The COVID-19 pandemic has confined many of us to what feels like an eternal waiting room – in terms of our careers and professional ambitions, even our relationships and personal goals. But what can that teach us?
UNE researcher Sarah Wayland* has worked with the families of missing people for 17 years and is familiar with their experience of living in an uncomfortable state of limbo. There are parallels with being in lockdown in Sydney for more than three months.
“I’ve been fortunate that I’ve had work to do,” says Sarah, who has also been home-schooling her two children. “It gives me the motivation to get out of bed and provides some structure to my day. But it is very tiring ‘turning up’ every day and doing the same thing, day in and day out.
“Lots of us are struggling to live in the ‘now’. That ‘now’, with all its uncertainty, is a foggy, ambiguous space. It doesn’t look like the life we used to live or the life we imagine we might return to.”
Metaphorical waiting room
Being in a metaphorical waiting room, between one life stage and another, has a name — liminality. Many of the families Sarah works with have been stuck in that room for years.
“Families waiting for missing people to come home can be trapped between the uncertainty about knowing what happened to their loved ones and learning to live without answers,” she says. “They must sit with the unknown, give in to the uncertainties that swirl around them, and finally accept that all they can control is their response.”
Similarly, Sarah believes that an important step in tolerating the unknown of the COVID-19 pandemic is to acknowledge the anguish it has caused.
We are living in a space between the life we had and the life we will potentially be able to have, and it’s distressing.
“It’s unsettling, scary and boring, and we’re done with it,” she says. “We are living in a space between the life we had and the life we will potentially be able to have, and it’s distressing. And no amount of Zoom trivia, Uber Eats delivery or walking around the block can satisfy us.
“Many of us are burdened with simply existing. We’re running low on our reserves of energy and enthusiasm.”
Unfortunately, there is also no way to fast-track your exit from the waiting room. “With liminality, there is no fixing; we simply have to sit with it,” Sarah says. “That seems to have been tougher in this second major lockdown. The first one was all Zoom parties and Zoom trivia. Now there is just a pervading silence.”
Sitting with that silence and grieving is important. “We have to grieve what we have lost over the past 18 months; the life we were leading before, even if it wasn’t the most perfect life, and a future that we might have had,” Sarah says. “It’s the loss of life-stage rituals, the daily tasks we took for granted, and the increased isolation and disconnection from people we love.”
The brighter side
On the positive side, Sarah says being in a liminal space can provide breathing room to learn to live with the uncertainty that typifies “normal” life and to overcome what scares us.
“We can help ourselves by finding daily routines within our control, small moments of the day where we connect with a person, nature, or an activity that reminds us where we are and who we are,” Sarah says.
“Accepting all the twists and turns of liminality and tolerating ambiguity is what we need. That also means finding the space to safely grieve the large and small losses of COVID, and to honour other people’s sense of hopelessness.
“Fortunately, the thing about liminality is that it is about moving through spaces. We can be feeling hopeless today, but have the potential to feel hopeful again tomorrow or in a week’s time. There is space to feel down, but also space to feel up.”
But to transition from one state to another, we must also overcome cautiousness. “We are learning fast that we need to do things when we can, to take any opportunity to fill our cups, because the situation can change very quickly,” Sarah says. “For me, it’s eating my lunch in the sun if it’s a nice day, or finishing work early to go for a walk. Making the most of small opportunities can be a way to get through.”
*Sarah Wayland is a researcher and senior lecturer in Social Work at the University of New England.
