The Messy Middle

That uncomfortable space where we don’t have answers yet, but still feel pressure to move forward anyway.

Friends, I’m emotionally hungover.

Not my usual cheerful greeting, huh?

Buckle up Baby!

I have been FEELING all my feelings, okay!?

…and if I’m honest—I’ve been feeling them so they would go away…

Isn’t that why we feel our feelings!?!?! 🫣

My bff Aliyah lovingly reflected: “that’s sort of not the point Lauren.”

Lately, I’ve been sitting in a space that feels raw and hard to name.

A kind of emotional in-between. It’s tender and full of tension.

And honestly? I think a lot of us are living here right now.

It’s that space where clarity hasn’t landed, but the pressure to keep going hasn’t lifted either.

Where just being in it feels unnatural, but choosing a direction just to get on with things doesn’t feel true either. Where we haven’t found the answer (and maybe aren’t even sure what the question is) but we still feel like we’re supposed to be doing more.

The best way I know how to make sense of these emotions—or even just be with them—is to write about them.

I take them to my journal. I try to articulate the essence of what I’m grappling with. And truthfully, I try to creatively transmute them so that I can tidy them up and then organize and store them in my brain as “learned wisdom.”

But ALL OF THIS is very much still unfolding. It’s learning that continues to take shape.

There’s no polished lesson here. Just the truth of what it feels like to hold two things at once: fear and trust, doubt and belief, surrender and resistance.

I almost titled this The Messy Middle of “Healing” but decided it’s really about the Messy Middle of being human.

While I’m sharing my particular story in this, I know you know this space I speak of. It’s the part of our lives we usually like to keep hidden in the junk drawer, never to be seen again!

For me, even just using the word healing feels risky.

In the realm of Western medicine, we’re not supposed to say we’re healing from chronic disease. You can treat. You can manage. You can stabilize. But healing? That sounds…delusional.

And here’s the paradox: I’ve written before about the magnetism of being delulu, about believing boldly in your goals, even when logic says no. That kind of delusion is powerful. Expansive. Liberating.

It’s part of my creative DNA - and how I work with my people.

But when it comes to my health—my body, my future—the stakes feel different. And the fear of being “delusional” in the wrong way gets louder too.

But there it is. That’s what I want. The delusion of my own healing.

There’s a particular vulnerability in wanting something you don’t yet have.
And perhaps an even deeper one in choosing to believe it might be possible—even when science, reason, and many people around you say it’s not.

We all know what it’s like to live between two truths.

• We’re in the middle of a political dumpster fire: and still, we vote, share, organize, believe.

• We’ve all experienced the pain of heartbreak: and still, we courageously open our hearts again.

• We’ve been inspired and created work that didn’t land: and still, we feel the pull to creatively express ourselves.

For many of the creatives I work with; artists, intuitive women, small business owners—this paradox shows up in quieter but equally profound ways:

• They’re burnt out and overwhelmed, yet still want to believe they can achieve their goals and feel good doing it.

• They feel stuck, yet still trust that their passion will return again, because they know it’s their path.

• They’ve followed all the “rules,” yet something in them tells them, this isn’t the way.

They’re standing in the same space I’ve begrudgingly come to know intimately: the middle. The place between resignation and possibility. Between the story they’ve been sold and the one they desperately want to write.

This is uncertainty.

“When nothing is certain, anything is possible.” ~ Margaret Drabble

It’s deeply uncomfortable, beautiful, brutal, magical, and mostly invisible. And recently, I’ve been living in it in an even more personal way.

For a few years now, I’ve been navigating a health journey that’s challenged me to stand with one foot in science and the other in mystery.

I was diagnosed with Congenital Liver Disease, which has seemingly progressed to Cirrhosis (which you would think I could now spell without triple checking!) It pulled up (and continues to) with a bunch of other crappy complications in tow.

It hasn’t just been a health issue—it’s been a grappling with how we make meaning when certainty disappears.

On one side, there’s the Western medical world. Lab reports. Scans. Doctors ever-so-casually saying heavy things.

I’m a good patient. I ask questions, I follow advice, I make the changes, I advocate on my behalf.

But every time I walk out of an appointment, it feels like the weight of what’s “likely” has gotten heavier. More warnings. More inevitability.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely grateful this care exists (and that I live in a country with health coverage).

It’s just that everything feels so clinical, so binary. If this than that. It often feels like there is zero tolerance for nuance, let alone possibility.

On the other side, there’s something else. A feeling that lives deeper than logic.

A resistance to the idea that my body is on a fixed timeline. A belief—fragile but present—that healing is still possible, even if I don’t know how.

Stories of spontaneous remission find me when I’m not looking. I listen. I desperately want to believe them. And sometimes I do—until I’m sitting in a waiting room surrounded by incredibly sick people thinking what am I doing here? Or until I get some results back that explicitly paint a yucky picture of what’s happening in my body even though I feel great.

These two parts of me—the rational realist, and the spiritual believer—often feel like they’re at war with each other.

Please tell me I’m not alone in feeling this tug of war?

You may have data to support how difficult it is to make great money doing what you love—that the odds feel stacked against you—but you also believe somewhere deep down that it is possible. You’ve heard the stories about it happening for other people (believer), but then you think it’s unlikely to happen for you (rational realist).

We’re at war with ourselves.

We’ve become so skilled at shaming ourselves for slipping into scarcity—as if acknowledging our fears, doubts, or contradictory thoughts makes us weak or wrong.

But what if these two sides of us—the one that doubts and the one that dreams—want the same thing?

Wholeness.

Room for both sides to co-exist.

Cannot Compute…

My rational realist side and my spiritual believer side both want healing. But they speak different languages. And most days, I’m caught in between, trying to be fluent in both.

This is the essence of the messy middle. For me, it’s that chasm between what medicine tells me is likely, and what my soul tells me is possible.

And the hardest part? It feels like I’m not allowed to live here.

I think we’re conditioned—especially in our Western culture—to pick a side. To be decisive. To be either hopeful or practical. Rational or intuitive. You can be a “good patient,” or you can be someone who “believes in miracles.” But not both.

I feel that pressure from all directions. From my Doctors who want me to fully subscribe and follow their prescriptions—where everything else is ‘junk science’. From spiritual spaces that imply my fearful thoughts and my doubt are the reason I’m not healing faster.

As if belief has to be pure to work.

As if feeling scared or uncertain is my ‘buy-in’ to an inevitable downfall, therefore disqualifying me from healing.

But what if it doesn’t?

That’s the question I will continue to untangle.

What if being nervous or cautious about the future doesn’t mean I’m failing at faith?

What complicates this even more is that some real good has come from this diagnosis. It cracked something open. It woke my intuition up in a way I hadn’t expected. I feel more softness. More love. More freedom.

There are days when I honestly feel more alive now than I did before I was forced to make certain changes that I used to view as restrictive (hello alcohol free lifestyle!) That’s real. And yet — it doesn’t cancel out the grief, the rage, the uncertainty, or the loneliness of the middle.

I’ve realized that the real pain isn’t just the prognosis, it’s the expectation that I should make sense of it all. That I need to either accept it or transcend it. That I should have a coherent story when what I actually have is more questions.

Maybe I’m not meant to find coherence right now.
Maybe I’m meant to find wholeness.

Coherence is tidy. Logical. Easy to explain.
Wholeness is messy. Emotional. Hard to articulate—but truthful.

But just for a dreamy second…wouldn’t it just feel so good if I could wrap this all up in a bow for us, and make perfect sense of it all?

Now that’s a delusion I can really get behind!

I think this is the work part: the staying present with both.
Letting fear exist without letting it run the show.
Letting hope exist without demanding certainty.

Some days that looks like wanting to punch my Doctor in the face (I said it!) and then laughing about the absurdity of it all with a friend. Other days it looks like being sentimental about the gift of being here at all, of experiencing the beauty of this world, and the grief of knowing that nothing lasts forever.

This place—the messy, uncertain, paradoxical, middle—isn’t comfortable. But it’s real.

What if true healing lives in the space between responding to what is, and believing in what might be?

If you’re here too—living in the middle of contradiction, holding truths that don’t reconcile—I see you.

Whether it’s about your body, your creativity, your relationships, or your business, you’re not broken.

You’re just holding multiple truths in a world that wants you to choose one—so it can feel more comfortable.

You’re allowed to be complex. Life is complex.

That’s not confusion. That’s courage.

Please don’t simplify yourself to make others feel at ease.

With oodles of love and loads of complexity…

If this speaks to something you’ve been carrying quietly, I’d love to hear about it.

And if you’re looking for support from someone who won’t try to pull you out of the middle, but will sit there with you, reflect with you, and help you make meaning from within it—I’m here.

With love from the middle…

xo
Lauren