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Isabela Granic in the garden at Goult

Isabela Granic, PhD

I combine science and art, theory and practice. Developmental psychologist: 20 years of research on emotional development and dynamic systems, 100+ papers, adjunct professor at Queen’s University. Founder and CEO of Liminal Learning. Writing The Open Nest.

For young adults: a rite-of-passage yearFor parents and caring adults: start hereFor researchers: the science and papersFor editors: The Open Nest

What I do now

Caterpillars, cocoon, chrysalis and moth: the metamorphosis of the lappet, Maria Sibylla Merian1

Liminal Learning

As founder and CEO, I bring together science, philosophy and wisdom traditions to craft a new form of community for young adults, 18–25.

 Hand-lettered title page in a wreath of leaves and caterpillars, Maria Sibylla Merian, 16792

Writing

The Open Nest, a book for parents of adult children, and essays every week on Substack.

 A crowd of butterflies, moths, beetles and spiders, Jan van Kessel, about 16553

Gatherings

Retreats in Goult and on Georgian Bay, and Friday dinners in Toronto: experiments in living and making things together.

Now, 1 of 3

Liminal Learning

For young people

If you’re between 18 and 25 and the usual advice about adulthood isn’t landing, this year is for you. If you’re so tired of having fake conversations with people that don’t seem to share your values for getting real in this time of change, come join us! Liminal Learning opens with five days on a lake with 15 people your age and guides who stay with you all year, then eleven months of real-world experiments with that same crew.

For parents

The common advice for starting adulthood isn’t working. Young people are navigating a world their parents didn’t face, and doing it largely alone. Many parents feel uncertain how to help their adult child build a life that feels genuinely theirs: one with real allies, meaningful work, and a sense of direction. Liminal Learning offers a yearlong, offline-and-online program that prepares young people ages 18–25 to thrive.

Worried? Start with Dear Parents

From Worry to Wonder, an introduction to Liminal Learning. Turn the sound on to hear it.
The conversations we were having made me realize that life doesn’t really have rules… you can kind of make up your own rules for the life you want to live.Sameera, Cohort 1

See the next Quest How the year works

The group sitting in a circle on a dock at sunrise, mist on the lake The cohort and guides laughing together among autumn leaves Young people around a fire circle in the woods

The science underneathDevelopmental transitions are periods when old patterns loosen and new ones can form, and the year is built to use that window: it moves deliberately between conceptual and experiential knowing, following the Neither/Nor framework (Kam & Granic, 2026). We evaluate it with participants as co-inquirers, using pre- and post-Quest measures of belonging, agency, tolerance for uncertainty, values clarity, openness and connection to nature, adapted from validated scales, along with daily reflection cards and guide observations. For a copy of our theory of change and our research agenda, email me.

English oak with acorns, hand-coloured botanical plate
Quercus pedunculata, Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen, 1887

Now, 2 of 3

Writing

The Open Nest

A book in progress, for parents and any adult who cares

The book argues that when our children launch, the love and attention we spent two decades building can be expanded to include the wider community, and that parents of adult children are being called into elderhood for a whole generation of young adults. I’m writing it now, and pieces of it appear first on Substack. Read it as it’s written.

I’m a parent of adult children too. My twin sons are twenty, and The Open Nest began in the gap between what my research told me and what I could actually manage at my own kitchen table. Whether our children leave home “for good,” move in and out over the next decade, or stay living with us, parenting undeniably changes. We’re building a new kind of relationship, and we’re doing it together, with new power dynamics and tremendous opportunities for learning in both directions.

Resilience research keeps landing in the same place: the most common factor in children who develop resilience is at least one stable, committed relationship with a supportive adult (Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, 2015). That adult might be a parent, an aunt, a neighbour, a teacher or a friend’s mother. So this is an invitation to parents and to any adult who wants to show up for this generation. Come and learn how to be that person, alongside others doing the same.

Essays on Substack

Talks and podcasts

Now, 3 of 3

Gatherings

Every year I host small retreats: experiments in living together for a while and making things side by side. Creative retreats in Goult, in Provence, with Bloom, with friends from Coralus and with young people from Liminal Learning, and a writing retreat on Georgian Bay each February.

And every Friday at home in Toronto, dinner for eight or ten: a theme, a poem read aloud, a question we stay with, one small thing we make together. I host because gathering in small groups is the only way I know to practice re-imagining and tinkering with this world in flux.

One table in Goult, and the many circles who have gathered around it to talk, think, play and make things.

The empty terrace in Goult at dusk, before anyone arrives The table in Goult set for dinner by candlelight, before anyone sits down An evening gathering around the long table at home A long lunch on the terrace with friends from Coralus Pushing hands on the terrace by candlelight Young people at the outdoor table at night Sorting sticky notes on the wall during a working session Dinner together in a stone cave

February on Georgian Bay

Frost and gold light at dawn over the bayA snow angel

Foundations

Real science studies and makes accessible that knowledge which people at that period of history think important, and real art transfers this truth from the domain of knowledge to the domain of feelings.Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art?
Banana flower and fruit with a moth and caterpillar, painted by Maria Sibylla Merian
Maria Sibylla Merian, banana flower and fruit, 1705

Theory into practice

The theoryNeither/NorA pragmatic philosophy for oscillating between conceptual and experiential knowing. Kam & Granic, 2026. The practiceThe Neither/Nor practice deckTurn a question between thinking and feeling until it looks different.

And the whole Liminal Learning program.

Selected papers

All publications on Google Scholar ยท The GEMH Lab

25 years of growth

    Field notes, this weekEmotions are fundamentally socially constituted.

    This week’s poem

    Good Bones

    Maggie Smith, first published in Waxwing, 2016, and in her collection Good Bones (Tupelo Press).

    Read the poem

    Mycelium

    Hover or tap a book

    Esther Thelen and Linda SmithA Dynamic Systems Approach to DevelopmentDevelopment self-organizes, out of a body meeting its world.
    Gregory BatesonSteps to an Ecology of MindThe map is not the territory, and mind lives in the relations.
    Maturana and VarelaThe Tree of KnowledgeWe only ever know a world we bring forth with others.
    Fungi, from Ernst Haeckel's Art Forms in Nature, 1904Ernst Haeckel, fungi, 1904
    Varela, Thompson and RoschThe Embodied MindThinking grows out of a living body engaged with the world.
    Nora BatesonSmall Arcs of Larger Circles, CombiningPay attention between contexts, and the edge of the self moves outward.
    Vanessa Machado de OliveiraHospicing ModernityHow to stay with a dying way of life without rushing to fix it.
    LaoziDao De Jing, a chapter at random in many translationsBeing and nonbeing produce each other; live along the paradox, in alignment.
    Stephen JenkinsonCome of Age, Die Wise, Matrimony
    Orphan WisdomWe die in the manner of our living, so elderhood starts now.
    Samantha SweetwaterTrue HumanThe polycrisis as a collective rite of passage.
    Sophie StrandThe Flowering Wand, and Make Me Good SoilUncertainty is where awareness begins.
    Joanna MacyWorld as Lover, World as SelfGrief for the world, felt fully, turns into the will to act.
    Robin Wall KimmererBraiding SweetgrassCaring for people and caring for place are one practice of attention.
    Fern cyanotype by Anna Atkins, 1840sAnna Atkins, ferns, 1840s
    Leo TolstoyWar and Peace, Anna KareninaLife resists our plans, in a marriage as much as in a battle.
    Virginia WoolfMoments of BeingWe live mostly beneath the surface and rise, now and then, into moments of being.

    Write to me at isabela@liminal-learning.com