I did it.

I set out to write an essay for the “Modern Love” column in the New York Times, and I ended up writing and self-publishing my first book.

For a while, I was pretty sure I would die before I got it into the world.

I was perfectly healthy, but I couldn’t help but fear some tragic ending in which a friend comes to clean out my apartment with unfinished poetry and prose still taped to the wall.

But God willing, I’m still here.

And I did it.

I poured my soul onto paper, bore witness to my own truth, and after being humbled beyond belief by my own delusions and limitations, I have come out the other end to tell about it.

I wrote Love at the Threshold when I was “between and betwixt” in that terribly uncomfortable space between what was and what will be.

In spiritual terms, this space is referred to as “liminality,” a word which comes from the Latin word līmen, meaning “a threshold.”

In life, we come to many thresholds, but the moment we choose to consciously cross it is when the hero’s journey truly begins.

I consciously crossed my first threshold in 2014 when a girlfriend and I committed to working through my teacher Julie Tallard Johnson’s book, The Wheel of Initiation.

My life since then has never been the same, and I’ll suffice it to say to walk the path of initiation isn’t for the faint of heart.

But I made it. I slew the inner demons and came to discover jewels in my soul that I didn’t know existed until I was forced to toil in the muck of my being.

The publication of my book was yet another threshold. It was a way of staking my claim not as some “enlightened master” but simply as an initiated adult.

I’m not sure what I thought would come out of it. Yes, there were some delusions of grandeur as if the whole world was patiently awaiting my words, but other than my own mother, I’m sure most people can live without them.

When I think about it, I wrote this book because I merely wanted to be witnessed, to have someone tell me that it’s okay to be human.

And the beauty that comes from self-publishing is that that someone turned out to be me.

At 39, I can finally say that I am a grown-ass woman fully aware of the boundlessness of my divinity and the limitations that come with walking around in a human meat suit.

I have realized that the journey is ever unfolding, the story is a never-ending one, and so is all this business of becoming.

The truth is that the space between the woman I am now and the woman I will become never goes away.

She is elusive and seemingly always just out of reach.

But at least now I can rest in the knowing that life is not some divine race, but a dance.

And that woman, who is always just a few steps ahead of me, is the best damn partner I’ll ever have.

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