The Seven Dimensions of In-Between

On becoming

There’s a strange and potent terrain that emerges when life stops making sense in the old way and hasn’t yet revealed a new form. You’re no longer where you were and not yet where you’re going. Welcome to the in-between.

This isn’t just a moment of transition. It’s a multidimensional experience that touches your sense of self, time, belonging, agency, and daily rituals.

It’s also not something to rush through, despite sometimes present real realities. What’s often revealed to many on this path is that there is no ‘there’ there. We aren’t perhaps in-between, but our ‘in-betweeness’ creates a runway for personal expansion that learns to operate on its own frequency. It lives outside our preconceptions of who and what we are supposed to be when and where. Simply, we are always becoming and the places we stop along the way are just points in time of a larger, more holistic, non-linear journey.

This is an area I’ve known well, from my own significant transformations through identities over the years and from decades of studying (and making) culture. The pressure to perform for exaggerated outcomes amidst constant ambiguity is extreme. People not rooted in efficiency models, strict hierarchical structures and roles, or up on the latest, rapidly evolving technology are struggling. They may have lost jobs, marriages, children to college, or embarked on a major life and/or career pivot in a volatile economy and political system. They live now among millions and millions of people wandering the halls of in-between.

Many dimensions shape the in-between and I’m here to share six big ones. They don’t arrive in order. They don’t resolve on a schedule. But they’re there, moving through us as situations in life untether from the previously known. It’s easy to say, “don’t worry you’ll be ok,” but until you’ve genuinely lived through it at least a few times, that sentiment can feel useless and cruel. But fear is not the answer; fear creates destructive tendencies that harm us and/or those around us.

The goal in sharing these is to create awareness and name the challenges so we may find easier paths for our reinventions, perhaps even joy in a practice of curiosity, discovery, and wonder.

Part One: Identity + Self Perception

In the in-between, identity often unglues from the usual anchors. You're not what you do, because you're not doing that anymore. You’re not who you were, but you don’t yet have language for who you’re becoming. It’s disorienting, especially in a world that rewards clarity, consistency, and a compelling personal brand.

If we’re not branded by an organization or life role, we’re told to brand ourselves. To polish. Package. Announce. This is most visible for careers made valid by LinkedIn and dating profiles. But brands are commodities: crisp, finished, digestible. And the in-between is none of those things.

When someone asks, “What have you been up to?” it can feel like a test. Try saying “I’ve been meditating outside for two hours a day” to a room full of employed business folk and watch the silence land. In moments like that, our self-perception wavers. If we can’t name it, is it real? If it doesn’t add up to something productive, does it still count?

Truth: identity doesn’t disappear in the in-between. It de-solidifies. It widens. You aren’t failing to be something. You’re making space to become.

Underneath all this shapeshifting is a deeper unraveling: the slow crumbling of modern subjecthood itself. The kind of subjecthood that was trained to separate mind from body, self from other, knowing from being. It’s not just that you’re between jobs or life roles, you might be between cosmologies. That’s not failure. It’s sacred time.

The sense of self that emerges here is fluid, multi-sourced, and porous. In the Emergence Magazine podcast from February 12, 2025, Merlin Sheldrake asks a potent question: "Where do we begin and end when the sunlight goes under our skin?" Just pause there. The edges of who we think we are start to shimmer. Throughout history, we’ve inherited dualisms like light/dark, mind/body, human/nature, but the in-between invites us to metabolize them into something new. Maybe intuition isn’t “inside” or “outside” us. Maybe instinct isn’t just biological, rather ecological, ancestral, microbial, mineral. What if the very idea of a bounded self is a modern hallucination? What if there is a yes and, another path? There is.

Embodied example: You go to update your bio and freeze. Every version feels like a costume. So you close the tab, go for a walk, and realize that maybe the words don’t come because you’re still listening for who you are now, not who you are independent of these roles.

Being in-between is not a ‘waiting’ period. It’s an active process of remembering and understanding who we are deep within, while also clearing space for beautiful new futures. It’s a special, nurturing place we are lucky, yes that’s right, lucky to inhabit. Not everyone gets or takes this time. We pause, then action, pause, then action, one thing leads to another, and our new selves rise in the adventure of becoming.

Stay tuned for Part Two next week on Time & Rhythm