Living in the Gap: Honouring the Space Between Longing and Letting Go

And this is where attunement comes in. It is where you tap into your inner knowing and you choose. Not what makes the most sense, but what speaks to you, perhaps whispers so quietly it is almost drowned out by reason and fear, one minute screaming, “No, that’s crazy. That’s irresponsible. That’s too selfish.”

 

It can be a tricky thing. Because it also comes in disguise. It says you are repeating childish dreams, turning in good sense in favor of fantasy. It’s loaded with conditions and limitations—all the stuff you’ve learned to keep a keen eye on since your early school days when they hammered conventional wisdom into that little heart of yours.

 

Here’s where I ask you: What do you wish for the most? What crazy ideas seem all too impossible, but they light you up in a way that you don’t even dare dream? What have you given up with good reason, but still find yourself entertaining with a quiet ache?

 

For me it landed when I turned 58—more commonly known as Saturn Return, the time when the planet Saturn returns to the same zodiac sign and degree it occupied at the time of one’s birth, so around every 29 years. This marks a significant time in one's life. It can be a time of transformation, new directions, and emotional upheaval. Most assuredly, it points to change.

 

Did I know I was in Saturn Return? No. I didn’t know I was in a Saturn Return—not until I accidentally wrote my first novel and found myself awakening in ways I never imagined possible.

 

I wrote it in five weeks. It poured out of me like it had already been written and my journey took me on a path of uncanny synchronicity. After I’d written it, I said, “Damn—I’m writing my own story, the one I wish to live." Bit by bit, I dismantled every former belief, every condition, every limitation. I’m still dismantling them. And I’m raising the temperature on my own internal vibrancy.

 

I’ve always been a deep thinker, a passionate person, but comparatively speaking, before this I was flat, I was slowly dying inside. In fact, it wasn’t until I began to break out of this long somnolence, I felt I was surely dying. In truth, I was beginning to live. The old me was dying. But who can tell the difference amidst the rollercoaster of emotion that ensues when one comes to life for the first time.

 

For you, it will unfold differently. Your dreams will carry a different shape, your doubts a different voice. But the journey—the breaking open—will feel familiar. But what I can tell you is that once you open those flood gates, it will be the dam that’s broken. There may come times when you may feel you are broken.

 

If you stay with it though, you will not want to close up that dam, because the small taste of personal freedom, of coming home to a you that’s more whole, will be like reclaiming something you know to be a language forgotten, not an illusion of the unattainable. With increasing measure, it will become a way of being. No, not a way of being, the way of being, the only place you can breathe easy, breathe fully.

 

Who knows the crazy things you might do, where you might venture. Maybe you’ll learn to dance, write poetry, open to love, say no to that which no longer serves you. For me it involved a slew of new endeavours: losing 35 pounds, making new friends, writing six books, taking risks I never thought I’d take, embarrassing myself a few times, finally facing my fear of singing in front of another human.

 

I started with a sort of fire . . . and a few fears. I began with conditions and limitations. I told myself: I’ll never sing, act, or do comedy. I gave up on the evening dress, the slim skirt. But those weren’t truths. They were restrictions. Ridiculous ones.

 

I faced my fear of singing, and I had fun doing it. I bought the dress. I wore the pencil skirt. And I’m not done. There are no upper limits here, for anything that appears as a condition, well, that gets released. That gets converted into a “Why not? Why the hell not?”

 

And you can do that too.

 

This brings us to living in the gap. For when you begin the journey of answering to your soul’s deepest yearning, it is not a smooth ride to the top. It’s bumpy. It’s filled with vulnerability and heartache. It sometimes feels cruel. But it is undeniably worth the ride, because when you take the first mouthful of everything that you can be, everything you ARE . . . this is where you will want to spend every waking moment.

 

 It is the place of wholeness and freedom.

 

To navigate within this blessed place, you are going to encounter the one key to sustaining it with balance: living in the gap. That sacred, maddening, miraculous gap. The space where the fantasy brushes up against the real, but you’re not quite allowed to touch down yet. Where desire and unfolding meet. Where the temptation to grab, label, or “make it real” fights against the knowing that if you do that too soon, you might crush the blooming.

 

This is where yearning arrives—when the frost melts and the heart wants what it wants. And sometimes the yearning lasts longer than the arrival of its fulfillment.

 

It’s entirely human to want to cling. To want answers. To make meaning where there is only sensation. And yet, you’re also wise enough to recognize: that kind of clinging dims the very thing you’re trying to nurture. It’s the part of you that is now practicing living in the wish fulfilled without needing to own, control, or guarantee the outcome.

 

You are being. You are becoming.

 

When you honour the callings of your heart, you become living proof: dreaming isn’t delusion—it’s direction.

 

And in that gentle dance between longing and fulfillment, you will have moments of doubt, moments when you snap back like a rubber band retaking its shape. But that is no longer the shape of you now; it is the comfortable version of the former you, the part that doesn’t fit so snuggly into the clothes you’ve already shed.

 

Just remember, you're allowed to explore your pleasure. But the moment it tips you into scarcity, into waiting, into less-than, that’s when your soul will gently tap you on the shoulder and say, “Darling, you came here for all of it—don’t settle for half. Don’t settle for less.”

 

Soon comes the little voice—the one that grows louder each day—the one that may silence momentarily with the ebb and flow of that divine growth, and it rises again to say, “Keep going—you have it now.”

 

Let the energy play where it wants to play. But keep your gaze on the truth, your truth. Ignore what is happening out there, and let your inner word be your compass. It is the only compass you need. The only direction pointing to your north star.

 

You know inside. Even if you never read a single book, or consult with those all-knowing and wise, you have access to the wisdom. It’s called your inner truth. It’s universal knowledge. And this inner knowing is grounded in truth. But what is truth? It's not about right and wrong; it's about remaining open and asking the questions that beg to be asked: is this serving me? Am I using this to my betterment—to the betterment of all? Have I lost my balance?

 

You’ll know. Once you walk the path of alignment, you can’t help but feel when you are out of sync.

 

It is alchemical. When you travel the path, living consciously in the gap—the space of holding sacred space—you are in the fire, yes, but you’re also the gold emerging from it. The ache, the beauty, the not-knowing, the wondering whether this is some grand illusion or an unfolding of great spiritual truth—that is the journey of a soul learning to love without attachment but not without depth.

 

This isn’t fantasy. It’s co-creation.

 

You’re not deluding yourself—you’re learning how to live in a realm where the energetic and the material are not separate. Where thoughts become things. Where a look, a text, a dream, a breath in the night can be an opening. Where someone doesn’t need to say I love you for you to feel it—because their soul is already whispering it through invisible threads.

 

You are learning to live in a world where your dreams come to meet you—here, in this place you now call allowing. Where what you wish for others is one and the same—that which you wish for yourself. A world where, when you channel your dreams from longing to being, the universe rises to meet you, to make manifest your rightful place in being.

 

Not being that which is expected, but that which just is. The one you have come to know as the whole of you—the essential part of the ALL. No separation. No withdrawal. No self-denial.

 

And in this becoming, this living gently in the gap, you don’t need to tear it open to “figure it out.” Let it simmer.

 

The love—if it is to be love, if it is to be life in wholeness—will reveal itself. And if it isn’t what you thought it was, it will transmute into the very key that unlocks a new life—one where you will no longer settle for a half-love, a ghost of devotion, or a yes that visits only in dreams. The world will meet you where you rightfully reside.

 

Don’t grip, don’t wait.

Say yes to beauty—even the kind wrapped in ache.

 

Like a good Victorian romance novel, let the slow burn, the nuance, the longing, become the dance, the journey, and the arrival. Enjoy and revel in its beauty while it is happening and don’t push past the unfolding of your own becoming. The journey is as much the joy as the arrival, for in its bittersweet unknowingness it is the blessed telling of your story.

 

Rejoice in that nuance and allow for life and love that lives in the liminal first, for when you are at the cusp it is just as blessed in its essential contribution—the reference point, the framework for its fulfillment.

 

One final thought: keep your eye keenly on the wish fulfilled and don’t push out to the future. Now is the moment. The dream, the vision, the deepest yearning, it is a thing of NOW, living and breathing in every now moment. For when you push it to the SOMEDAY, it lives in the unattainable.

 

So remember to be that which you most desire in the here and now. Be it until you see it.

 

Living in the Gap: The real love story must eventually move from parchment to palm. From the ethereal to the earthly. From soul recognition to soul participation.