In my physical world, the day is like many other days, but in the spiritual sense, something big happened today. It feels like an inner weather shift, set into motion by a dream of a tsunami, beginning to carry me across my liminal threshold. I can feel these are the first steps out of my liminal space.

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100 Liminal Days is an experimental project of embracing my current transitional season after exiting my business by sharing an honest, real-time account of my self-initiation experience in daily posts. Visit Day 1/100 to learn more and sign up to get the weekly recaps delivered to your inbox.

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I couldn’t know what 100 Liminal Days would do for me until I did it. I trust, listen, and do the things my soul whispers for me to do. The strongest liminal lesson has been to linger. To stop resisting the discomfort of the middle space – to surrender to it. To acknowledge that my dharma is not something I discover and make my own – it is something already fully within me. I am seeing it more and more now, and there is a sense of the liminality closing.

That’s the felt sense in waking life, but my dreams have been speaking, too. Two nights ago, I dreamt of a tsunami.

The Dream: A Tsunami Approaches

I recount dreams in the present tense to honor the fact that they are living events. I am in a building with large floor-to-ceiling windows. People around me are busily preparing – anxious – but I am watching out the window. In the distance, I see a tsunami wave coming. I stand at the window, watching with a deep sense of peace, reverence, and curiosity.

This is the second tsunami dream in the last couple of weeks, so even though this little snippet is all I remember, I take the time to interpret it today. When images repeat in my dreams, I pay more attention. This image was returning with purpose.

Using my dream interpretation process following Robert A. Johnson’s framework, I began to reflect on what tsunamis mean to me.

Tsunamis for me hold amazing power. They are unstoppable and unfathomable. In waking life, when I’ve seen videos of them, I can hardly comprehend their power. I’ve never been near one but I think I’d be afraid if I were. When I visit the ocean, I always feel such peace and joy while standing in the waves, but I also fear them. I know the power of the sea. But I love being in the sea and do it despite my fear. I’m cautious but compelled to be in the water.

When I reflect on what my tendency is when something is approaching – something big and beyond my control – I tend to watch and wait. If fear is present, I might brace myself and hope for the best, but I wasn’t afraid in this dream.

And further, when I think about what in my life feels like it’s big and approaching? Gosh, my whole life! My dharma in action. It feels as if I’ve been reborn and am beginning my life again, as a truer version of myself. I feel as if my greatest work of my life is just around the corner.

As I hold all of this in mind and let the visual image of the tsunami flow through my body – the felt sense in my body is surprisingly relaxed and peaceful. This has been a key feeling I’ve experienced lately as I turn up my curiosity around my life’s work. The peace in the dream matched the peace I’ve felt in waking life – an inner knowing that something is rising and I am ready for it.

After making the associations and interpretation, I chose a ritual that involved placing my hand in a bowl of water. I wanted to bring a tangible element of my dream into the ritual and align the symbol from the dream with my waking life action. It was simple and subtle – as it should be. As I let the water drip from my hand, I felt a sense of readiness.

The Wave Touches the Shore

I know that ritual can change things for us, but I did not expect anything major or immediate. I trusted the process, and got on with my day. I headed out to meet an old friend for lunch – someone I don’t think I’ve seen since before the pandemic, who recently started following the blog because he is also in a liminal season, seeking, and doing the soul work.

We didn’t waste even a minute on small talk – without effort we found ourselves speaking vulnerably, landing on themes of the inner child. As I spoke about releasing the false responsibility I carried as a child and how in ceremony space I was able to hold that younger version of me and tell her that my parents’ pain wasn’t her fault, his eyes filled with tears.

He later shared how he felt a connection to a piece of art I shared online several months ago, indicated to him that I was on a real journey, not just painting for hobby. He also reflected on the qigong practice video I posted last week.

Several more moments during the conversation brought more tears – not the kind of tears from sadness, but of recognition. Of catching a glimpse of our truest self.

Jung says this about these tears:

“Tears often accompany the emergence of the Self, for it is the recognition of something deeply known yet long forgotten.” ~ Jung, CW 9ii, p. 172

This is exactly what I witness in these moments – the emergence of something deeply known yet long forgotten, so when I see these tears in others, I pause. I thank them for showing vulnerability. Because it takes a lot of courage to show themselves. What I haven’t said but I think is that I am grateful for their tears, because I believe they are showing me that this is the medicine I didn’t know I was carrying. It is not me, but God moving through me.

In the moments of solitude after leaving lunch, I realized that none of this was accidental or coincidence – the depth of this conversation immediately following the dream interpretation and ritual. It felt as though something in the field of my psyche shifted – subtle, unmistakable.

Tears as a Signal, Not Sadness

This theme of tears has significance for me. It’s as if tears are the signal to me that I am sharing my gift with others – my gift of presence.

From my journal, May 19, 2025:

“I want to inspire others to do things that scare them. That make them cry. To make themselves uncomfortable. To be brave.”

And again on November 18, 2025:

“I want to make people feel so deeply they cry. And then guide them through their transitional season.”

I’ve shared before how I have been making birthday cards for loved ones. When my mom received hers, she texted me telling me that it made her cry. Another more distant acquaintance cried during a short, unexpected conversation just a month or so ago. When I preached my sermon in August, multiple people cried.

These tears are not the kind we wipe away at first. We let them build and fall. These tears are the result of seeing ourselves – a reflection of who we actually are, spotted in the eyes of another. And just like the tears, the images in my dream began to echo something deeper I had already written months ago.

I Am Turquoise Poem

As I interpreted the tsunami dream, I couldn’t help but think about my poem, I Am Turquoise, that I wrote in August last year. The lines that feels most alive for me today are these:

I am a safe haven for the life force below my surface.
I nurture and love this precious life within me.

Sometimes the deeper self speaks long before the ego understands. This poem feels like something that came through me, not from me. I feel the same way about how I’m noticing I make people cry.

Weaving the Threads Together

This tsunami I was watching out the window – it is not destruction, it is arrival. Arrival of my soul’s gift. The dream, the ritual, the lunch conversation, the tears, the poem, and this sense of inevitability are all pointing to an emerging vocation. Something God is giving me to share with the world.

I think my truest self – my spiritual gift – is simply resolved to be. My work is the shore where it will land. I will eventually define this, but for now, I see it as a calling to hold others through liminality. To offer presence for emotional revelation. I want to hold space for true transformation.

With these little messages coming to me, I sense my liminality closing. This is exciting in the most sacred, awe-filled way. And the closing begins because I surrendered, not because I’ve almost made it to 100 days. I stopped trying to make something work out, and took the courageous first and next steps in trust and curiosity. Let’s see what this big wave has to offer us all.

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