Living in the Between

By Debra Hillard

There is a place in life that many women enter at some point, though it rarely gets named.

It often follows change or loss—something ends, shifts, or quietly falls away. From the outside, life may still look intact. But inside, something no longer fits.

The roles that once defined you feel distant. The direction you were moving in no longer feels certain. The version of yourself you built over time doesn’t quite feel like who you are anymore.

And yet, there is no clear sense of what comes next.

This is the space in between.

I came into this place slowly, after years of living in a way that looked strong and capable from the outside, but no longer felt aligned inside. Over time, the identities that had organized my life began to loosen.

Not because I chose to let them go, but because I could no longer hold them in the same way.

When my dog Chloe died, something in me crossed a threshold I could not return from. It wasn’t just grief—it felt like the closing of a way of being I had lived inside for years.

After that, I found myself in a space that was difficult to explain.

Nothing was clearly wrong. But nothing felt fully right either.

I could still move through my days, but without the same sense of direction. The things that once gave me purpose no longer held the same meaning. The future—something I had always oriented toward—felt undefined.

What replaced that was not clarity, but quiet.

I began to notice smaller things. The way my body felt. What I was drawn toward. What felt heavy or off.

Some days I felt like I had lived many lives. Other days I felt like I was starting over. And sometimes I simply felt tired—like I had reached the end of something but hadn’t yet begun again.

This space can feel unsettling because it offers nothing to hold onto.

No clear identity. No strong direction. No immediate sense of purpose.

But that doesn’t mean something is wrong.

It means something deeper is shifting.

To live here is to begin relating to yourself differently—not through what you do, but through how you listen.

Listening to your body. Listening to what draws you. Listening to what no longer feels true.

This is not an easy place to stay.

It asks for patience. For honesty. For a willingness to be with yourself without needing immediate answers.

But it is also where something real begins.

You are not becoming someone new.

You are meeting yourself underneath what no longer fits.

Remembering Myself: A Journey Through the Threads of Time emerged from living inside this threshold. It is not a map out of the unknown, but a reflection of what it looks like to walk through it—the loss, the uncertainty, and the slow return to something more true.

At its core, it is a story of remembering. And in that, an invitation: to begin seeing your own experience not as something to fix, but as something that may be guiding you back to yourself.

Because there is power in allowing your story to be seen—even by you.

And because this kind of reconnection often begins in simple, non-linear ways, I’ve created a free guide that uses creativity as a doorway back into that relationship with yourself.

If you recognize yourself here, you can begin there or explore the book at dkhillard.com.

Connect With Debra

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