, resistance, self-care, and identity.

Some of you have followed this space for a while, previously called the Soul to Soul Newsletter, a monthly newsletter full of original essays, news, and resources. You’ll still get some of that content here, and so much more. We’re just tweaking the space a bit, and I am so excited to launch into this new season with you!

me + geese + a beautiful river on a warm Philly afternoon

This is my new space, focused around the idea of liminality.

What is liminality? Simply put, it’s the psychological process of transitioning across boundaries and borders. In a time when we love to keep ourselves separated from one another with our ideologies, beliefs, religions, ethics, identities, or politics, liminality asks how we exist in those in-between spaces. That’s what I write about, especially from a spiritual perspective.

Every now and then, it is helpful to take a look at the landscape of our lives and ask where the borders lie between one space and another, one land and another, one soul and another. We don’t do this to compartmentalize, or to say that we are not wholly who we are, but to notice what happens when we move from space to space, when we choose to exist in the world between the various layers of who we are and who we are becoming.

Author and teacher Sadhguru writes of this as our karma, our way of being in the world, and the things we carry with us along the way. So here, I’m writing about liminality, the notice of movement as we go about our lives, the boxes we do or don’t fit into, the languages we use and the identities we feel connected to—often the identities we take on simply to survive.

Liminality means we know how heavy and complex the world is, and we choose to make space and exist because of it. We choose presence, boundaried presence that allows us to know ourselves well and love others better. 

I’ll be sharing here weekly, whether it’s fresh poetry, notes from my personal journals, or essays on all sorts of topics related, mostly, to our humanness. Besides the free essays and poems I am so excited to share with you, some of the content will be for paid subscribers only. Either way, you being here, reading my words, it means so much to me.

Most of my writing will remain free, because I believe that sharing my words with all of you is what creates this community. For free subscribers, you’ll still get access to my essays and some original poetry.

Paid subscribers get access to the following:

• a look into my life as an essayist and poet

• participate in discussion threads with me

• glimpses into notes from my personal journals

We are living in a time that calls us to look past so much and ask deep, difficult, raw questions, and when we do, we find that our humanity continues to be the thread that strings us together, that connects us. The spaces in between, the liminality, reminds us that we belong to each other.

As we begin this journey, I’d love for you to ask yourself: what liminal spaces do you inhabit in your personal life, in your community, in the world?

Onward, together, in the spaces between.