The Liminal Commons
the hero's journey to new possibilities
Nearly five years ago, Kid and I jumped on a bus and started a new life. I decided we were going on an adventure. The unexamined caricature of road life is that of 70’s classic rock songs that have a vibe of freedom, limitlessness, and emancipation. This is the classic Insta shot of a vanlifer with the back doors open facing an alpine lake with snow capped mountains in the background, the image that speaks a thousand words— I am living the dream. Yet, when one is out for years on end without a home base the reality shifts from endless freedom to actual lived experience—and one realizes that that alpine getaway ideal was realized not for those living it but for the curb appeal it has for others.
Let’s shatter some rose colored glasses. This nomad life is life. It is challenging to move through the world in ways that equally bring amazing people to us as they attract those that blindside us with their assumptions about what it means to live in a vehicle full time. This is the negative bias we encounter from many that disapprove of our way of living, breaking down at unexpected times and finding ourselves in the thick of a circumstance where there is no obvious way out or around. Just as we take ourselves everywhere we go, so to do we bring ourselves and our guardians at the gates of our next opportunity.
Two years ago I deepened my inner journey with a year long class, Writing Your Personal Myth with Rose Wolff. I was the only male in a small class that spent that year combing through a discovery process of our own Hero’s Journey through the lens of Norse Runes, archetypes, mythology and shamanic journeying.
Here, I encountered the archetype of the Death Mother. One’s own self-critical voice that begins clamoring and itching before one’s pen touches paper. This is the multi-headed Medusa that threatens to turn one to stone rather than see ourselves grow and expand and become.
At its worst, the Archetypal Death Parent might consciously or unconsciously wish us dead. In less extreme cases, it may feel ambivalent or indifferent about our life, or want a part of us to be extinguished. Sometimes there is no intention to harm. When somebody who we naturally expect to nurture us is unable to do so, we experience that absence as the Archetypal Death Parent. Regardless of the form it takes, the bottom line is that we are not welcomed into life by those we should be able to trust.
The Archetypal Death Parent exists not only in the outer world; it also lives inside our own minds and bodies. Instead of nurturing ourselves, we harbour harmful attitudes and are unable to be a trustworthy, supportive, and nurturing presence in our own lives. In fact, we often act in ways that retraumatise ourselves.
This Death Mother or Death Parent finds us when we least expect it (unless I have a pen and paper in my hands attempting to create). It finds us at truck stops and with WOOFF hosts unexpectedly, but the two places it is most likely to find Nomad Dad are walking our dog and potential romantic entanglements. The former has gotten me repeated screamed at, threatened with pepper spray, almost hit by a car on my bike while running the dog, and verbally assaulted by another dog owner that whipped my dog with his dog’s leash. The latter… well, let’s just say that having a potential entanglement with a nomad triggers each and every abandonment complex a potential partner has. As soon as they realize that this nomad isn’t going to commit to sticks and bricks after the third meeting, and could up and leave at any moment the expression on their face changes externally to match the insecurity that my way of life has triggered from their past.
Despite my frustrations in romance it has forced me to sit with myself. By myself. For extended periods of time. I’ve sat with myself for so fucking long that I actually began to like and appreciate myself. Then, lo and behold, I became curious about myself, my patterns and struggles, my desires, direction and purpose. I killed my old life, my old self in 2020 and decided healing and remediation was urgent and necessary. So, if I’m going to be alone I might as well have a good time. If I have to live with myself, I might as well master the voices in my head that mimic the Death Mother’s cries for ritual self-immolation—having been well trained by two parents that didn’t have the capacity to care for, nurture, guide or support others because no one ever did it for them.
I have felt for decades that my internal battle was to find and recover my missing pieces of self that were beaten, battered and subjected to experiences that were beyond my control and ability to cope, both as a child and adult. Discovering my personal myth led me to look at trends and repeating patterns, belief systems and self-limitation. I created chart after chart of the hero’s journey, looking at my story from one angle and then another.
Our Hero’s Journey
The call to adventure was clear once we had secured our rig and gutted it to begin the transformation. We were going to find a new way of being that enabled us to actually live instead of dragging obligation, frustration, resentment and impossibility behind us like so much dead weight. The bus, with 100 gallons of water storage, a composting toilet and an off grid solar system was simply the physical vehicle to an inner transformation.
In a world that has been overtaken with rigid social norms, endless asphalt and bland cultural uniformity, we found ourselves attracted to liminal spaces and places where anything was possible, where there were no constraints on expression or movement. In these spaces comfort and convenience were withdrawn, yet our innate sense of life flowing in miraculous ways enabled growth and expansion and becoming.
Why don’t we travel the east much? Because there is no expanse of public land on which to live well and unrestricted. The public spaces that do exist are tightly metered and controlled and we are resigned to the status of outcasts in a concrete framework of private property that is all privatize or pay to play. Hell, in my home town you have to have a $100 annual pass to open the gate to the fucking dog park. Even Dallas, Texas has free dog parks and Texas is the patron saint of privatization. There are few commons in the east, just people defending what they think is theirs.
So, we found ourselves a new commons, on public land and we found out we weren’t alone. Busses here, vanlifers there—shuttle busses and Insta rigs and beautiful hippie shit shows. We found an unregulated space that was co-created not only by the human participants but by the environment and life around us, and this was a more welcome home than any other we had experienced.
Our adventure was our lives, and our supernatural aid made itself known as the flow of life itself. The space and time where a single parent can actually live and have a relationship with his Kid instead of packing that time into transport between this activity or that; moments at breakfast before school, or a summer as a kid jumping from grandparent to grand parent because dad was so busy with the farm I literally didn’t have time, or was exhausted by the end of the day I could barely keep my eyes open while reading Harry Potter before bed time.
And in this space, immersed in life I learned to slow the fuck down. There was space. There was time. So, why do I feel so anxious and edgy all the time. Learning, growth, expansion. There was time to do the research and play with modalities that would reduce nervous system activation. All the anxiety, stress and overwhelm one experiences in their daily life — that’s nervous system activation. In complex trauma the body has rarely, if ever, had the opportunity to de-escalate for long enough to return to homeostasis—balance, relaxation, restoration. How novel is it to give up everything you own, know and assume to be true about life only to find exactly what you needed to heal all along?
The thing is, it wasn’t just my nervous system, it was my whole reality. When that which was truly unnecessary fell away, I was left with myself. In that space I turned toward myself and learned to heal. My helper, my guide was my kid who showed me how to show up with something I never got as a child; compassionate understanding, caring support, nurturance, guidance. I had time to listen. I had time to know they felt seen. And in doing so I learned how to shift my self talk to provide the same care for myself that I never received as a child. Kid was my tutor, my mentor and my guide. Can one quantify or assess or compute a value to this experience?
Hell no.
This experience of life is priceless.
To accomplish this it as a single, homeschooling parent?
That’s fucking epic.
Were there challenges? Hell yes!
Homeschool was a shit show for most of the first two years. Living in a small space there is no hiding from the interpersonal demons that crop up. I had to learn to respect Kid’s autonomy and they, my direction. Living in a new, smaller space forced us to come to terms with our mutual shit because we had to live together and wake up in a small but ample 300 square feet. We had to learn how to coordinate and developed routines that got us on the road quickly. We had to adapt. Inherent in adapting is being open to learning again how to relate to one another and taking the time to see what needs and wants are not yet met.
These experiences were the guardians at our gates. That and smoking out our brakes in the Sierra Nevada, and getting taken off the road for six weeks for a sensor failure, having to hunker down with covid in West Michigan. The ultimate test and death was the loss of our 2020 built rig. And we adapted. And we made the best of it. There are no ‘buts’ here. We had to decide whether to shelter in place or to double down on our new life and figure out a way to make it fly differently.
And also, we did this together.
We acknowledged that this has to work for both of us, building on the momentum of each previous reconciliation we had experienced between Kid and I. Where former legitimate parental guilt was offered amends not in words, but in action. Kid’s voice matters. Kid’s feelings matter. Kid’s perspective matters. The shift from a busy, domineering parent with the best of intentions to the parent that actually showed up and chose to see and hear their kid, free of the narratives and voices in his own head.
The circular representation of the Hero’s Journey is way too 2d for my tastes. I outgrew it when the flow of life opened to me and remained open so long that I learned to trust it. Then, I saw not a two dimensional circle with a symbolic starting and ending point in the same position, but an ever expanding spiral of learning through growth and challenge. When we create space for ourselves, our self expands to fill that space. We can be contained in a tea cup if we choose, or we dip our cup in a clean, clear and deep northwoods lake.
In our return nothing and everything has changed. The physical space remains the same, yet we cannot go back to the old skin of the perspective we have shed. We keep moving. Now, whether we choose to move in the same 2d circle or choose another path is completely up to each of us in each and every moment of our lives.
If only we could overcome the fangs of the Death Mother’s multitudinous serpents. Yet when we choose to repeatedly encounter our fears the home brewed confidence gained is another priceless gift of life lived well. It won’t get you viral on Insta, and you don’t have to spend a dime (let alone $200k on a skoolie bus build). You just have to show up for yourself and those you care most deeply for.