In the Middle of Everything: Living the Daily Bardo
I met Sewon, the husband of my beastie Eunbi, in one of the cafes at Kalm Village in Chiang Mai on a humid afternoon where time seemed to slow down and dissolve like incense smoke. We sat in quiet conversation, not always looking for answers, but simply opening space for the in-between. Sewon mentioned about Bardo — the liminal spaces of Tibetan Buddhism — Bardo wasn't just about death. It was everywhere, stitched into the fabric of my life: in the breath between diagnosis and healing, in the soft pauses between love and heartbreak, in the waiting rooms, the rituals, the silences I learned to revere. As a queer Buddhist and a cancer survivor, I have lived in the Bardo. Not once, but many times. There was the shock of hearing "you have cancer"—a sentence that split my life into before and after. The grief wasn’t immediate; it came later, slowly and strangely, like the feeling of being a ghost in your own home. At first, I hovered. I watched life move forward without me. I ...
