Not only is “liminal” a lovely word to say and feel on the lips, reminding me a bit of that scene in Donnie Darko, about “cellar door” being the most beautiful combination of words in the English language, but I love its meaning too.
My old red dictionary defines it as “of, pertaining to, or situated at the limen,” and limen means threshold.
My online dictionary defines it as “occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold” or “relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process.”
Other words and phrases that come to mind when I think of “liminal” are…
on the verge
between
blurring edges
borders
having a hand in two worlds
transition
transformation
possibilities & potential
fleeting
almost and not quite and soon
Liminal makes me think of twilight, one of my favorite times of day, when the air can be purple or yellow or pink or just a calm cozy shadowy gray, when the crows go to sleep, when the opossums wake and crunch through the leaves looking for snacks, when the first stars appear, when the question pops into my head—“Do I want a campfire tonight?”—when I sit on the porch and look and listen and don’t want to come inside because I might miss something.
Liminal makes me think of witchery. When does a tea become a potion? When does a thought become a prayer? Where is the line between admiring a tree and worshipping it? What’s the difference between writing a poem and casting a spell? Is there one?
Liminal reminds me of this whole time of year, the weeks between October and January, transitioning through Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, Christmas, and New Year, giving treats and thanks and gifts and blessings, watching the trees change color and making resolutions.
I think LIMINAL will be my word for 2026. Maybe I’m on the verge of something. A new identity? A new project? A new path? Or maybe I’m finally just recognizing how “liminal” life is in general, always changing, always balancing between one direction and another. I’m turning fifty in the upcoming year—the start of my own personal twilight?—so perhaps that’s the threshold inspiring me to embrace hazy boundaries and be open to unexplored territories.
Speaking of unexplored territories, I’ve never actually celebrated the solstice before, which I feel a bit strange admitting since I love nature and feel a strong connection to the earth this time of year. However, it’s never too late to start a new tradition. Tomorrow, on the first day of winter, I’ll build a fire and… see what happens. I may make some nature-inspired crafts or do a tarot reading for the new year or write some poetry by the light of the flames.
Care to join me? I don’t mean literally. This year I’m craving some quiet time to myself amongst all the social gatherings and holiday travel, so I’ll be celebrating the solstice solo. But there is power in community, even from afar, and I believe that collective positivity can light up the world, even on the darkest night of the year. So, consider taking a moment or two tomorrow to appreciate nature and honor the Earth and offer up some affirmation to the atmosphere.
If you don’t have time for a full solstice ritual, I encourage you to spend a few minutes listening to this hauntingly beautiful choral rendition of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” composed by Eric Whitacre. I had the pleasure of hearing my friend’s choir perform this piece at their Winter Solstice concert last week, and the experience has stuck with me. The song itself is an embodiment of the word “liminal,” a balancing act between poetry and music, walking the line between eerie and enchanting.
Whatever you do tomorrow, do it with intention and appreciation for the world around you.
Happy Solstice!
May the yuletide bring many moments of peace and joy to you and your loved ones.
Happy December! I just told this story to a friend over the weekend and decided it needed to be shared publicly again. I originally posted this tale to my previous blog in 2012, just after I quit teaching the first time. At that point, it had been thirteen years since “the incident.” Now, another thirteen years have passed, but the whole thing still cracks me up. Ah, the things we do when we’re twenty-three… Enjoy!
Confessions of a Former Teacher #1: I Stole the Baby!
[The last part of the title should be read in the voice of the brownie in the movie Willow. If you missed that on the first read, try again. If you don’t know what I’m talking about (sigh heavily) then check out this clip before reading on.]
As you know by now, I have quit teaching. Now that the dust has settled a little… the three-hole punch is packed away and the glue has dried on the “about me” collages… I feel it’s time to let you all in on a few choice secrets from my thirteen-year career. Prepare to gasp.
This first shocking tale of mayhem comes from my very first semester as a teacher. I was twenty-three years old and teaching 7th grade language arts in Cedar Park, TX. And I warn you, there are so many things wrong with this story, your judgmental brain won’t even know where to begin.
Let me set the scene.
It’s December. The chilly Texas air keeps threatening to drop below 40°F. It’s nine school days before the holiday break. The students are restless. The teachers are restless. Tacky Christmas sweaters are being donned with no irony at all. And then, quite suddenly, it appears in the break room: a nativity scene made out of chocolate.
Chocolate Nativity Scene. Just as you pictured it.
I don’t know who brought it. I never heard anyone say a word about it. But there it was. Every day as I ate my homemade peanut butter sandwich or my cafeteria-bought chicken nuggets, out of the corner of my eye, hovering in my periphery, making a comfortable nest in the back of my mind, it was there. Milk chocolate Mary. Juicy Joseph. Scrumptious shepherd. Cocoa camel. Mouth-watering wise men. And that sweet, savory morsel—baby Jesus himself.
Every day for two weeks, I walked past this gaudy display and three thoughts occurred simultaneously to my brain. Is a nativity scene really allowed in a public school? Isn’t it kinda sacrilegious to cast our Lord and Savior in chocolate? Why can’t I stop salivating?
Every day for two weeks, it sat there, getting a little drier, a little more chalky in appearance, a wise man or two wilting just a bit. Taunting me.
Then school was out for the holidays. Students fled the campus, half-eaten candy canes hanging from their smile-stretched mouths. Teachers sped away in their sensible sedans, the gleam of freedom shining in their eyes like starlight. The campus would be a ghost town for two full weeks.
Except…
Two days after school let out, my Crazy Cousin Kelley came to visit me and brought along her friend Matt. Proud new teacher that I was, I wanted to show them where I worked.
Matt, Crazy Cousin Kelley, Me
Since the tour of my classroom (an extremely unimpressive space in a portable building with chalk boards and fake wood paneling) only took about a minute and half, I decided to wow them with a trip into the school building itself. I showed them the rows of maroon lockers and pointed inside locked classrooms at the dry erase boards. (Look! Look at the fancy stuff the INDOOR teachers get!) I pointed at posters advertising upcoming dances and demonstrated how my key unlocked both computer labs AND faculty restrooms, and my fans oohed and ahhed appropriately.
After I showed them the cafetorium (a fantastical place where people can both eat fish sticks AND enjoy off-key choir performances) and pointed out my favorite sign in the whole school (handwritten, hanging over the gym door, proudly proclaiming Do Not Take Balls Out—good advice by the way), we finally found ourselves in the break room. And IT was still there. In the rush to disperse at the last bell of the year, the chocolate nativity had been forgotten.
And, come on, from that point on it was really a no-brainer.
The heavenly dessert
Yes, Crazy Cousin Kelley and I stole the baby chocolate Jesus from the candy nativity scene in the break room of the middle school where I taught. Matt, bless his pious little heart, cannot be blamed. He tried to talk us out of it. He said it wasn’t right. Later, when the conquest was complete and Kelley and I indulged in our very guilty pleasure Matt adamantly refused to participate. His soul remained pure. His teeth remained free of the devilish brown stain left by the sweet baby Jesus.
However, my Crazy Cousin and I were beyond reasoning. Satan had a hold of our taste buds and he wasn’t letting go. We barely made it to the parking lot before we had to satisfy our craving and taste our victory. And our victory tasted like… a two-week-old piece of chocolate that had been sitting out in the germ-infested air of a school. Ah well. We were in our twenties. Our immune systems were strong.
The first sacri-licious bite
After the giddy drive home, Cousin Kelley and I celebrated our baby-Jesus-stealing in the obvious way: we wrote a song about it. Borrowing the tune (and quite a few of the lyrics) from REM, we commemorated our triumph with a ballad. The lyrics are found below. [Beware: Once you read them, you may never be able to listen to “Losing My Religion” in the same way again, so if you wish not to sully that sacred musical experience, I suggest you use the utmost restraint and stop after the next paragraph.]
So, there you have it. Confession #1. The sweet, caring, hard-working young woman you trusted to educate the next generation is nothing more than a thief, a heretic, a baby Jesus eater. It feels good to admit it.
“Losing Our Religion”
Lyrics by Carie and Kelley
Music stolen from REM
[Note: I have no doubt that I could do better than this today. I believe my musical spoof skills have improved considerably in the past thirteen years. But I am resisting the urge to revise. This is the song, unchanged, as it was written in December of 1999. Don’t hate.]
[2025 Note: Another thirteen years have passed since I wrote that previous note, but I still stand by it.]
Oh Christ, is smaller Smaller when molded Into chocolate The lengths that I would go to To see it in bite size Oh no, I've said too much I set it up
That's me in the break room That's me in the bright light Stealing baby chocolate Jesus Trying to sneak it out with you And I don't know if I can do it Oh no, I've said too much I haven't said enough
I thought that I felt it melting I shouldn’t be doing this thing I think I heard Matt start to cry
With every swallow I’m waiting to devour I'm losing to temptation Trying to keep my mind off it Like a hungry and sinful fool, drool Oh no, I've said too much I set it up
Consider this Consider this Jesus is calling to me Consider this I bit It brought me to my knees STALE Now my whole theology has Crashed to the ground Now I've bit too much
“STALE!”
I bet that it was fattening I shouldn’t have eaten this thing I think if asked I will deny
I wish it was a dream CHOCOLATE NATIVITY SCENE
That's me in the break room That's me in God’s light Stealing baby chocolate Jesus Trying to sneak it out with you And I know now that I can do it Oh no, I've said too much I think I’ve said enough
I bet that it was fattening I shouldn’t have eaten this thing I think if asked I will deny
I wish it was a dream Try, die, cry, why CHOCOLATE NATIVITY SCENE Caused a scene Just a scene, seen
[For more confessions and other stories from my teaching career, check out this page.]
My most recent decorated journal, featuring a collage found poem titled “My Wild Wild Ways”
I’ve been feeling wild lately.
My days have been filled gathering acorns and picking up rocks, rescuing wildlife and tending my garden, while my nights have passed gazing into campfires in the backyard or creating crafts well past midnight in a messy corner of my house. I walk outside at all hours– feeling the air, making eye contact with rabbits and foxes, tasting the change of seasons. I even slept out in my hammock one night.
Me reading in my hammock by the glow of my skull book light while an opossum munches on bugs nearby.
My ideas are all over the place lately, bouncing from novel notes to lines of poetry, from old short stories I’d like to revive to new concoctions of words I’d like to brew. It may sound chaotic, but I like letting them be free and uninhibited. How else are the unexpected gems supposed to find their way in?
Do you see the face in the flames, too?
One reason for my recent descent into wildness is definitely the change in weather. I wrote in my journal on November 8th at 6:44PM:
“I’m sitting in my hammock chair on my back porch guarding the humane trap I set in hopes of catching the opossum I saw earlier with the wound on his face. I don’t want a cat to wander in instead. Luckily, it’s a lovely night for opossum catching.*
This is my favorite time of year, when the weather is perfect for being outside at all hours, maybe a little warm in the heat of the day or a little cool at night, but never “too” either way. These are the days (and nights and mornings and dusks) when I can’t stop going outside, when I walk here, sit here, read here, write here, eat here, be here, sometimes even sleep here. I often tell people my favorite month is October, but I need to admit that October can disappoint. Too hot, too humid, too itchy, too sneezy, too much like September or June. Really , my favorite month is this, be it November or February or some random thirty days in between.
My October was wonderful, but not because of the weather. Now the jack-o-lanterns are rotting in the compost pit and the skeleton mugs have been returned to the shelves, and finally October is arriving, late and full of excuses.”
Another catalyst comes from the novels I’ve been reading. I read these two beautiful books back-to-back, and both had me longing for a secret home in the woods.
It’s important to note that I started working on my found poem titled “My Wild Wild Ways” long before I read either of these books.
October, October by Katya Balen is a middle grade novel about a girl named October who was raised off the grid in a little cabin in the woods with her dad. When she is eleven-years-old, her dad suffers a serious injury, and October has to go stay with “the woman who is her mother” in the city. The book is told from October’s point-of-view, and the author does an amazing job capturing her emotions and way of seeing the world. There is nothing supernatural about this book, but it is magical nonetheless, and the end made me cry happy tears in a coffee shop.
Wake the Wild Creatures by Nova Ren Suma is about a girl named Talia who grew up in an old abandoned hotel hidden at the top of a misty mountain with her mom and a small group of other women and girls who all escaped from various abusive pasts. Some of the women, like Talia’s mother, are wanted for crimes they committed in the outside world, and when Talia is thirteen, the outside world catches up with them. Her mother is sent to prison, and Talia is sent to live with relatives she didn’t know existed, but she never gives up hope of returning to her real home in the woods. This book does have supernatural elements, but they are weaved in so subtly and gently, mesmerizing the reader in a way only Nova Ren Suma can. I finished this book not with tears, but with a strong desire to howl at the moon and dance around a bonfire.
Whatever the reason(s), I’ve been spending longer and longer stretches away from screens and keeping my phone on silent a lot more often these days. (My favorite notifications are from my trail cam, anyway.)
Look at this silly raccoon climbing the bird bath to see what’s inside.
The result is a feeling of alertness and aliveness and a connection to nature that I hope lasts all winter and long into spring and maybe, MAYBE even into the dreary days of summer. (Is it possible to be wild in August in Texas? I’d really like to find out.)
* P.S. I did catch that injured opossum and took him to the North Texas Wildlife Center where he had his wounds treated for about a week. Then I released him back on our property. My husband named him Scarburrow. Here’s a photo of him the day we caught him and the day he came back home.
A quick unrelated note:
Some people are confused about the difference between my blog and my newsletter, which is understandable since both appear in your inbox from time to time. I’ll try to clear things up.
Blog posts are anecdotes or thoughts about one topic, such as our trip to Maine or the closing of my favorite coffee shop. They’re published here on my website, where anyone has access, but people who subscribe to my blog also get an email when I post.
Newsletters include a short story or message at the top, followed by news, announcements, updates, and what I’m reading. They’re only emailed to subscribers, but later can be viewed by anyone when I share the link online.
*THIS* is a blog post. If you received it in your email, you’re a subscriber. Congrats! If you also got an email called “Winning Poems, Ghostly Tales, & Gratitude for the Change in Seasons,” you’re subscribed to my newsletter, too. Double congrats! I don’t usually share them on the same day, but I did this time to help differentiate between the two.
Thank you for following along on my writing (and life) journey. You can unsubscribe from either or both at any time and there will be NO hard feelings on my part, unless you’re my parents.
Carie Juettner 