Dangling Between Breaths

Learning to live beyond survival

Have you ever felt like you were breathing, but not fully? Like survival was possible, but only in fragments — rationed air, half-smiles, steady enough to endure but never enough to expand.

The Weight of Adaptation

She learned to live this way without even realizing when it began. Half a breath became her rhythm. Half a life became enough to keep going. Outwardly, she seemed fine, but inwardly her lungs ached, her chest never opened, her spirit never stretched wide.

The adaptation began when one part of her concluded, "this is how you master survival!"

This part kept her tethered to half-breaths, whispering that smallness was safer than collapse. Better to ration herself than to risk the sting of disappointment or danger.

This part we might call Keeper.

Eventually, though, another force pressed at the edges. It urged her to shut it all down, to run, to escape. “Anything but this,” it insisted. “Better to close the door than to dangle here. Just leave.”

Let's call this part Threshold.

And so she dangled between them. Keeper held her tightly in endurance, while Threshold tempted her with escape. Suspended, straining, she dangled between them. She became skilled at it—balancing, disguising, even smiling while her ribs ached for air.

"This must be life," she thought to herself.

And then a moment came, as gentle as a sigh, and something gave way.

A fuller breath slipped in, sharp and unfamiliar. It startled her, as though her body remembered something her mind had long forgotten. For a moment, warmth rushed through her, a vision of sunlight through a window, laughter unguarded, something soft resting against her skin.

Initially, it pierced her, confused her tired being.

“Don’t taunt me with another way,” she cried. “I can barely survive this one. I only have enough strength for Keeper’s half-breaths or Threshold’s escape. Do not ask me for more.”

And yet, in the silence that followed, something else remained. Not conflict. Not survival. Not escape. A steady presence, quiet but undeniable. It was as if another part of her stepped forward, one she had always known but forgotten.

She named her quite simply, Her.

Her was not urgent. She did not pull or threaten.

She whispered, “You were made for wholeness. You were made for breath.”

The dangling one trembled between Keeper and Threshold, yet Her spoke again. “You don’t have to choose between surviving and running away. You can soften without collapsing. You can expand without breaking. You belong in the fullness of your own breath.”

Something in her shifted. She saw the truth.

It was not the ropes that bound her, it was her own grip.

And in that knowing, she let go.

For a heartbeat, she fell. Then she felt it. Air rushing in, ground rising to meet her, the fullness of life expanding from within. She did not collapse! She rose!

This is what it means to live beyond survival! Not to master endurance. Not to escape it. But to remember that life was never meant to be rationed into half-breaths.

It is the slow, sacred work of choosing presence, reclaiming breath, and allowing wholeness to return. It is the path of belonging to yourself, in your body, in your life, here and now.

Journal Prompts

Here’s some gentle work you can do on your own. Take a few minutes with your journal, or simply pause and breathe with these questions:

• Where in your life do you notice yourself living on “half a breath”?

• What does it feel like in your body when you are rationing yourself just enough to survive?

• What might you be avoiding or escaping when you hold yourself in that half-life?

• Where do you feel as though you don’t have a choice — and what happens when you imagine loosening that grip?

• What would a “full breath” look like for you right now?

  
  

The Invitation

If any of this resonates with you, if you have felt yourself caught between endurance and escape, this is the invitation before you. Not just to endure, not to run away, but to live, to breathe fully, to belong to yourself again.

Sitting with these questions can be brave work. If at any point you’d like guidance or company on the journey, I would be honored to walk beside you, meeting you exactly where you are.

A Soul Session is a gentle way to begin. It’s a space for recognizing and releasing the ties that bind you — and remembering the fullness that has always been yours.

Love is all there is,

Elaine

Schedule a session here: https://ElaineBrackenHealing.as.me/SoulSession75Virtual

Learn more here: https://www.elainebracken.com/soulsession