Have you ever noticed how when life shifts beneath our feet, our instinct is often to run faster? I certainly have. We scramble to adjust every aspect of our lives simultaneously—reorganising schedules, making plans, setting new goals—as though sheer momentum might carry us through the turbulence of transition. In our rush to establish a new normal, we frequently bypass what I've come to call "the necessary in-between": that vital space where we acknowledge, process, and integrate change before racing toward what comes next.
In music they call it negative space—those deliberate silences between notes that give a composition its breath and character. As any musician learns, often painfully, the temptation is always to fill every measure with sound, to layer instrument upon instrument, to demonstrate technical prowess through complexity. Been there, got the t-shirt. Yet the most moving compositions typically understand the power of restraint. They honour the rests between notes, allowing certain phrases to linger in the air before the next begins. Without these pauses, music becomes noise—a cluttered soundscape where nothing has room to resonate.
I've written about my attempt to dally in music these past few months, with greater or lesser success. I remember watching a YouTube video by a musician who was at pains to remind me to "Listen to the spaces... That's where the music lives." At first, I didn't understand. How can music live in silence? But gradually, I began to hear how these carefully crafted pauses create tension, anticipation, and ultimately, meaning. The notes themselves mean nothing without the architectural spaces designed to hold them. When creating my own pieces, I find myself still fighting the urge to fill every beat—to leave no moment unattended by sound—when often what the composition truly needs is room to breathe.
The Urgency of Adjustment
Anyway back to change. Where was I? Oh yes, change - something that rarely arrives in isolation. The profound disorientation of loss, for example, often coincides with the upheaval of physical relocation. When we lose someone or something central to our lives, the ground beneath us already feels unstable. Add to this the prospect of moving into unknown territory—a new home, a new community, perhaps even a new identity—and the vertigo of change can become overwhelming.
And this is the situation I find myself in now.
It's like suddenly being asked to perform a complex musical piece in an unfamiliar key signature. The notes on the page—the practical tasks of packing boxes, filling out change-of-address forms, sorting through belongings that now carry the weight of memory—appear straightforward enough. But playing them while simultaneously processing grief and shepherding the fear of the unknown creates a good measure of cognitive and emotional dissonance. My fingers move across the keys, performing the mechanics of transition, while my heart struggles to interpret this new composition of life that has been thrust upon me.
Does that make sense?
In these moments of dual transition, we feel an almost primal urge to stabilise our circumstances as quickly as possible. I don't suppose this impulse is wrong—humans naturally seek equilibrium. We make lists of tasks, we sort through belongings, we research new neighbourhoods, we fill our calendars with appointments. These concrete actions provide a comforting illusion of control when so much feels beyond our grasp.
It's similar to the novice musician's tendency to fill a musical score with constant sound—layering chord upon chord, adding ornamentation to every phrase, introducing new instruments when the melody feels too exposed. This density creates a sense of complexity that can mask insecurity. After all, if every moment is filled, there's no space for doubt to seep in. If every beat carries an identifiable note, there's less risk of hearing the unsettling resonance of what's been lost or the intimidating silence of what hasn't yet been found.
But in our haste to reach the other side of these changes, we often forget that we ourselves need time to transform. The spreadsheets and action plans that help us orchestrate external change cannot manage the internal transitions happening simultaneously.
Our grief, our sense of displacement, our tentative hope for what might lie ahead—these need a different kind of attention. They need the necessary in-between.
What Is the Necessary In-between?
For me, the "necessary in-between" is the deliberate space I create for myself when navigating great change. It's not about pausing all forward movement, but rather about acknowledging that meaningful change happens in layers, with our emotional and psychological adjustment often lagging behind practical arrangements.
Like the above-mentioned rests in a musical score, this in-between space isn't empty—it's pregnant with possibility. It's the fermata that holds a note longer than its written value, allowing its full resonance to emerge. It's the deliberate break between movements that gives the listener time to absorb what came before and prepare for what follows. Without these musical spaces, even the most beautiful melody becomes overwhelming, each note blurring into the next without distinction or meaning.
Consider the power of a well-placed rest in a Chopin Nocturne. The opening arpeggio establishes a pattern, but it's the subtle space after this phrase that allows it to sink into the listener's consciousness. If Chopin had rushed forward without this microscopic pause, the emotional depth of the piece would surely have been diminished. Similarly, in jazz (a music genre I simply cannot abide), the notes not played are often as important as those that are—exemplifying the need for restraint, for understanding that a single, perfectly placed note with space around it could communicate more than a flurry of technical flourishes.
I digress.
My necessary in-between serves the same purpose in the composition of our lives during transition. It's the counterpoint to action, the negative space that gives shape to our experience. Like a musical rest, it isn't passive—it actively contributes to the emotional architecture of our journey through loss and into the unknown.
This in-between space serves as a sanctuary where grief can surface without immediately being pushed aside by the demands of packing boxes or signing documents. It offers a retreat where the anxiety of moving into unknown circumstances can be felt and named rather than buried beneath forced optimism.
It provides a pause where we can acknowledge the strange liminality of no longer being fully where we were but not yet having arrived where we're going.
This space functions as a cadenza—that moment in a concerto where the orchestra falls silent and the soloist is given freedom to explore the emotional terrain of the piece without the constraints of strict tempo or structure. The cadenza isn't a departure from the composition; it's an essential part of it, allowing for personal interpretation and deeper expression. My necessary in-between is similar—a cadenza in life's composition where we can explore the full emotional register of our experience without the accompaniment of external demands and expectations.
In the wake of loss, this space allows us to carry forward not just memories, but meanings. When preparing to move into the unknown, it gives us room to imagine possibilities without immediately committing to certainties. The necessary in-between honours the reality that human beings aren't machines that can be instantly reprogrammed from one life circumstance to another.
The Cost of Skipping the In-between
When we leap from the rawness of loss directly into the logistics of relocation without this transitional space, we are bound to encounter unexpected difficulties. That figures, right? Our bodies may signal distress through insomnia, tension, or illness. Our minds become foggy with decision fatigue. We find ourselves standing in an empty kitchen, surrounded by half-packed boxes, overcome by a wave of grief that seems to arrive from nowhere—though in truth, it has been waiting patiently for acknowledgment all along.
Music-makers too know the cost of ignoring the natural rhythm of a piece. When a performer rushes through a phrase that requires space and consideration, the result is jarring—technically correct notes played without emotional truth. Similarly, when we attempt to bypass the necessary in-between of major life transitions, we create a dissonance between our outer circumstances and inner experience. Like a melody played at the wrong tempo, everything feels slightly off, even if we can't immediately identify why.
These consequences aren't signs of failure—they're signals that we've bypassed a necessary part of the change process itself. The grief of what we've lost and the anxiety about what lies ahead will find expression one way or another.
When denied the space of conscious attention, these emotions often emerge in moments when our defences are lowered, sometimes with greater intensity than if we had made room for them earlier.
I'm reminded of a musical phenomenon known as "harmonic tension." When a piece establishes a certain key, then introduces notes outside that key without proper resolution, the listener experiences a subtle unease—a sense that something needs to be addressed before the music can move forward naturally. Like driving on a road with an adverse camber. Our unprocessed emotions create a similar harmonic tension in our lives. The "notes" of grief or anxiety that we haven't allowed proper space will continue to sound, creating a persistent dissonance beneath whatever new melodies we attempt to play.
Creating A Necessary In-between
What might this space look like when we're navigating change? The necessary in-between will be unique to our own circumstances, but I'd urge everyone to consider how they too might honour this crucial transition time.
In music composition, there's a concept called "orchestration"—the art of determining which instruments will play which parts to create the desired emotional effect. Creating a necessary in-between requires a similar attentiveness to arrangement and instrumentation. Which elements need to be prominent during this transition? Which should be background? What tempo best serves this particular movement of your life?
I think we all establish small constants amid the changing landscape of our lives—a morning ritual with a cherished object that has moved with us from a previous home, or regular connection with someone who knew the person we've lost. These threads of continuity can provide anchoring amid change.
These constants function like the bass line in a complex musical piece—a steady, recurring pattern that grounds the composition while allowing for variation and exploration in other elements. In contrapuntal music, this foundational voice creates a sense of stability that makes the interweaving of other melodic lines possible. Our own bass line—those small, consistent rituals or connections—can similarly support the complex emotional counterpoint of navigating loss while establishing a new home, for example.
We might give ourselves permission to feel seemingly contradictory emotions: the sorrow of what we've left behind alongside glimmers of curiosity about what lies ahead; the emptiness of loss alongside moments of unexpected peace; the anxiety of the unknown alongside whispers of possibility.
These emotional juxtapositions are not unlike the harmonic tensions deliberately created in music through dissonance. A minor seventh chord creates a particular kind of yearning precisely because it contains notes that both clash and complement each other. Similarly, our contradictory feelings during major transitions aren't signs of emotional confusion but rather the natural complexity of the human experience. Just as a composer doesn't resolve every dissonance immediately but allows certain tensions to develop before finding resolution, we should allow our conflicting emotions to coexist in the necessary in-between, trusting that their interactions contain important information about our experience.
We need to adjust our timeline expectations. The culture around us often implies that grief should follow a neat schedule, that moving should be completed within a specific timeframe, that "settling in" should happen by a certain date. My necessary in-between whole-heartedly rejects any such artificial timelines. It recognises that meaningful adjustment unfolds according to its own rhythm, often in spirals rather than straight lines.
We can create physical spaces for this process—perhaps a corner of a new home that we set up first, not for utility but for comfort and reflection. Or a path in our new neighbourhood where we walk and allow memories to surface. These places can become containers for the emotional work that accompanies practical change.
As we navigate the logistics of relocation, we need to carefully distinguish between what truly needs immediate attention and what can wait while we tend to our emotional wellbeing. Not every box must be packed at once. Not every decision about our new home must be made immediately. Some things can remain in their own form of in-between while we honour our own.
Personally, I have chosen to document this journey through writing, voice recordings and sounds. I'm hopeful that these chronicles of my necessary in-betweens may later reveal patterns and insights that weren't visible in the moment. That they become testament to the courage it takes to move consciously through loss and into unknown territory.
The Wisdom of the In-between
What makes these spaces "necessary" rather than merely "helpful"? Good question.
The in-between is necessary because without it, we risk carrying unprocessed grief forward into our new circumstances. We risk making decisions about our new home and community from a place of reaction rather than intention. What we don't integrate, we tend to repeat or project onto new situations.
In music, there's a principle known as "development"—the process by which a theme or motif evolves throughout a piece. A skilled composer doesn't simply repeat a theme identically but allows it to be transformed by what has come before. The theme that returns is never quite the same as when it was first introduced; it has been enriched and altered by its journey through the development section.
Similarly, our experiences of change and loss cannot simply be set aside as we move into new circumstances. They need the development space of the in-between—a time where they can be acknowledged, explored, and integrated into the continuing composition of our lives. Without this developmental space, unprocessed grief becomes like an unresolved musical phrase that keeps repeating, interrupting the new themes we're trying to establish in our changed circumstances.
Moreover, the in-between often contains wisdom that only reveals itself when we slow down enough to notice it.
In this space, loss can gradually transform from a gaping absence into a different kind of presence. The unknown can shift from a source of anxiety to a canvas of possibility. But these alchemical changes require the ingredient of time—not just chronological time, but time that's been given deliberate attention.
Honouring Our Own Rhythm
Perhaps the most important aspect of the necessary in-between is recognising that our transition rhythm is uniquely ours. The depth of our loss, the circumstances of our move, our personal history with change, our individual temperament—all these factors influence how we navigate this time.
Tempo markings in a score aren't absolute, are they? They're guidelines that allow for interpretation. Andante (walking pace) for one musician might be slightly different than for another. The same piece performed by different musicians will naturally have subtle variations in timing, emphasis, and expression. These interpretive differences aren't flaws but rather the human element that makes each performance unique and authentic.
Some may need weeks to process significant changes, while others might require months or longer. Some process change primarily through quiet reflection, while others integrate change through physical activity, creative expression, or conversation. Some need solitude in this space, while others need companionship.
This variation in approach is reminiscent of how different musical traditions interpret rhythm and timing. Western classical music generally adheres closely to metronomic time, while jazz embraces a more flexible approach with "swing" that can't be precisely notated. Bossa Nova has its distinctive temporal feel, and Indian classical music operates with complex cyclical patterns of beats. None of these approaches is more "correct" than the others—they simply reflect different traditions of making meaning through sound.
The necessary in-between isn't about following a prescribed formula—it's about honouring our particular ways of metabolising profound change. It's about bringing consciousness to a process that too often happens in the blurry margins of our attention.
The Courage to Pause
In a culture that prizes productivity and forward momentum, creating space for the necessary in-between requires a particular kind of courage. It means resisting the pressure to "just move on" after loss or to "get settled quickly" after a move. It means acknowledging that meaningful transitions happen in both external circumstances and internal landscapes, and that the latter deserves just as much attention as the former.
Perhaps we might think of this process as composing the music of our lives. When facing loss and the unknown simultaneously, the urge to fill every moment with activity—to drown out grief with the noise of logistics, to silence anxiety with the clamour of constant doing—is nearly irresistible. Yet the most authentic composition might require fewer notes than we imagine, more deliberate pauses, more willingness to let certain themes develop fully before introducing new ones. The negative space we allow becomes not an absence but a presence in itself—the container that gives shape and meaning to everything around it.
By honouring the necessary in-between—that sacred space between what was and what will be—we don't just cope with loss and relocation. We allow these profound changes to transform us in ways that ultimately serve our growth and wholeness. The home we eventually create in new surroundings becomes more authentic because we've allowed ourselves this time. The life we build after loss becomes more meaningful because we haven't rushed past the teaching that grief always offers.
There's a moment in all great musical performances that musicians sometimes call "the pocket"—that sweet spot where technical mastery and emotional authenticity perfectly align. It can't be forced or manufactured; it emerges organically when the performer has done the necessary preparation but then allows something beyond technique to flow through the music. A "necessary in-between" creates the conditions for finding our own version of "the pocket" in life after significant change—that place where our outer circumstances and inner experience come into alignment not through force but through honest attention.
In that sense, the in-between isn't an indulgence or a luxury—it's precisely what makes change worthwhile. It's the space where we learn to carry our past with grace, to stand in our present with awareness, and to move toward our future with both trembling and hope.
As I continue composing my own music, I return again and again to that early lesson: "Listen to the spaces." I'm learning to trust that the silence between notes isn't empty but full of possibility. And as I navigate my own experiences of loss and unknown futures, I'm attempting to bring this same trust to the necessary in-between—that sacred pause between movements in the symphony of a life.
Perhaps that's the most profound parallel between music and life transitions: both require not just the courage to sound new notes but also the wisdom to allow space for their meaning to emerge.
