Lacunae: Stepping into The Gap
In graduate school, I learned of a concept that has in recent years returned to walk at my side: the notion of a lacuna.
The word has multiple meaning, each applicable to the collective challenge we face in this moment.
What Lacunae Are and Why They Matter
The term “lacuna” comes from the Latin lacus, which is cognate for the word “lake.”
In astronomy, lacunae are the name for several lakes of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon and the most Earthlike moon in our galaxy.
In art, Lacuna is a Marvel Comics character. Part of a team of mutant superheroes, Lacuna’s superpower was time manipulation. She could create ripples in time that allowed her to travel while everyone else remained frozen.
In music, a lacuna is an intentional, extended passage in a musical work during which no notes are played.
In anatomy, a lacuna is a cavity or depression, particularly in bone; it provides a habitat for osteocytes, or bone cells, to form and grow.
In psychology, lacuna refers to missing elements in a person’s knowledge or understanding. The term also connotes gaps in someone’s memory or awareness caused by trauma and dissociation. For instance, lacunar amnesia refers to a loss of memory of a specific event or series of events.
Perhaps the best-known meaning of lacuna is an unfilled space or gap. Think of a missing portion of a book or manuscript.
Let’s put a bookmark in the concepts of time-traveling, gaps in knowledge, trauma and dissociation, habitats for growth, and musical passages that contain the absence of sound.
Embodied Absence in Lacunae
The felt sense of lacuna came to life for me in a clear and conscious way when I was 23 years old. I’d just begun the final year of a full-time doctoral internship at a psychiatric hospital in Chicago. On the first day alone, I experienced sexual harassment, was forced to join the psychiatrist committing that harassment as co-therapist on a high-profile court-ordered case, saw someone in full leather restraints for the first time, talked with a man who had ingested bleach and nearly died because he believed he was a bad father, and spent several hours on a dedicated self-injury unit. (I also met the woman who would become one of my beloved adopted siblings, so there’s that.)
Before the first week of my internship had passed, I knew in my bones that I was acutely unprepared to be of service.
There was a Grand Canyon-sized gap between the help-from-a-distance approach taught in graduate school and the human-to-human connection I wanted to cultivate in its place.
I could feel the hollow space inside myself and register the sense of absence. It felt primal and jarring. It seemed to signify a less-than quality to my innerness. It felt as though I were on the precipice of a consequential choice.
This was not a pleasurable experience. I fought an urge to ignore it, to turn away, to put on the mantle of professionalism.
I contacted one of my graduate school supervisors for help. We met weekly throughout that year and beyond on top of the supervision provided by the internship department.
These gaps in embodiment have become an emblem in my life: Each time one comes up again, it’s a sign to seek counsel from someone wiser, to learn from their super vision.
Over time, these gaps became a source of medicine.
Lacunae aren’t inherently bad. Most people have them; they’re part of the normal human experience. At the same time, avoiding them can result in harm to ourselves and others.
Collective Lacunae
Social groups also have lacunae, gaps and missing elements in their understanding of the complexities of society. As an example, dominant culture and people with privilege marginalize and underrepresent multiple cultures—such as BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and disabled people—in mainstream discourse and practice. These are attempts to sail over a wide abyss of trauma and dissociation.
In the U.S. and elsewhere, we are bearing witness to lacunae in the way people in power repress and assault our history and literature, and forbid discussion of key events (such as enslavement and Native genocide) and omit certain perspectives, such as diverse genders and sexual identities.
Lacunae exist within structural systems of oppression; we note them in the vast gaps in wealth, education, access to healthcare, voting rights, home ownership, food sovereignty, and many other areas.
When I look at what’s happening in the United States and elsewhere right now, we seem to be descending into a Great Unawakening. On the global stage, we seem to be entering a multipolar world where a rules-based international order is eroding. And our planet is in the m midst of an accelerating upheaval.
In my opinion, these events signify a collective lacuna of great proportions in collective understanding and praxis.
We are face to face with large, directly observable holes in our embodiment. Many of us (and I count myself among them) are unprepared to meet the demands of time and place, to bridge the gaps we face.
Sensory lacunae are holes in our embodiment, in our own direct experience.
It’s hard enough to embody difficult experiences. But embodying absence can feel almost impossible.
For people like myself with compounded nodes of privilege, living an embodied life means (in my opinion) encountering absences of embodiment with regularity.
In my opinion, it’s easier to endure extreme discomfort than to encounter these gaps in awareness. It’s hard to feel into what is disembodied, both with respect to our own experience and to our larger social body.
This difficulty, in turn, can preclude us from feeling solidarity and joy.
The British phrase “Mind the gap” denotes, on the London Underground, the space between the platform and the train.
The phrase gives me solace; it emphasizes the power of attention and sensitivity to our lacunae.
It lets us know that we can practice at the edges.
And we can get supervision from people who have traveled this way before, whose ancestral memory is close at hand.
This is not a passive response; taking direction is intimately entwined with action, with supervision, with practicing in the space between.
Let’s return to lacuna’s meanings, and make of them a blessing:
May we practice at the edges.
May we immerse ourselves in the absence of sound—which is not the same as silence, or being silent.
May we draw close to our ancestors, and listen to their counsel.
May we find a habitat in which to grow together.
May we accompany one another well.
May we create together a wrinkle in time, so that the trauma and lessons of the past inform our present actions.
As the worlds reels from violence and the shifting sands of geopolitics, today’s offering is less polished than usual. (Which is to say, not polished at all.) But it comes from my heart, and I hope that is enough.
Resources for this time:
adrienne maree brown on Instagram (recommend the conversation with Morgan Harper at Jewish Voice for Peace)
Joris Lechene on colonialism, oppression, and justice
Law of Armed Conflict in the Israel-Hamas War online guide