The In-Between Space of Repair

I live in a house that is 10 years older than I am. When I bought it, I remember the inspector saying it had good bones. That always stuck with me. It was reassuring to hear that the structure was solid, even if there were things that would need attention over time.

And over time, things did need attention.

After dealing with a family of possums who decided to take up residence underneath it, I learned there was water damage under one of the bathrooms. A contractor came out and confirmed what I did not want to deal with. The floor would have to be torn out. The whole room would need to be rebuilt.

I knew it needed to be done. And I put it off for months.

Not because I thought it would fix itself. Not because I doubted the assessment. I delayed it because it was going to be disruptive. Dust, noise, cost, inconvenience. Life was busy. Everything was still working. It just felt easier for a while to live around the problem than to open it up and deal with it.

Eventually I scheduled the repair because avoiding it was taking up too much worry and headspace. It was clear that putting it off was not going to make it better.

Right now I’m in the uncomfortable middle space of repair. There is heavy paper taped across my floors. Dust that never quite goes away. Things out of place. My home office is temporarily set up in the laundry room so I can keep working while everything feels unsettled. It's functional, but not comfortable.

One evening after the workers left, I walked into the gutted room and just stood there. The walls were gone and I could see the studs. The original framework of the house was exposed, decades old and still doing the job.

I was surprised it didn't feel like everything was ruined. It felt like seeing the truth of it. The damaged parts were being replaced, yes. But most of the structure was still strong. The bones that had been there for decades were still strong and doing exactly what they were meant to do.

That moment felt strangely reassuring.

Inner work is often like this. We often think that if something isn’t working in our lives, we need a complete overhaul. That we need to tear everything down, start from scratch, become a different person.

But that's not what’s needed.

More often, there are specific areas that need attention. Old ways of coping that once helped but no longer do. Patterns that developed for good reasons but now cause stress. Parts that need repair, not total demolition.

Much of who we are is already sound. Our values, our capacity to care, our ability to pay attention, to pause, to choose differently. These are the bones. They don't need to be replaced.

What we resist is the process of opening things up.

Just like with my house, we avoid it because it's inconvenient. It disrupts routines. It's uncomfortable, maybe even scary, to see what has been hidden. There's a phase where things feel messier, not better. We're functioning, but not back to routine yet. That in between space can feel frustrating, and it's where many people decide they would rather not continue with the work.

But repair requires that middle phase.

You can't rebuild without first opening things up and seeing clearly what's no longer working. But it doesn't end there. The work continues in that uncomfortable in between space, when nothing looks finished yet. New supports are put in place. Things are reinforced. You learn new ways of responding, paying attention, setting boundaries. And it rarely looks the way people expect. There are no dramatic breakthroughs or sudden transformations. Most of the time it looks more like small shifts, moments of noticing, gradually choosing differently. It looks like living in the house while the work is still underway.

Mindfulness helps us stay more present and grounded during that in between time. It allows us to better tolerate the dust, the noise, the disruption of how things used to be. It reminds us that the disturbance is temporary. It helps us remember that the work we're doing is intentional and that sometimes messiness is simply what repair looks like while it is happening.

We don't need to tear down the whole house to stand on firmer ground. We just need the willingness to address what's no longer holding up well, while trusting the strength that is already there.