Capturing the In-Between: A Collection of Stories From Empowering Women About Navigating Here, There, and Everywhere In-Between

By Cindy Urbanski and Taylor Edwards

If you are anything like the authors of this collaborative book, you've got goals in life. You are highly-ambitious, and you aren't here to play small. In fact, you've been working on "getting there" -- achieving that goal, following that dream, finding that path -- your whole life, it seems. The old adage "it's not about the de

• Language: English
• Publisher: Synergy Publishing Group
• Release date: Apr 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781960892003

Cindy Urbanski

Cindy is a mom of three, for now. (She solidly counts her son-in-law to be as one of her children and hopes to add more to the brood someday when her son finds his person). She loves cooking wholesome food, reading good books, traveling and being in the woods or near the water with her husband and children. She is the Lead Writing Coach for Synergy Publishing and a Yoga instructor, both occupations that tap into her super power of helping people love on themselves. Cindy is fearlessly accepting, wildly authentic, persistently truthful, and relentlessly kind. Connect with her on Instagram: @zen_by_u.

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Capturing the In-Between

A Collection of Stories from Empowering Women About Navigating Here, There, and Everywhere In-Between

Shana Hartman, PhD, Editor

Synergy Publishing Group, LLC

Capturing the In-Between: A Collection of Stories from Empowering Women About Navigating Here, There, and Everywhere In-Between

Shana Hartman, PhD, Editor

Copyright © 2022, Synergy Wellness Group, LLC. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by United States copyright law.

Published by Synergy Publishing Group, Belmont, NC

Cover by Arielle Torkelson

Softcover, December 2022, ISBN 979-8370043185

Ebook, April 2023, 978-1-960892-00-3

Printed in the USA

We dedicate this book to the folks who realize

there is more than a destination and a journey.

We wrestle beside you in the naming and experiencing

of what the in-between gets to be for you.

Capturing the In-Between:

An Introduction

Shana Hartman

This book sits before you because I posed a simple question on social media one day:

Do you know anyone who’d like to join me in writing a collaborative book about navigating the in-between of life?

I didn’t really know what I meant by the in-between. I just knew that here often didn’t last long, and I knew there was a very popular goal in our culture, even if all of our collective theres seemed to vary wildly. At least 20 folks raised their hands to my question.

Here’s what they had in common:

All identified as women.

All were business owners, teachers, or thought leaders of some sort.

All had no idea what they were going to write about, but all had a deep knowing about the in-between.

We all said yes to exploring our journey from here to there, from where we were to where we wanted to go, from memories of where we had navigated the in-between before, and what all of that meant to us.

Guess what? We all ended up in very different places than we initially thought. For example, as the leader of this project, I thought I was going to share my story of going from English professor to embodied writing coach, focusing on how writing has been my talisman for the in-betweens I found myself in along the way. Yet, as I wrote several stories about how writing has supported me over the years, I kept noticing a familiar tug: this feels like what I think I should be writing. I was letting my should gremlins lead. You know, those voices that tell you what it should look like when tragedy hits or opportunity comes. This book aims to re-examine should thinking as we go on the journey of life and navigate the in-between. You’re going to hear our stories of what that rethinking has looked like for us, what we have learned from it, and ideas for you to reflect on, dear reader.

I find the powerful Glennon Doyle’s words useful as I introduce what the writers of this collection will share about the in-between. Glennon talks about the power of fully feeling as a path to becoming in her book, Untamed. She writes:

I am here to keep becoming truer, more beautiful versions of myself again and again forever. To be alive is to be in a perpetual state of revolution. Whether I like it or not, pain is the fuel of revolution. Everything I need to become the woman I’m meant to be next is inside my feelings of now. Life is alchemy, and emotions are the fire that turns me to gold. I will continue to become only if I resist extinguishing myself a million times a day. If I can sit in the fire of my own feelings, I will keep becoming. There is no glory except straight through your story.

So, we submit the straight through parts of our stories. We became even more as we (re)witnessed our various paths from one part of our story to the next. And, here’s the thing we realized: we are never there. Not really. We aren’t even sure that there actually exists. We posit that we are always in the in-between. And, we also realize that the in-between is actually this amazing place that is not dictated by the shoulds of life when we can marvel in our messy, complex, painful, wonderous journeys. We are thrilled beyond measure to invite you to come along with us as we revel in the glory that is life in the in-between.

About the Author

Through her 20+ years of work teaching, talking, and writing about writing, Shana Hartman knows that writing is a way for us to connect with ourselves! Shifting from tenured English professor to embodied writing coach, she loves to support heart-centered, mission-driven folks in sharing their core messages from life and business in powerful self-published books. Shana and her team are on a mission to change the landscape (and covers) of publishing by inviting and supporting marginalized communities in their own embodied writing process and getting their powerful words out in the world.

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shanahartman.com

Incantations of Existence

Taylor Edwards

Most of my days are spent on the precipice of low

one wrong move, one misstep

and the world darkens

shoulders up, jaw clenched, breath held,

grasping for every card contained in my back pocket

maybe i can find new cards,

i think.

-

the stack grows thinner and thinner.

some of my days are spent on the exhalation of high

No wrong moves; All good steps

My world is bright lights and warm sun on expectant skin

Laughter supernova across my face

Love and kindness and compassion and home

When I am good, I am oh-so-good

If grace is the marriage between the low and the high, am I the love-child of indecision?

or the bastard-child of unacceptance?

In my world, opposites don’t attract.

They split.

They diverge.

Binaries polarize.

I am learning how love-children and bastards live in-between.

And, I’ve no home…

…yet.

Liminal space is the space between, coming from the Latin word limen, meaning threshold. The space between that which you came from and that to which you are going. When I think of threshold, I think of a Morgan Freeman-esque voice, pushing me along, stating: You stand at the threshold of [fill in the blank]. Sometimes, I’m standing at the threshold of greatness. Sometimes, the threshold of an impending doom. Either way, in both examples, I feel uncomfy in their spaces.

The discomfort reminds me of a waiting room. I recognize the metaphor between a waiting room and liminal space, and I also recognize both the divination and disquietude that occurs within liminal space, more often than not. There’s a pain in the waiting room, just as there is a becoming in one, as well. Here’s the thing: my anxiety flourishes in waiting rooms. I acknowledged this thought as I walked into my gynecologist’s office a couple of months ago.

Pushing through the door, mask secured on my face with the loops strategically flipped around my ears, I try very, very hard to stare straight ahead at the receptionist’s desk. I am consciously ignoring the other women and girls that are busting the waiting room at its seams. I am consciously ignoring how they are all also trying very, very hard not to make eye contact with one another.

Why is it when we most are in need of a connection that we oh-so-often reject it completely? That’s what was happening in the liminal space of the Ashley Women’s Center Waiting Room.

I consciously ignore those near me. Instead, I think of the reason I’m here today. There’s a ticking time bomb in my cervix, and, annually, I have the pleasure of being swabbed and prodded. Sometimes sliced and diced and burned away, my cervix and I have a tumultuous relationship where it is responsible for this waiting room anxiety year after year.

Going through the motions, I check-in, pay my copay, thank the kind gray-haired receptionist with curls atop her head, who resembles