A Liminal Space

...when we were children, and we fell and scraped our knees, we hopefully were able to find someone into whose lap we could climb, a safe place where we were allowed to cry. And if we were fortunate, this caregiver would offer soothing words to let us know that everything would be all right. In that moment, we were able to feel the full weight of our pain and move through the emotional force it carried. In essence, our pain had a bottom, and because of that, we could build trust in our ability to move through pain.
— Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow

I crashed my bike one day on the way down a steep hill—a hill I knew I probably shouldn’t have been riding down. My friend who was with me walked back to her house with me, where we cleaned the wound and put on a Band-Aid. After several weeks, the scrape healed.

What’s interesting is that the first thing I thought that day was that I didn’t want to tell my parents. Because if I did, they might be upset. Somehow I would have felt responsible. Because that was just the way things worked at my house.

I didn’t have a safe place to land when I crashed on my bike.

I didn’t know it then, but I was learning the same lesson my father never learned: that pain without a safe place to land becomes a volcano.

Maybe you learned this lesson too. Maybe you also grew up knowing instinctively that your pain wasn’t safe to share. That if you brought your scraped knees and bruised hearts to your caregivers, somehow you’d end up taking care of them instead. Or worse—you’d crack something open that couldn’t be closed again.

The Volcano That Never Stopped

For years, this was how it was growing up. Even as I write this, I feel a sense of sorrow for that little girl who didn’t have anywhere to go.

It wasn’t always this way. When I was sick with a virus, my mother would bring me eggs and toast and tell me I would feel better. The sickness would end, she said. And it always did. But my father had little to say because in our house his pain was what we tiptoed around, making sure to the best of our ability that we did nothing to upset him.

If we did, we might crack open something inside him that could last for days. Anything could set him off, and when it did, an endless rant back into the past would begin—talking about the same tragic stories  of loss of how my grandmother loved his brother more than him. How the bank took everything. How people abandoned him.

His grief had no end. No bottom to land safely on. No one could comfort him. It just had to run its course, only to come back up at another time.

I’m pretty sure he didn’t have anyone to go to either when something bad happened in his life. So he ranted and raged over and over again about the pain until he felt relief. For me, listening to him over and over again was miserable. More than anything else, I wanted it to end. But it didn’t until I left.

If this sounds familiar, I want you to know: it wasn’t your job to absorb someone else’s volcanic grief. It never was. That’s what parentification does—it causes us to feel responsible for our parents’ pain, not to step on the painful spots, not to have any needs ourselves. Because that will just make things worse.

It isn’t supposed to be that way. But it is for so many people. And it will continue to be until we recognize what is happening and change the pattern.

What He Was Really Looking For

I wonder today what would have stopped it? What was he looking for when he ranted and raged and relived the past again and again?

I’m pretty sure, as I think back on it, he was looking for something he never got. Someone who would tell him it was going to be all right. And he could believe it. But his nervous system never found that safe place to land for as long as he was alive.

It was so simple what my father needed growing up: someone who was there when he was hurting, someone who would tell him it would be okay, someone who could calm his nervous system, someone to dry his tears when he crashed his bike and scraped his knee.

He told the story sometimes about his own father shooting up drugs in front of him—another person who believed they didn’t have anywhere to go with their pain. So he chose the needle. My father chose the bottle. And he never found lasting relief.

This is the inheritance of unprocessed pain. It gets passed down until someone finally finds the bottom, the place where grief can land and be witnessed and held.

The Cost of Carrying Another’s Pain

I watched his body shut down and come to a complete stop. He had a brain tumor, and eventually he only slept throughout the day. I tried my best to honor him and my mother by being there.

I will never forget the last night I slept on the couch in the same room as him. I woke up terrified from a dream I can’t remember. I felt overwhelmed by fear, and I knew I couldn’t stay in that house another moment. I forced my frozen legs off the sofa and rushed out the door to my car. The drive home—I can only remember a snippet of turning down a dark road. I got home and the relief of being in my own bed was instant, even though I felt terrible for leaving my mother all alone.

The next morning, my plan was to go back, but the call came before I did that he had passed away.

I’m sharing this because it reveals how painful it was witnessing someone’s slow decline and not being able to ever truly bring him relief. I tried in all the ways that I could, but it wasn’t enough. My nervous system was absorbing his unprocessed terror, and my body knew what my mind couldn’t yet name: I was drowning in someone else’s pain.

I recognize now that there was way more to my own story of loss than my brain could remember. But that night I touched on some of that grief and only felt overwhelming fear.

Even as I process these memories these days, I can remember what it was like being there in that house with him. Hopeless—like the days would never end. Trapped—like I would never get out. Like the pain would always be there, just waiting to erupt like a volcano that I could do little to prevent.

And that’s how it still feels today when I witness someone else erupting everywhere. I want to get out of the way.
That’s not being selfish. That’s wisdom—protecting myself from getting burned alive by someone else’s unprocessed grief.

If you feel this way too—if you find yourself wanting to run when someone’s pain starts spilling over onto you—trust that instinct. You’re not abandoning them. You’re recognizing that you can’t be the container for someone else’s volcano. You learned young that other people’s pain was your responsibility, but it never was. You can care without carrying it.

Recognizing the Pattern Everywhere

Decades later, I recognize this pattern in so many places.

I am watching all that is happening in our world right now—all the heightened emotions, the desperate voices crying out for attention. It’s so very loud. It can cause me to feel at times like I’m that little girl sitting in my room again, covering my ears and trying to block out the sounds of my father erupting, the hot lava of bitterness pouring out on us.

When we don’t find a safe place to land and the comfort we need, the grief doesn’t feel like it ever ends.

Unprocessed pain can also create a vacuum that pulls everything toward it—seeking relief, seeking witness, seeking someone who can finally make it stop. I see this pattern playing out across our culture—so much pain, grief that feels like it has no safe place to land.

High emotional reactions that cause people to use violence as an attempt to defend themselves. But violence won’t end the pain. It will just feed into the hate and make it grow.

No one came to save me from it back then. I had to save myself. So I wrote stories and created characters who went through difficulties together and had each other’s backs, because that was what I needed more than anything else.

And it’s what I still need today: a safe place for my pain.

But I’m not a child anymore. I can leave my room. I can let my father work out his own pain. Because the reality was nothing I ever did or didn’t do caused it. He just never found an effective way to deal with his pain. And if he did, then he didn’t trust what it was.

You’re not a child anymore either. You can leave the room. You can stop trying to fix what was never yours to fix.

What I Found That He Didn’t

It occurs to me, even as I write this, how exceedingly grateful I am that I found what he never did. Safe places to land.
A look of genuine compassion from another friend who’s suffered loss. She’s not rushing me through my story. She listens and does not judge. My nervous system experiences relief. A silent witness. Someone who can sit with me without absorbing my pain and feeling responsible.

I can see now how much others’ pain has made me uncomfortable at times because I felt responsible. But I’ve learned something crucial: not everyone can give you what you need.

Those people in our lives who expect us to give them what they need aren’t going to be the people who bring you relief. They’ll be the ones we realize we need to take care of ourselves around, because they are asking us to do what is impossible: be exactly what they need.
And when we can’t be that for them—when we finally step back to tend our own wounds—they may say we’re being selfish, that we’re using our trauma as an excuse.  Taking time to heal isn’t denial or avoiding. It’s actually the bravest work we can do.

We all deserve the time and space to heal in whatever ways we need to. If we don’t put our own healing first, no one else will. And that’s not selfish—it’s survival. It’s breaking the cycle.
No human can be exactly what another human needs. We aren’t built that way. When we try to be what another person needs, that creates a codependent system where we suppress our needs, and it creates those volcanoes that erupt on each other. They just keep erupting until there is real relief—relief that comes outside of controlling another, attempting to get them to be who we need them to be, to appease them because somehow they think we owe it to them.

Based on my lifetime experiences, no one ever finds it easy to love another person they feel obligated to appease.

Mercy, Not Sacrifice

It took me years to understand the difference between what my father was asking for and what would have actually helped him.

It reminds me of Jesus’ words: “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.”

What is mercy? What exactly did Jesus mean when he said this?

Tender, deep compassion and comfort offered to another soul. Compassion that comes from a place of genuine understanding, because the person offering it has been in dark places and received what they needed, and are therefore able to give it to others who are willing to receive it.

Sacrifice can mean to slaughter, to offer—a final act of appeasement. The life of Jesus reveals to me that you can absolutely give everything, and for some people it will never be enough.
But mercy is different.

Mercy means we give from a deep and genuine place in our hearts what we have to give, because we don’t want another person to suffer without having a safe place to land. We give because we want to, not because we’re obligated to.

We give what we actually have, not what we’re trying to manufacture through sheer force of will.

This is what I offer now—not sacrifice, but mercy. Not appeasement that drains me dry, but genuine compassion that flows from a place of my own healing. Because I don’t have energy to give in order to appease anymore. That tank is running on empty.

And maybe yours is too. Maybe you’ve spent years trying to be enough for people whose pain has no bottom. Maybe you’re exhausted from the sacrifice of it all.

Here’s what I’ve learned: appeasement will never be enough. But mercy and genuine compassion gives back and continues to give.

The Solution Is Simpler Than We Think

For a long time, I’ve been a trauma recovery coach. I started learning about trauma back in 2020. For the first time, I understood how much growing up the way I did caused my brain to develop in ways that were not ideal as a child. For a long time, I dealt with so many emotions around that—emotions that at times caused me to believe I would always be dealing with the grief of what I missed out on.

I had to realize in my own life that I can spend too much time going back into the past, reliving the pain and getting stuck looking for a solution. The solution isn’t there. But what was missing is. And that’s ultimately the solution: what was missing, how to give it to myself, and how to receive it from others.

It occurred to me recently that what we do with our pain determines so much about the quality of our lives and the lives of those around us. The pain itself isn’t wrong, but the way we cope determines how much we thrive and how much others thrive around us.
Sometimes the only thing we can do is pay attention to our own pain and learn how to be there for others who are suffering so that they can heal and we can become a healing balm together.

Because I’m convinced that this is the only way we can turn things around: healing together and an end to the division and hate.

But the difficult part is I can’t make others heal. I can’t make them see that there is a better way to deal with their pain rather than erupting everywhere and burning others. But I can deal with my own pain in such a way that I won’t suppress it and create my own volcano.

And so can you.

You can find your own safe places to land. You can learn to give yourself what was missing. You can surround yourself with people who offer genuine witness without demanding you carry their pain.

You can recognize the difference between mercy and sacrifice in your own life, and choose mercy—both for yourself and for others.

Isn’t that exactly the message Jesus gave—that everyone deserved a chance at a safe place to land, to weep, to be witnessed and heard? Isn’t it interesting that Jesus came and did such simple acts to offer hope to the world?

It occurs to me that the solution is much easier than we think.

Your pain deserves a bottom to land on.

You deserve a safe place. And the work of finding it—of breaking the cycle—is some of the most important work you’ll ever do.

Not just for yourself, but for everyone who comes after you.

This Is My Offering

This is my grief ritual—putting out into the universe what I have experienced so that it can be witnessed by whoever happens to hold space and maybe find hope. That’s not my responsibility. I can only offer what I have to give.

And now I invite you to consider your own grief ritual. What would it look like for you to witness your own pain? To give it the bottom it’s been searching for?

Some questions to sit with:

• Where in your life are you still trying to be exactly what someone else needs?
• What would change if you stopped hiding your healing and started protecting it?
• Who in your life offers you genuine witness without demanding you carry their pain?
• What does your pain need from you that you’ve been afraid to give it?

Creating your own grief ritual might look like:

• Writing your story, even if no one ever reads it
• Speaking your truth out loud in a safe space
• Finding one person who can sit with you without trying to fix you
• Giving yourself permission to leave the room when someone’s volcano starts erupting
• Acknowledging that your healing matters as much as anyone else’s

You Don’t Have to Do This Alone

If you’re looking for support as you navigate your own healing, peer support can offer a safe place to land. Peer support means connecting with others who understand what it’s like to carry unprocessed pain, who won’t ask you to sacrifice yourself, and who know the difference between caring and carrying.

I facilitate peer support spaces where we practice being witnessed without judgment, where we learn to distinguish between mercy and appeasement, and where we discover together what it means to find the bottom our pain has been searching for.

If you’d like to explore peer support,  you can reach out to loriwilliamslimnalspace@gmail.com.

Remember: You don’t owe anyone your sacrifice. But you do deserve your own mercy.

May you find your safe place to land.