A reflection from Kate Appleton 2025

A Child Between Worlds

Not long ago, I worked with a little boy who was waking in the night, terrified. His father was dying, and both of them seemed caught between worlds. The boy’s nightmares blurred the line between waking and sleeping, between this world and the one his father was slowly entering.

He didn’t know how to find his way back home, and neither did his father. Both were at the portal, in transition, living in the unknown. My role was not to fix what was happening but to widen the threshold and to be a steady witness in the space between. Together, we began to build bridges.

This is what I call edgework: the work done at the threshold between endings and beginnings, between what was and what is not yet.

The Edge as Portal

Transitions are the rawest representation of edgework. When we pass from womb to birth, or from matter to spirit in death, we move through a portal gate. This is a place of constriction and expansion.

We don’t get to opt out of these thresholds. No one in labor can say, “Not today, thank you very much, I’ve decided I don’t have to have this baby.” The baby is coming. And the same is true of death: when it comes, we cannot say, “No thank you, I’ll pass.”

These crossings are not optional. They are survival. They are the places where we most need accompaniment, someone to remind us that even when we are lost in the spiral of uncertainty, unable to see ahead or behind, we are not alone.

A Family Shattered by Sudden Loss

Another family I worked with had lost their 20-year-old son in a tragic accident. Their world cracked open overnight. The mother said, “I don’t know where he is. I don’t know where I am.” They were standing at the edge, disoriented, grieving and searching for ground.

Edgework in moments like this is not about words or solutions. It is about presence. I could not take away their pain, but I could hold the space where grief lived alongside memory and where silence was not emptiness but witness. Slowly, edges softened. They found ways to carry love forward, even in the ache of absence.

The Body’s Way of Knowing

What happens in these moments is mirrored in the body. The edges between constriction and softness, tension and slackness, become teachers. By bringing awareness to these places such as pressing into the support of a chair, then pulling away and noticing the work of the core, we practice edgework physically.

The body learns that edges are not barriers but portals. That what feels like a hard wall can soften, diffuse, and transform. And the same is true for story, ideology, and belief. When we meet at the edge, change becomes possible.

Edgework as Sacred Practice

Whether with a dying parent, a grieving family, or a body in pain, edgework asks us to stand at the threshold. We must not arrive with answers since what is really necessary is presence.

It is sacred work because it honors the truth that life is always moving us through portals we cannot refuse such as birth, death, rupture, grief, joy, change. The edge is not where things end. It is where transformation begins.

And when we have a witness, someone willing to hold that space with us, the unknown becomes bearable. The edge becomes not a wall, but a gateway.