Look At That Gap
"You're getting your adult teeth," Therese said to me, 5 years ago.
Wait. Two decades of this work. Studying, healing, unraveling, rebuilding, teaching teacher trainings, helping people out of chronic mental and physical pain. And you're telling me in the metaphor of life, I'm barely getting my adult teeth?
Underneath my defenses, another part of me went: Hmm. She might be lovingly correct.
Because I was lying on the floor. Exhausted. Heavy in my bones. A foggy gap between me and any next step.
A gap in my life that felt so big I wasn't sure anything was coming at all.
I left a business I had built for seven years in New York. I loved the people I served and the very particular way I taught. Teaching soulful anatomy trainings. Working with professional athletes and CEOs during the 2008 crash. Holding space for people in chronic pain who found freedom in their bodies and minds. I belonged to something created by following the bread crumbs. Step by step.
We left NY, moved to Maine, and in the same week that Steve started his career, we also became parents. We had a role reversal in who was bringing home the pay check, and in this case who was now in charge of home life.
Sophia didn't sleep. Like REALLY didn't sleep, for years. I taught one class a week (as opposed to the 23 I was teaching in NY), running trainings just one weekend a month, and held a handful of major events, while feeling like I was doing nothing compared to before.
I was losing my teeth and didn't know it.
Then came the losses. In 2017, a baby I never got to meet, and at the end of 2019, I very reluctantly let go of what little was left of my business. The blessed news was that this was in preparation for my final child to come into this world.
Then the pandemic.
By 2020, I couldn't catch my breath. Literally. I was on the floor with a baby on my chest, my back often thrown out, a four-year-old needing everything, and I was still "working the night shift." My husband was trying to keep his company alive, 7 days a week, and all child support including school, gone.
My mind couldn't hold a schedule.
The tooth was officially out.
The gap opened and grew larger.
Here's the beauty that happened in the gap:
The teaching and inspiration stopped showing up. The credentials, the trainings, the big events. They all fell away. The work that used to be visible, disappeared. What was left was internal. Small but big. Humbling. An exposed version of me.
I learned what I absolutely would not tolerate anymore. Friendships that only took. Patterns in my marriage that dimmed me. The performance of being fine. The victimhood I had collapsed into. I got to know my own boundaries in a way I could no longer afford to cross. Literally, no tolerance for it.
I became more human. More humble. More empathetic to anyone else in a gap.
I got clearer.
Baby steps began. Taking online trainings, sometimes while in the tub or in bed. In 2021, a nanny saying yes. Then, when I eventually wanted to say yes to helping a friend in deep need it was with the skills I'd acquired through the gap itself.
Starting to teach publicly in 2023, one gentle session at a time. Getting a website together but not ready to put my face on it yet, or show any signs of joy, out of fear I'd leave people behind. Then trying to find words for what I do now, who I am now.
The adult teeth were in fact coming in. Damn it Therese.
I'm now watching my daughter lose her baby teeth. She actually just pulled this last one out because she decided it had been wiggling around long enough! She took a selfie of her ever growing gap. She was so proud.
The gap is so much bigger than what she lost, and it's the exact right size of what's to come.
What's coming has actually been within her since she was in utero, tucked under the baby teeth. They wait. They let the baby teeth do the first round of eruption. Then stabilizing until you forget that teething was ever a thing.
When adult teeth come through, they're sharper. Stronger. Built to chew what the baby teeth couldn't (hello second half of life!). There is right timing for things to emerge. Sometimes they come before we're ready. Sometimes they make us wait way longer than we think we can.
I'm pretty sure this is the path of becoming.
What feels different now from then?
I still feel quite vulnerable, often, if I'm honest. But I'm sturdier now. Sharper. I know what's a real yes and what's a performed one. I get to keep the depth and foundation that the nothingness and everything all at once gave me. I feel rich with the simple things.
This gap, the space in between, widened my foundation. It called in years of nervous system and trauma resolution study. I could already name every bone and muscle in the body. Now I was learning the internal stories that bodies need to tell. And the movements and support that help them release what they've been holding, for years, with so much effort.
These new practices were life saving and joy building.
Bonus: the gifts from the gap, stay with us.
If you're in the gap right now, the empty, maddening, "how much longer?" kind, I want you to know this. The big teeth are coming. It's possible they've been waiting a lifetime.
Most adults like certainty. Small steps can feel insignificant. Yet it's how children's adult teeth arrive. And apparently how we do too. One tooth, one threshold at a time, each in its own way.
Perhaps what's coming has been coming since before you took your first breath. It has its own timeline. Its own desire for space and conditions, to arrive.
May we borrow the confidence of a kid mid-gap, certain the tooth is on its way.
With deep care,
Sarah
P.S. If someone you love is in the gap right now, send them this.
Sometimes the most useful thing is something or someone from the other side of the gap. Like Therese was for me.