Postcards from the Chrysalis
“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” — Maya Angelou
(Photo credit: Shutterstock)
I used to talk about transformation from the butterfly stage. I’d wait to share my experience until I’d fully emerged, wings outstretched, their brilliant colors bathed in light, dazzling in the sunshine of a new beginning.
I’d have crafted a beautiful, inspirational story describing my metamorphosis, rich with metaphor to bring the experience to life for others. I’d speak from a place of confidence, positivity and triumph.
Right now, I am really wanting to be a butterfly. I keep thinking I am a butterfly. That my transformation is complete. Cue the powerful story!
But I realize that I am very much still in the messy, goo phase. There’s a lot of darkness and it feels like all my structures — all that holds me together and keeps me safe — are disintegrating.
It’s honestly a really challenging place to create from. And an especially challenging place to be inspired much less inspiring.
I am writing postcards from inside the Chrysalis, my butterfly wings still tiny imaginal discs inside my own primordial soup of future self.
Writing about transformation is never easy. Writing about transformation as it’s happening — when things are messy and it feels like everything you used to know is dissolving around you into the vast nothingness of the unknown — oof!
This level of contagious vulnerability is super uncomfortable! Because true, authentic vulnerability is uncomfortable.
When I first launched contagious vulnerability into the world in 2016, I engaged in what I now see was actually “canned vulnerability”. Stories that felt deeply vulnerable to others but for me, not so much.
I’d share about my mother’s suicide on Mother’s Day and people would be in awe of the vulnerability they perceived in me. In reality, I’d already completed the transformation attached to this story long ago. I had mined for its inherent gifts, choosing a path of courageous personal growth over that of maternal victimization.
It was vulnerable for them to hear.
It wasn’t vulnerable for me to share.
Canned vulnerability.
True, authentic vulnerability is speaking about the experience of transformation when you’re in the thick of it. As it’s unfolding. As everything feels like it’s falling apart.
When things are more dark than light.
When you are more lost than you are found.
When you’re really not sure where it’s all going or how it’s going to turn out.
It’s not really a falling apart so much as a falling into place. Old structures are crumbling because you’ve chosen to break free of them — because they were holding back your growth, creating obstacles to your joy.
As these structures break down, they create the raw materials from which you’ll build your future self.
I often wish I was an actual caterpillar because unlike human beings undergoing metamorphosis, the caterpillar is driven by biology to transform, to gorge on leaves until hanging itself upside-down so that the chrysalis forms around it. It doesn’t have the witness consciousness we humans have as we’re undergoing transformation.
This witness consciousness makes metamorphosis so much more challenging. We are literally watching ourselves disintegrate — watching as the sated fat caterpillar that gorged herself to the point of bursting enters the chrysalis phase and starts to turn inward and consume herself to emptiness.
Trying to suppress the fear inherent in witnessing our own transformation.
Trying to resist the powerful urge to retreat back to the safety of the known.
Trying to stay confident and have faith that on the other side of the messy, gooey darkness we’ll emerge as a beautiful butterfly.
So here I am, in the chrysalis phase, pretty much feeling like a sack of amorphous goo. It’s too late to turn back. I’m past the point of no return.
I’ve been here before — so many times before — and I’ll be here again. Because to make the most of this precious life of ours — to heal our karma and realize our dharmic opportunity — we engage in a lifelong-lather-rinse-repeat cycle of metamorphosis.
Going from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly and back again.
Going from comforting over-consumption to dissolution to transformation and back again.
Over and over.
I know from experience that a butterfly will emerge — that I will be a butterfly again. In the meantime, I’m choosing to share this messiness — my messiness — with you as it’s unfolding.
Because I believe in the power of the live-and-unplugged kind of vulnerability.
Because I know that many of you reading this are in the goo phase and your witness consciousness might need a little soothing right about now.
I know mine does.
The act of writing about my authentic experience as it’s happening is super uncomfortable. I’m also finding it deeply healing and empowering. It’s fueling and furthering my transformation.
Giving voice to the ups and especially the downs along the path of metamorphosis helps me make sense of it.
My hope is that it shines light for you on your own hero or heroine’s journey. That knowing you are not alone and that other beings experience similar painful struggles on the path of transformation gives you the courage to keep going.
Gives you the courage to engage in your own contagious vulnerability.
Gives you the gift of deepening human connection that results from this thoughtful, contemplative, authentic sharing.
Know that I’m in the goo too. And I have faith that before long, we’ll emerge into the light and be butterflies again.
If you’re in the goo phase and would like a partner to walk shoulder to shoulder with you as you do your inner work, please book a curious conversation to explore how the Vulnerability Doula can be of service to you.