You’re standing in a strange kind of December light.
The year is not quite over, the next one hasn’t really begun, and yet something inside you already knows: you’re not who you were in January… and you’re not yet who you’re becoming.

This in-between isn’t blank space.
It’s where the quiet work of transformation is happening, almost out of sight.

The in-between space

December often feels like a corridor.
You’ve walked out of one room, but you haven’t fully stepped into the next. Your outer life might still look the same, the same commute, the same people, the same login screens, but your inner life is shifting in ways you can’t fully name yet.

Part of you wants to rush: “What’s my plan? What’s my word for next year? Who am I going to be now?”
Another part is slower, softer, still catching its breath from everything this year asked of you. That slower part doesn’t want a five-step roadmap. It just wants a moment to arrive.

This in-between is not a mistake in the story of your life.
It is the scene where the character pauses and finally hears themselves.

The gift of being in-between

There’s a word for this threshold feeling: liminal. A state of being no longer who you were, but not yet who you’re going to be. It shows up in psychology, in rites of passage, in old stories about crossing from one phase of life to another. It’s the moment when the old shell has cracked, and the new form hasn’t quite grown in yet.

Humans don’t usually like this place. The mind wants certainty, labels, job titles, relationship statuses, a neat sense of “This is who I am.”
The in-between offers none of that. It offers questions instead of answers. It offers pause instead of productivity. No wonder it feels uncomfortable.

But that discomfort is not proof that something is wrong with you.
It’s often a sign that something truer is rearranging itself inside you, gently pushing against the edges of the life you’ve outgrown.

Honouring who you were

Before you rush into becoming, it helps to look back, not with judgment, but with a quiet kind of gratitude.

Think about the version of you who carried this year.
The beliefs you held because they once kept you safe. The ways you coped when you weren’t sure how else to survive. Maybe you overworked. Maybe you shut down. Maybe you stayed in situations that no longer matched your inner truth. Those patterns might not fit you anymore, but they did keep you going when you didn’t have better options.

You can thank that self without wanting to stay them.

You might gently ask:

• Which beliefs feel a bit too tight now, as if I’ve grown beyond them?
• What strategies helped me cope, but don’t feel honest anymore?
• What did this older version of me protect me from?

Honouring the “old you” doesn’t mean dragging them into the next chapter.
It means acknowledging that, with their imperfect tools, they still got you here. To this doorway. To this moment.

Becoming, slowly and quietly

Transformation rarely arrives with fireworks.
Most of the time it shows up in small, almost unremarkable ways.

You answer a message more calmly than you would have last year.
You say no where you previously said yes out of guilt.
You rest without quite as much self-criticism.
You notice that something you tolerated for years now feels impossible to go back to.

You may not have a clear image of “the new you,” and that’s okay.
You don’t need a grand vision board to be in motion. Becoming is often a subtle shift in what feels true, what feels nourishing, what you’re no longer willing to abandon yourself for.

Ask yourself:

• What feels slightly different in me now, even if it’s hard to articulate?
• Where do I sense a quiet “not this anymore,” or “more of this, please”?

These are the signals of a new self-emerging, not loudly, but steadily.

The middle, where the real change happens

We tend to think change happens in announcements and decisions: the moment you choose, the day you start, the resolution you post. But the deeper reshaping happens in the middle, in this blurry space where you don’t fully recognise yourself anymore, but you also don’t have new language yet.

Here, identity is soft clay.
The old labels don’t quite fit, the new ones feel premature, and that can feel like standing in fog. You can’t see the full road ahead, but you know you can’t walk backwards either.

This isn’t stagnation.
This is integration.

Your system is absorbing what this year showed you, about your limits, your longings, your patterns, your boundaries. December doesn’t need to be a performance where you present a polished, upgraded version of yourself before the clock hits midnight. It can be a pause, a deep breath, a gentle rearranging inside.

You don’t have to define yourself by the end of the year.
You’re allowed to let this month be a cocoon, not a showcase.

Learning to live the questions

Rilke wrote about “living the questions”, letting questions be part of your life until one day you find yourself living into the answers. That’s the invitation of this season.

Instead of forcing clarity, try carrying a few soft questions with you:

• What kind of life feels more honest to me now?
• Where do I feel most like myself, even if only for a few minutes?
• What am I quietly longing for, beneath the noise?
• What am I done pretending about?

You don’t have to solve these questions today.
Let them walk beside you. Let them sit with you on your commute, in your evening shower, during that small pocket of quiet before you fall asleep. Questions can be companions, not problems.

Often, better answers arrive not from pushing, but from staying with these questions long enough for your deeper self to respond.

Final thoughts

So here you are, at the threshold between who you were and who you’re becoming.

You don’t have to transform by January 1st.
The calendar can turn without you rushing yourself into a new identity. Your becoming is on a different timeline, a slower, wiser one.

You can:

• Honour the person you’ve been, with all their imperfect courage.
• Notice the tiny shifts that tell you something new is forming.
• Allow this middle space to hold you, instead of trying to escape it.

Becoming is quieter than you were taught.
It lives in half-finished journal entries, in the pause before an old reaction, in the small decision to choose what’s kinder and more true, even if no one else notices.

Trust that something is moving inside you, even if it’s not visible yet.
This December, you’re not failing for being in-between. You’re simply standing in the real place where transformation happens, the space between who you were and who you’re slowly, beautifully becoming.