The In-Between: When You’re Not Quite Here or There

There’s something strange about the space between leaving and arriving. It’s like time slows down, but your thoughts speed up. I’m still in Minnesota. Still working. Still studying. Still trying to keep up. But part of me is already somewhere else. Somewhere softer. Somewhere warmer. Somewhere that feels like breath.

I leave for Hawaiʻi next week — just for the summer — and still, it feels like I’m walking away from a whole life. Even though I know I’ll be back here, part of me feels like I’m leaving for good. Like I’m shedding a version of myself I’ve been living in for too long.

And I won’t lie. I’m scared.

Scared I’ll return to the places that shaped me and forget how much I’ve grown. Scared I’ll feel twelve again, or seventeen again — stuck in the echoes of old wounds and old habits. Scared that going home will make me question the healing I’ve done, or worse, make it harder to hold onto.

Because Hawaiʻi is not just a place I’m going. It’s a place I’ve come from. And when you come from somewhere that holds both joy and grief, love and trauma, the return is never simple.

But maybe that’s okay. Maybe the return is not meant to be easy. Maybe it’s meant to be honest.

Right now, I’m in the in-between. Still here. Not quite there.

This space — this pause between lives — has been stretching me. I find myself dissociating more, zoning out, feeling like I’m already floating in a different time zone. It’s like my body is still here, but my spirit is already halfway home.

I think it’s because transitions bring a quiet grief. Even when they’re good. Even when they’re long-awaited. There’s always a version of you that doesn’t come with you. And maybe that’s part of growing.

I’m learning that going home doesn’t mean losing who I’ve become. It means showing up as her — tender, soft, honest — and letting her walk the same roads with new eyes. It means writing from the place that raised me, not as the broken girl I once was, but as the woman she kept alive.

Even if I’m only there for a little while, I want it to matter. I want to breathe differently. I want to reconnect. I want to feel my roots and remember why they mattered so much in the first place.

And I want my younger self to know — the one who used to think she had to leave everything behind in order to grow — that she was never wrong for wanting more. She just didn’t know how to carry it all yet.

I feel her now. My soft little Sissy Girl. She knows I’m coming. And this time, I’m coming back with voice, with boundaries, with softness that isn’t shameful.

So this week, I’m letting myself sit in the in-between. Letting the ache exist without trying to name it. Letting the fear speak without giving it control.

Because even though I’m not there yet, I’m on my way. And I’m not going back to who I was. I’m returning to the one who’s always been waiting.

With ʻUhane From Me to You,

ʻUhane Hawaiʻi