Wednesday I was stuck on nursery rhymes. Thursday, it was fairly tales. Reading the Wikipedia entry on Red Riding Hood, I followed the link to an entry on something I'd never heard of before: liminality. While Wikipedia has not nearly evolved into something rigorous enough to be considered a sole source for research, sometimes a new word or concept can shift something known and comfortable into an entirely different perspective; this is what that definition did for me.

Briefly put, liminality is the state of becoming-- the intermediate state between what I was and what I am/will be. It is associated with revolutions and with rites of passage. In the final paragraph under the heading "Victor Turner", Peter Homans is quoted, stating "all liminality must eventually dissolve, for it is a state of great intensity that cannot exist very long without some sort of structure to stabilize it..." and that it either dissolves (such as pilgrims returning home after their pilgrimage), resolves in the expected manner (for example, the pronunciation of bridegroom and bride as "husband and wife"), or transitions into a different -- and possibly isolated -- new "normal".

That paragraph explains several key periods in my life in a seminal "Doh!" moment. It explains how a five-year-old could steel herself against the unavoidable repetition of a traumatic event -- but only for the first several days of its two-week duration. It explains how a college freshman who was a very "picky" eater could decide to "eat what was put before her" as a condition of joining a living group. And it explains how a middle-aged woman could up and drastically change her lifestyle to deal with the diagnoses of metabolic syndrome.

It also explains "why (traditional weight-loss) diets fail", why we get "diabetes burnout", and why a communitas like the Diabetes Online Community (DOC) could form and grow.

Early in the entry (under the heading Arnold van Gennep), rites of passage are described as having three stages: an initial stage that separates us from what we are/were, a liminal stage that erases those previous identities and prepares us to accept new identities, and a final stage that reintegrates us into society with those new identities -- the what we are/becoming.

For many of us who remember Life Before Diagnosis, the process of transitioning from "normal person [without diabetes]" to "Diabetic" (or "person with diabetes") was a liminal process. [I am capitalizing "Diabetic" to distinguish identity from diagnosis.] We were shocked as our "non-diabetic" identities were ripped from us; we were (at least in theory!) prepared for our lives-with-diabetes with information and education, and plopped back into the world as "Diabetics". The time between diagnosis and our self-acceptance as people with diabetes was a liminal stage in which we were neither what we had been (non-diabetic) nor what our doctors said we were (Diabetic/PWD), nor what we needed to become (people who have integrated the rituals and responsibilities of diabetes self-care into our lives). The process of becoming Diabetic incorporated a fair amount of hypervigilance and fear as we worried about what a single high or low reading would do to our limbs, our sight, our kidneys. We strove to make sense of the new dietary restrictions and to wean ourselves off the foods said to be destructive to our health and our glycemic control. We tested and logged religiously. Diabetes became our full-time job -- one into which we had to learn to integrate our families, our occupations, and our social lives.

Unlike traditional rites of passage, the transition to Diabetic-ness is not one which is understood or accepted by most of our familial, collegial, and social circles. Instead of accepting our new identities as a permanent new "normal", our communities perceive us as persistently other. This may place us in a permanently liminal state with respect to our families and "old" friends. The stresses involved with integrating our Diabetic identities into our pre-diagnosis lives are so intense that without a strong support system (the "ceremonial masters" in the Wikipedia entry) and clear forward guidance, we have only the World Wild Web and our own previous norms to fall back upon. This is the psychological space in which diabetes burnout develops.

But just as a group of pilgrims may form a separate communitas for the period of that pilgrimage, many of us with diabetes have formed, or have chosen to join, one or more of the networks and communities that comprise the DOC. In this space, our diabetes is not "abnormal" -- it simply is. Whether or not our real-life contacts accept our pancreatically-challenged identities, the DOC does -- and it accepts that we have integrated, or are trying to integrate, that part of our identity into our daily lives. Where our real-life masters-of-ceremony may be lacking, our online leaders and experts can guide us to, and through, the rituals. We can provide a touchstone for the newly-diagnosed, the overwhelmed, the re-transitioning (to still another Diabetic norm) amongst us. Our "normative communitas" is to accept, to help, and to provide a separate support so individuals with diabetes can resolve and evolve their identities and their places within the greater society.

This role that is both within, and outside of, our physical lives, is what causes the Diabetes Online Community, and others like it, to develop and thrive.