Liminal comes from the Latin word for threshold. It is not an everyday word; it is one whose meaning I want to evoke out of the remembered experience of the reader and the collective memory of the human race, which we all have access to. Whenever we participate in something that will change us, and change how others relate to us — as when we marry, are inducted into the armed forces or ordained, become a doctor, or survive an ordeal — that experience is a liminal one. Whenever we are initiated into knowing something we did not know before on a body level — for example, through sexual intercourse or pregnancy — we cross a threshold. Here the mystical, spiritual, or psychic awareness of what is happening however, determines its significance as a soul experience. So it is with a life-threatening illness, which similarly happens in and to the body and yet can profoundly affect the soul.
— Jean Shinoda Bolen, Close to the Bone