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Welcome to Traveling Companion Stories of Becoming. I'm your host, Jenny Snyder. This is a podcast about the in-between, those threshold moments when we can no longer go back to who we were. And who we're becoming isn't yet clear. If you've ever stood in that space, or maybe you find yourself there now, you're not alone. Today I'm turning the lens inward and looking back and sharing some of my own experiences navigating that in-between space. Let's begin. Two years ago, I stepped away from a career that occupied most of my adult life. And what I noticed was this threshold felt different. No urgent decision, no answer to discover, just me and a question. And that brought me back to something that I've been sitting with. What is it about those moments in our lives when we know we can't go back, and yet what's ahead isn't clear. What makes a next step possible? Because there have definitely been other times in my life when the stakes felt much higher. And I remember one of those moments in particular. In my late 20s, I had a taste of it. Working as a teaching assistant while I was in graduate school, this experience of being in a classroom with students, the dialogue, it felt magical. I worked hard, but it didn't feel like work. I just felt alive, and I remember that feeling. And then I had to be a responsible adult. I ended up working in an HR office under the fluorescent lights, a commute that took me two hours to and from work each day in front of a computer screen in my office all alone, staring at spreadsheets for three years. And the contrast could not have been sharper. And during those three years, under the fluorescent lights, driving two hours back and forth each day, I felt my soul slipoy, my energy drained, dreaded going into the office. I knew I couldn't stay. And I kept coming back to this memory of the classroom and the students and work that felt alive. You could teach, get paid, earn your credential. They invited me to come up for an interview, and I remember uh flying up to the Oakland airport one morning, drove to the interview, and I was just so full of hope. I just was excited. My step was lighter, I was just gliding. Showed up at the interview and met with a committee that asked me about my background. They were really supportive, said my application looked great. They said, absolutely, we can accept you into the program. Unfortunately, uh we can't guarantee you a job as an intern teacher. And it was just in that moment as I heard the words coming out of the committee chair's mouth that landed like a thud. I felt my chest tighten. I just struggled to get a breath. I thanked them. I walked out to the car, drove to the airport, and my thoughts were just spiraling. Oh my God, what am I gonna do now? I was just beside myself. Got to my gate and found my way to a payphone and put some coins in and called a friend of mine in Southern California, and the words were rushing out of my mouth. I was just like stream of consciousness. She just was like, okay, slow down. What happened? And I started to recount what had happened, and I and through my words, I'm choking back tears. I'm just overwhelmed. And what struck me in that moment, I am sitting on the floor, I've got the payphone in my hand, and I'm just my words and spilling out in tears. And my friend's response, as I look back, really stood out to me. She didn't offer any advice. She didn't say, okay, this is what you got to do next. She didn't try to fix anything. She just listened. As I tried to make sense of where I was, she acknowledged how hard that was, the disappointment that she heard in my voice, and she stayed with me. And as I think about this podcast and what I'm hoping to create here is that sense of companionship that my friend offered me that day. It's not a fixing, it's not, these are the quick steps to get to your endpoint, but to be present, to accompany ourselves, each other, on this journey through these threshold moments. And we wrapped up our conversation. I boarded my plane, I flew back home, and over the next several days, I just was spinning. I went back and forth, you know, got the little envelope doing calculations. How could I make this work? Um, how would I even be able to make this move without a job, without a way of supporting? I mean, lots of questions that I just went back and forth. And the next day I showed up in my office and I, after the commute, climbed the stairs, walked to my office, and sat under the fluorescent lights in front of my computer screen, and I hung my head down. And I was like, I can't keep doing this. I'm not even sure what it was that propelled me. What was the final thing that sort of led me to my next step? But after mulling it over for a few days, I walked into my boss's office and I said, I'm gonna be quitting in June. I gave her my letter of resignation. And in that moment, I felt lighter. It was like, wow, something's moving. And it wasn't an arrival, it wasn't I had sorted it all out. Crossing that threshold was another beginning. It's like, now what? But going through that process afforded me the time, the space to sort through what mattered to me. And I think that what I held on to was that contrast, the soul-crushing job, and how alive I felt as a teacher. And over the course of my life, I have had a number of thresholds, and every threshold has asked the same thing, essentially. They've been different aspects of my life, but they all involve putting something down, stepping away, preparing, gathering, and taking a next step, despite the fear, despite the uncertainty. I came across this quote by Mark Nipo. It's such a simple thing, but in a moment of ego, we refuse to put down what we carry in order to open the door. We cannot hold on to things and enter. We must put down what we carry, open the door, and then take up only what we need to bring inside. It's a basic human sequence. Gather, prepare, put down, enter. And as I look at the different threshold moments that I have walked over the course of my life, the one on the airport floor, others coming out to my parents as an 18-year-old, taking steps towards recovery. That arc has held true. The call, the mismatch between the way I have been or the way I've been living becomes unbearable in some way, the cost too great to ignore, putting something down, a facade that I've got it all together, that I've got it all figured out, patterns of behavior, a way of being that no longer fit, the picking up courage, a willingness to feel the fear and take the step anyway, and to enter. And a next step is not the next step. It doesn't necessarily bring resolution, it brings its whole host of new beginnings. Every crossing has led to more territory, not an arrival. And I think for me, this has been the nature of those thresholds. And so this is the invitation that I extend to all of you. As I think about those thresholds that I have navigated and those that I'm in the midst of right now, I have felt the disorientation. Even the alumnus, I haven't figured this out, and I'm the only person who feels this way. And as I've talked to people and shared my experience, what I'm beginning to discover is that other people are experiencing this. Like, surprise, I'm not chronically unique. And so I think the invitation here is that you don't have to travel it alone. As I think about moments in my life, a condition that made a next step possible for me was I didn't necessarily walk it alone. There were aspects of that experience that I experienced uniquely to myself. And like my friend on the phone in the airport, to be surrounded by people who could listen, to be present, to point out, like, hey, here's a blind spot you might have missed. That companionship was really important to my being able to navigate those steps. I'm really curious, both for my own journey, also, these are the conversations that I want to have with others. What's your experience? What are those moments in your life where you found yourself at that point where you couldn't go back and yet what was ahead was not clear. What this show offers for anyone that's navigating this territory or has been there, it's not a promise of answers or tidy resolution. It's not a map about how you get from point A to point B. It's an offer of companionship for the ongoing journey, because a step opens into another beginning, and that beginning will ask something of you too. Traveling companions is not arrived companions. Thank you for being here in this space, and I'll see you on the next stretch of the journey.