Why we feel "in-between" in September and how to make the most of it
It’s September 1st. Outside it smells of paper, morning mist and a little nervousness. Children with backpacks wander around the bus stops, parents try to look like they have everything under control. Social media meanwhile announces “new month, new start” as if it were some mandatory mantra.
And yet there is something that doesn’t fit into those slogans.
September is not a beginning. It is a threshold.
And thresholds are not entirely comfortable.
Maybe you’re sitting with a coffee and you have that strange feeling that’s hard to describe. It’s not sadness. It’s not joy either. It’s a vague “in-between.” I get it every year, sometimes just as a slight tension in my chest, other times as a feeling that I should do something but I don’t know what.
This feeling has a name. Liminality.
What liminality is
The word comes from the Latin limen, meaning threshold. A liminal state is the moment when you have stepped out of one door but have not yet entered the next. It’s a strange place where you are no longer where you were and not yet where you are going.
Anthropologists used the term for rites of passage, weddings, initiation ceremonies and funerals. Moments when a person leaves one role and another is only beginning to form.
But liminality doesn’t happen only at big life events. It happens now, at the start of September. Summer ends, routines restart, calendars fill up and you stand exactly on that imaginary threshold even if you don’t always notice it.
Why we feel it more strongly in September than in January
January is a somewhat artificial beginning. The new year is a convention we agreed on, but our bodies don’t necessarily feel it deeply.
September is different. It’s written into us from childhood: the first bell, new notebooks, new clothes, a new routine. Even if we no longer stand in front of a school, something of that returns in us every year.
Maybe that’s why September is tougher than January. Maybe that’s why it drains us more.
Why liminal states trigger anxiety
The brain doesn’t like uncertainty. It needs to know where it stands, what applies, what is certain.
When you’re in a liminal state, the solid ground under your feet disappears for a while. The old routine falls apart, the new one hasn’t settled yet and in that space anxiety or a strange tension often appears.
Not because something is wrong but because something is changing.
Anxiety is a signal of movement.
Try closing your eyes for a moment. Where do you feel that “in-between”? In your chest? In your stomach? In your shoulders?
You don’t have to fix it right away. Just notice it. For me, that small pause often brings some relief.
Liminality as a space for creativity
Transition states are oddly fertile. Old structures loosen, new ones are not yet fixed and in between there is room to rebuild things differently.
Most big decisions don’t arise in calm. They arise in transition, after the end of a relationship, after returning from a trip, after changing jobs. At the moment when the old has stopped applying and the new is only forming.
September offers exactly that space, just on a smaller scale. The question is whether we use it or merely rush through it.
Exercise: a step across the threshold
If you can, stand up. Imagine a line on the floor with summer on one side and autumn on the other.
Stand for a moment exactly on that boundary. Notice what it feels like not to be on either side.
When you’re ready, take one step forward. Just one. Notice what changes in your body, in your breath and in where you look.
It’s a simple exercise but it contains something of the rituals that generations before us performed.
Three ways not to waste a liminal period
Name what is ending Before you dive into plans, try writing one sentence: “This summer or this period meant to me…” It’s surprising how much that small closure helps.
Choose what you want to carry forward Maybe there’s something you don’t want to leave behind: a calmer pace, a morning ritual, a way of working. Liminality is not about erasing the past. It’s about choosing.
Set one intention Forget a long list of New Year’s resolutions in a September version. Instead pick one single thing you want to do differently this month. One intention to work with is far more effective than ten items you’ll forget within a week.
To make an intention work, run it through three questions:
Checklist for your September intention
Is it phrased positively?
Is it fully within your control?
Can you imagine a concrete scene where you live it?
If you can answer yes to all three, you have an intention that stands a chance of surviving beyond the first week of September.
A final challenge
This month try consciously closing one thing and consciously opening one thing.
It can be anything. Close a project that has been draining you even if that means admitting it’s over. Open something new you’ve been postponing because “it wasn’t the right time.”
Do it now, not later. The right time is the threshold you are standing on.
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