The other day, a friend and I were talking about language—specifically, the words we tend to reach for when we’re trying to describe certain kinds of spaces; the kind where something tender is happening, something intimate, embodied, and quietly unfolding in ways that don’t always announce themselves but are unmistakably alive and present once you’re inside them.
We were laughing, gently, at ourselves in this shared noticing—how often the same words show up in these liminal spaces, the in-between places where something meaningful is being explored, but can’t quite be named, and so we say:
‘deep’, ‘potent’, ‘to the core’
—and even ‘love’,
that slippery, overburdened word that carries more than it can ever hold.
None of these are untrue, and rarely are they empty; in fact, they’re often used because they’re the most available gestures toward something that resists easy description.
I mean, how do you translate this stuff?
I cringe at the memory of myself over a decade ago, attempting to explain what happens in circling and authentic relating while trying to grow a community around those practices in London.
I meant well, of course—I was trying to share something I believed in deeply, and clearly something resonated, because a vibrant community formed around it—but looking back, I can feel how hard I was trying to name what didn’t quite want to be named, Or perhaps more truthfully, what didn’t want to be reduced.
I remember someone once weeping after a circle, trying to thank me, and the only words they could find were:
“That felt like something I used to know,”
and I nodded, because even then
I didn’t have the right words either.
For a long time, I’ve been thinking about language—not just what we say, but how we speak when we’re trying to meet something real, especially the kind of real that hasn’t taken full shape yet, that doesn’t arrive on time or in clean lines, but shows up half-formed and a little out of breath, as if it had to run to get here.
It’s not the kind of language I was taught to master, especially during those early years when I was quietly trying to prove that despite only speaking Polish at home, my English was excellent—thank you very much.
Not the well-structured sentence or the crisp conclusion, but something quieter, something messier, the kind that comes in sideways, more a scent than a statement, more like something living than something said.
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And I’ve noticed how often, especially in spaces that feel sacred or vulnerable or just a little bit fragile, we reach for the same phrases—the ones that nod toward something true, but sometimes hover just above the truth itself—and it’s understandable.
We want to make meaning. We want to connect.
There’s a comfort in shared language, especially when the world around us feels like it’s fraying.
These phrases can sound like belonging, and sometimes they are—but they can also function as a kind of code, a low hum of mutual recognition that lets us know we’re still circling the same fire.
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And yet, more and more, I feel this quiet tug in my body—something subtle but insistent—when I hear them spoken, or when I’m about to speak them myself.
It’s not resistance exactly; it’s more like a stillness that enters the room, a kind of inner pause, like a wild animal hearing a sound just out of sight, ears pricked, sensing something just off-frame.
Perhaps because there’s possibility here to speak a little more often from that threshold space—the one that isn’t quite ready yet, the one where the thought is half-formed, the breath not yet shaped into language, and you don’t know quite what is going to come out of your mouth when you open it to speak.
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There’s still shame there for many of us, or something very close to it.
That quiet sense that if I don’t have the language yet—if I hesitate, or shift halfway through, or reveal my uncertainty—I’m not quite credible. Not quite real, not quite trustable.
But I think that voice is lying.
I think the tremble might be more trustworthy than the script.
Because the words that come too cleanly can sometimes skate past the depth.
And the ones that falter? They’re often the ones still carrying the scent of where they’ve been.
Still warm. Still incomplete.
Still connected to what they’re trying to name.
Perhaps an alive language is the kind that shows up smelling of a little smoke.
Not the one that arrives dressed for presentation with a PowerPoint, but the one that stumbles in barefoot and says: ‘I’m here’.