1a: change of physical form, structure, or substance especially by supernatural means
the metamorphosis of humans into animals
b: a striking alteration in appearance, character, or circumstances
The company has gone through a series of metamorphoses.
2: a typically marked and more or less abrupt developmental change in the form or structure of an animal (such as a butterfly or a frog) occurring subsequent to birth or hatching
the metamorphosis of caterpillars into butterflies
Hello, Beautiful;
These past months have been challenging for nearly every human being around the world as a result of the fallout from Covid. We have all experienced isolation and tension over the way we have had to change our public business and interactions. Many of us (myself included) have lost our livelihoods, our financial, and our emotional equity. The emotional fallout from these stressors has been hard for most and nothing short of cataclysmic for some. We see marriages failing, families falling apart, and pretty much everyone has had to rethink the way they move in the world. But perhaps an aspect of how we re-think things is to consider that this has been a necessary process for our society as a whole and we are in the process of transformation – metamorphosis – from a system that hasn’t worked in some time into something greater.
Recently I have been seeing butterflies everywhere – at the lake, in my yard, on social media, when I open my email each morning. This has gotten me to thinking about the process butterflies take to achieve their own metamorphosis and how it seems incredibly relevant to what’s happening in our society right now.
We all admire butterflies for their gentleness, power of flight, and beauty. In the Monarch particularly, the long, arduous migratory journey they make over 3000 miles each year is an incredible inspiration for perseverance. The transformation these beautiful creatures make from lowly caterpillar to majestic butterfly is also a powerful symbolism for transformation to be used in our own lives when we are experiencing difficult circumstances.
But did you know that when the caterpillar: an eating machine, finally stops consuming to create its cocoon, it does not just sprout wings and burst from its chamber fully-formed? The transformation is a messy, difficult journey. It literally digests itself into a viscous goo and gradually re-forms from that primordial soup around imaginal discs; tiny little cells that contain DNA building blocks for each body part.
Our own transformations can be much like this. We experience a catalyst, such as this pandemic, where the parts of our life that weren’t really working well, to begin with, break entirely. We often experience tremendous pain or grief as we deal with the loss of whatever it was that was familiar to us; the dissolution of a marriage, the loss of a job, etc. – and dissolve into our own primordial goo for a bit as we try to manage these tremendous changes. But slowly, we begin to re-frame our points of reference and build new foundations, hopefully around good mental health and better situations. We may not even realize we have transformed and emerged from our cocoons until one day, we find ourselves soaring through clear skies, the sun on our face and the wind at our backs, new, stronger, beautiful, and free at last.
If you are experiencing your own painful transformation right now, keep moving forward, and know that you are not alone in this journey. This too, shall pass. Keep feeding yourself love, nurturing, and good and you will emerge from the darkness of your transformation back into the light. Maybe not today, tomorrow, or even a month from now, but when you get there, you will be grateful for this experience, knowing that it brought about the radical transformation that took you from larvae to butterfly. Much love, beautiful.
This Blessed Sacred Life 