The In-Between, Intro to Hellenic Embodied Practice

The Liminal Compass Workbook is here. Why I made it, some collages, and a poem about liminality

I have been in the in-between my whole life. Between languages, between countries, between states of health — between the person I was expected to be and the one I became. For most of my existence, I didn’t have words for it. I am not even sure I understood it beyond knowing that I had to constantly translate myself for whatever room I was in. This was my reality, but I had no framework to hold it.

Mythology and archetype gave me the framework before I even knew it. Specifically, the myths I grew up with. They were not just stories I read in school. They were living. They were moving through my family, my language, and my body. I started understanding my own story by placing it inside something older. This connection to creativity across millennia has brought me healing in unexpected ways; what had felt fragmented started feeling like wholeness.

Collage by me, from The Liminal Compass: A Journaling Workbook for the In-Between

myth as mirror, poetry as channel, body as oracle

This is what I call Hellenic Embodied Practice. It involves Greek myth, philosophy, and creative tradition not as distant intellectual subjects, but as part of a living methodology for healing. Hellenic Embodied Practice has three main tenets: myth as mirror, poetry as channel, body as oracle. It is the core of everything I write and everything I make. Now I’m sharing with those who are ready.

As part of my offering today, I invoke Ερατώ (Erato), the Muse of lyric poetry. Her name carries the force of Eros, from which the word erotic comes. This is the generative power that drives all making. May she move through these words as eros moves through all creation.

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I am the in-between

I’m not fully anything

it’s easy to say that

but I mean it

terms and categories

don’t hold me

they never have

I am American

but I am first

generation Greek

the daughter

of immigrants

I am Greek

but my last name

doesn’t sound it

I am an Arvanitissa

a member of a group

whose language

is endangered

a language

neither my mother

nor I learned

I am from Los Angeles

county, not city

I went to school in Orange

and to sleep in LA

I spoke Greek at home

and English everywhere else

in the states I was Greek

and in Greece

I was the Amerikanaki

the little American

I don’t look sick

but I have chronic illness

not neurotypical

but neurodivergent

I am a woman

but lost my womb

I have lived

across continents

but I barely leave bed

I am almost always in bed

resting

I am married

but I live alone

apart from my husband

because we don’t

share citizenship

still trying to find our way

back to one another

I am always in the in-between

cultures because I am diaspora

health states because my illness is invisible

neurotypes because I am not typical

I live on the margins

I am the in-between

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The Liminal Compass: A Journaling Workbook for the In-Between is available now. Fourteen prompts, eight original collages, one invitation: to find your bearings in the spaces between.

It is for code-switchers, third culture kids, the chronically ill, the neurodivergent, the ones who have never quite fit any single category. It is for anyone ready to stop waiting for the in-between to end and start listening to what it has to say.

This workbook is the first in a series of invitations to connect with the deeper parts of the self and the collective, of which we are all a part. It is the wisdom of the in-between, and it is ready when you are.

[Get the workbook here → ko-fi.com/theliminalcompass]

Collage cover by me, The Liminal Compass: A Journaling Workbook for the In-Between

A few prompts from the liminal, if you want to begin now:

1. What does “in-between” feel like in your body, not the definition, but the sensation?

2. What might it feel like to put down the weight of not fitting in?

3. What is one thing you could start now if you just stopped waiting to be ‘stable’ or ‘ready’?

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Free resources and more can be found on my website

Support my work with a paid contribution. You’ll also find The Liminal Compass Workbook there, which you can access as a paid downloadable pdf.

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