Birthdays, Butterflies, and Thresholds
The butterfly’s birth story goes something like this. A curious little boy found a chrysalis and wanted to see the butterfly emerge. He watched it for hours and hours, waiting for the butterfly to come out. Slowly, it started to push through a tiny little hole. Suddenly, it stopped making progress and lay there for what felt like ages. The boy wanted to help, so he held it gently to warm it and then snipped the edges away to create more room for the butterfly to open its wings. Without any further resistance, the butterfly no longer struggled and was able to fully emerge. Only, it didn’t look like it was supposed to. It’s wings were crumpled and it’s body was swollen. Unable to fly, it crawled sluggishly around and then slowly died in the young boy’s hand.
If you have heard this story before, you have likely heard the multiple life lessons: don’t rush the process; struggle is critical to building resilience; transformation is an unknowable and unpredictable process; progress can seem imperceptible and then voilà the emergence is magnificent!
Lessons apart, I’ve been captivated with the idea of the chrysalis as a magical threshold. The science behind the transformation can be gruesome – bodily enzymes literally dissolving the internal muscles and organs, creating space for imaginal cells to develop a beautiful new body and wings – and also wondrous in the many mysterious ways that nature creates life.
Like breath, the transformational process is anchored in the thresholds that allow for both the intense generative work and the complete letting go of all that has been. The entirety of breath, of life, is shaped by exhale, pause, inhale, pause, and on.
In some respects, I (not-totally-intentionally) carved out this past year to be a threshold to this new chapter of my life. Like a piece of wood bounding the here to there, connecting the past to the future through the doorframe of now.
Externally, it may have been shaped around my divorce, cross-country move, and career pivot. All stemming from the limit at which an arrangement changes. A point at which something starts to or ceases to happen. Internally, it’s been a (re-) connection of my physical and spiritual body. A moment marking the start of something new. Growth, change, and possibility.
As with many moments of transition, though, I have tried to move through it quickly, impatient to get to the other side. What I forgot was that the generative inhalation of possibility, nurturance, and emergence requires an equally expansive exhalation of empty spaciousness and abundant faith. The pause, a fractal threshold of breath, is a time for wonder, play, and magic.
Today, on my birthday, I will remember. As I pause in this space between worlds, not yet who I am fully meant to be but no longer who I once was, I will live into the Warrior pose. One hand outstretched to the future, one touching the past, and body anchored in the resonant, imaginative space of the present. The transformation that I seek will undoubtedly be painful, and also restorative. May I cultivate patience for God’s time and plan to unfurl my new wings rather than the rush to arrive leaving me with an unraveling of tattered threads and parts of what could have been.
My wish for you is the same:
May you cultivate loving kindness for yourself.
May you cultivate patience to allow for the transformation within.
May you revel in the wonder and magnificence around you.
May your every threshold be filled with silliness, joy, and laughter.
