Is There a Middle Place?

One of the many books I remember having bought for cancer patients is called the Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan. The book cover has the color of my favorite, the crystal blue sky a girl flying free to. This is the memoir of a mother of two, learning to navigate life in the middle place after stage 3 breast cancer diagnosis - the place where you're trying to learn how to be an independent person, but find yourself drawn to where your parents are when problems arise. In the prologue she writes (about her father) "He defined me first, as parents do. Those early characterizations can become the shimmering self-image we embrace or the limited, stifling perception we rail against for a lifetime."

The Middle Place, according to Kelly, is the place between childhood and adulthood. My version of the middle place is one between summits and easy hikes when your climb suddenly becomes steeper, or somewhere between being compelling and dull when you try to tell your stories, or anywhere where perceptions of relationships are shifted between "in" and "out", and/or times when your heart is uplifting then life gets another abrupt turn. Then we want to ask ourselves, is there an overlap between the two places, the middle place, where we can comfortably choose not to take a leap, in Kelly's case, she did and chose to grow up. To walk through the tunnel, illusion or not, sometimes is not a choice. We just go.