Metamorphosis, Revisited
Synchronicities Illuminating our North Star
I wrote extensively about metamorphosis back in August, and am excited to offer a powerful update.
To briefly recap:
August 29, 2024: I posted to Instagram about metamorphosis, and noticed with delight that very same day two plump caterpillars on my parsley plant, for the first time in my garden’s four-year history—which, upon Googling, I discovered to be swallowtail caterpillars, my favorite butterfly!
September 2, 2024: My identical twin sister, Dana, moved to France, and Caterpillar 1 entered its chrysalis. I had been debating joining my sister for months, but hadn’t felt quite ready yet.
September 16, 2024: Caterpillar 1 emerged as a butterfly!
September 5, 2024 → March 22, 2025: Caterpillar 2 entered and remained in its chrysalis.
Entering a Liminal Space
I have been patiently watching Caterpillar 2 in its emerald green chrysalis since it spun its gorgeous sanctum in early September, making a point to check on it every day. This feat of nature, spun entirely by the modest caterpillar, anchored to a twig by two thin yet powerful threads, left me in complete awe and wonder. How something so majestic and otherworldly could be so small, and blend in so well, that it could remain undetected by most human eyes. That within the delicate confines of the chrysalis, a death and rebirth were unfolding.
Over the fall, I made the decision to join my twin sister in France, reflecting comically that Dana was born first (“Baby A”), so it makes sense that she moved abroad first. All the while, Caterpillar 2’s chrysalis remained bright green, indicatimg it remained alive. I could not help but wonder if a butterfly would ever take flight, given the passage of time. I read online that some caterpillars “overwinter” as pupa in a chrysalis, spending longer periods in a state of dormancy known as diapause to ensure sufficient pollination sources are available upon emerging—cue springtime. I worried whether it would be snatched up by a bird, or emerge while I was away, given my extensive travels. I surrendered to it all and trusted the unfolding.
In the winter, I moved the parsley plant that housed the chrysalis under a porch roof for protection from the LA wildfires, heavy winds, and winter rains. I questioned if I should bring the plant indoors as the temperatures dropped. I decided to leave it in the elements, trusting that raw nature is always most potent and to be trusted.
Death and Rebirth
Two days ago, on March 21st, I noticed that the chrysalis was subtly turning light brown at the top, and yesterday morning, almost the entire chrysalis had become cast in a shade of earthy brown, which I read happens when a pupa dies.
I hosted a garage sale yesterday in preparation for my move in five days, and shared with my neighbors the journey of the caterpillars from August through the present, lamenting that Caterpillar 2 seemed to have died. I have a big heart and no one was surprised that I was sad to lose this companion of the past six months, which had become a symbol of hope and transformation as I navigated my own transition in leaving LA for France.
During the morning of the garage sale, I gifted a RUMI Oracle Card deck, by Alana Fairchild to a friend, and a few of us chose a card for fun. I randomly pulled the Beyond Death, Life card. I didn’t read the description of the card, and given my upset over the caterpillar, I interpreted the card to be largely about death.
My neighbors and I spoke of those we lost, including someone who tragically passed away across the street earlier in the week; I felt a heart heaviness about this woman I never met who left us too soon, along with heartache for the caterpillar, trying to make sense of it all. I know that out of endings come beginnings, and out of death comes rebirth, but could not shake an intuitive sense (or maybe stubbornness) that the butterfly was supposed to survive.
A short while later, as I ascended my front steps to show some friends my home, I saw with utter shock and joy that Caterpillar 2 had bloomed into a butterfly!!!!!!!
The caterpillar had not died, but in fact was in the final stages of its metamorphosis. I have never cried-laughed so hard—sobbing and laughing at once like I had lost my mind—nor experienced such a profound spiritual event in my life. I heard my lovely neighbors squealing with happiness as they caught wind of the development. Full chills radiated throughout my body.
I still feel utterly in awe and swept up in a kind of cosmic fairy dust by the sequence of events.
Metamorphoses 1 & 2. Music: Valzer d'Inverno (A Winter Waltz) by Andrea Vanzo
I went out to run an errand this morning, and when I arrived home, I saw a young swallowtail fluttering nearby; I sensed it was the same one, for I haven’t seen any swallowtails in months.
I came inside, reflecting on the wonder of it all, and realized I had forgotten about the Rumi Beyond Death, Life card that I pulled yesterday. I googled the description, shared in full below. More chills!
Embracing Enchantment
I have historically been what you might call a skeptically spiritual person. I see magic, synchronicity, and mysticism all around me. I converse with nature, have vivid and symbolic dreams, and feel goose bumps and other energetic dynamics deeply that are timed with spiritually meaningful moments. I have experienced events that can only be described as spiritual, including premonitions. And yet, part of me holds a sense of skepticism that perhaps it was all a coincidence. This skepticism is a vestige of my former lawyer, logical, rational, intellectualizing-everything identity, and also from internalizing extensive social conditioning to see spirituality as weird, woo, and abnormal. When we live in our fear-based, survival, thinking, busy brains, we diminish our access the depths of our hearts and souls.
This series of events with the caterpillars metamorphosing into butterflies, timed with my both twin sister’s and my move to France, to me can only be interpreted through a spiritual lens. There are simply too many coincidences that defy logic. I am immensely grateful, for I am finally releasing all of my skepticism, and stepping into more of an openness to the magic we all can swim in—like curtains lifted after wintertime to invite in the warmth of spring sunshine and scent of blossoms for my spirit!
My Butterfly Chapter - Moving to France
The death to my identity that I am currently experiencing is an ending to my life-changing, transformative chapter in Los Angeles. I first came to LA in 2017 on the heels of a series of crises (which I wrote about here)—divorce, leaving my career in federal service with the change in administration, my cat passing away suddenly.
The move from D.C. to LA was a running away more than a running towards. At that time, the haiku, Since my House Burned Down, I Now Own, A Better View of the Rising Moon, by Mizuta Masahide, a 17th century Japanese samurai, was my north star, and is the namesake for this account. Out of the ashes, a phoenix rose.
These 7+ years in Los Angeles held me as I underwent a metamorphosis and spiritual awakening, served as my base during an extended sabbatical, supported me in changing my career from lawyer to coach, and inspired me to curate a big little life, personally and professionally, that is authentically and uniquely aligned with my moonshot dreams, values, vision, and purpose. LA gave me the space, beauty, and vision to get off of the rat race, shed the things holding me back (like the productivity myth, perfectionism, and workaholism), and embrace my essence. LA revealed I have a green thumb (even raising a small monstera to reach over seven feet tall!), and my community feels like the most beautiful, vibrant garden of all. I cherish all the friendships I’ve made here.
To leave LA, a place and community I cherish, purely for the intrinsic calling to honor my next transformation, has felt unmooring. How can I possibly leave something I deeply love?
There is a saying, “Love isn’t enough,” which I know well from my divorce: Heart-wrenching times when we must say good-bye to something or someone we love, because we intuitively sense that it or they no longer serves us. Even when we break our own heart.
This experience is brand new for me—to say farewell to something I love, purely born from the deeper knowing that something bigger awaits me. To love something deeply and still trust that an equally, if not more, fulfilling love awaits. That to fulfill this “one wild and precious life” (Mary Oliver), this messy compact of being a soul in a human body, this spiral adventure of learning lessons and ascending, I must honor my lifelong yearning to live abroad.
I made the decision to move abroad before the wildfires and election. It was born from a purely intrinsic glimmer of trusting my intuition and casting my sights towards revelation—the whispers of my future self, beckoning me to take this leap and move abroad. To make a decision purely for me, with no extrinsic forces, no crises, is a first in my life. Like a seedling slowly pushing through ground towards embracing the warmth of the sun, I too have been guided by primordial forces.
Before the decision, I felt like two people trapped in the same body for ages—part of me is at home abroad and part of me is nestled into LA. I began taking two extended trips to Europe a year and researched splitting my time between LA and abroad.
Sometimes a metamorphic change begins like the smallest of seeds sprouting deep within, and as time unfolds, clarity blooms (“you know when you know”); this is how I arrived to my decision. It wasn’t so much of a full certainty as a subtle shift to “I am moving abroad,” like a scale that’s gradually tilting.
I first noticed feeling like a ship that’s in harbor where nothing has changed, except that the anchor has been lifted. I could stay like that in the harbor indefinitely, yet the open sea called me. Even when I told myself I haven’t made any decisions, I can stay in LA, everything is as it always has been, I knew in my bones that I would go.
I’ve been submerged in anticipatory grief for the past year—as my heart knew before my mind that I would be moving—feeling sad at all that I will be leaving in LA. I’ve witnessed countless sunsets, reveled in the songs of hummingbirds, soaked in every magical inch of the Venice walk streets and Ballona Creek, immersed myself in the arts, cycled and ran thousands of miles, spent more hours than I can count at the ocean’s edge, and hiked extraordinary trails that left me feeling like I was on another planet—the scale of raw, rugged wilderness and wildlife took my breath away. If I close my eyes, LA is right here within me, always. This is the place where I stepped into my wildest dreams; journeyed home to my true self; cocooned, survived, and even thrived at times in the pandemic; and came into my own. It’s been my greatest city love story, one for the ages.
Often the anticipatory grief presents as stuckness, lethary, and malaise. Just as the caterpillar freezes in place for a while before it spins its miraculous chrysalis, we too enter a slowing down period before a big life change. It’s hard to appreciate this pause as a part of transformation, when we are culturally so accustomed to movemement and tangible outcomes as a sign of progress. Yet, it is in the stillness and slowing down that we birth our true paths.
Once in a while, a path calls to us, as if it’s written in us. These are the things we intuitively know must be honored, for if we do not even attempt them, we risk breaking our own hearts. These are the beckonings of our future self, guiding us forward. This is what my chapter abroad means to me.
It has been a bittersweet experience navigating a big life transition in the midst of the massive upheavals we are witnessing in our society. I am beyond excited for the adventures to come, even as I nurse my sorrows in saying farewell for now to LA, and carry grief and anger for political developments in the United States, especially as a former public servant and lawyer who cherishes our democracy and the rule of law.
Yet, to make a big change always means holding competing forces—the joy, pain, anticipation, dread, hope, and fear.
Cheers to trusting the unfolding, to honoring our intuition, to taking leaps of faith, and to believing the best is yet to come. To making a first step without seeing the full staircase (MLK, Jr.). To jumping, sensing a net will appear. To knowing that when we finally unclench our white-knuckle grip on the familiar—our nails dug into the cliffside of comforts—we will not fall. No, our wings will unfold, and we will soar.
There is freedom waiting for you, On the breezes of the sky, And you ask "What if I fall?" Oh but my darling, What if you fly? —Erin Hanson
I booked a one-way ticket to Paris for April (how I began my metamorphic 2018 sabbatical), and am allowing the unfolding to take me wherever I need to go... whether six months or six years.
Stay tuned for more insights on chapter abroad in future Substack posts!
You are a beautiful blazing soul having a human experience that defies explanation and opens you up to divinity. That is what is happening in your life now, whether the death is obvious and painful to you, or whether you are uncertain as to how it is as yet showing up in your life. Either way, there is an ending imminent and new life coming to you, with greater opportunity for your radiant soul to shine its beauty in the world. Grasp it eagerly, beloved. Now is not the time for fear or hesitation. Focus on what is becoming, whilst honoring what is no longer to be. —Excerpt from the Rumi card (in full below)
BEYOND DEATH, LIFE
Footprints lead to the shore of the sea!
Beyond that point,
No trace remains.
-RUMI
”I am calling to you. Can you hear me? Listen. Within your heart, there I speak; my voice rings true. You are urged beyond what has been. The time has come. Lay it to rest now. This ending comes as grace to free you from all that you have known, for what you have known is now too small for your soul. Bear your uncertainty with equanimity. I am certain enough for both of us. Allow me to show you the light that you are, that burns within you, blazing angel of heavenly purity. I will unveil you to yourself. Undressing your ego, casting aside its layers, as tender as a lover, with unwavering attention upon the sacred body of light. You shall know yourself in truth. As pure, beyond all experience, untainted, ever innocent. As a pure vessel, stripped bare, ready for the divine revelation. As light. As life. As love.
The soul craves variety because it leads to wholeness, and wholeness leads to divine revelation. The purpose of the soul incarnating in this world in the first place is to realize its divinity through the sacred crucible of life. The older the soul, the closer it is to the realization of divine oneness, and the more powerful its determination to shed that which would constrain complete and conscious immersion into the divine presence.
So, here you are, an old soul at the edge of something you have known; at the cusp of an ending and a beginning. Perhaps you are already in surrender and falling in, or perhaps you are fearful and resisting as you greet your own divinity. Yet this moment is happening because your own divine soul has chosen for it to be this way, so that love may grow. There is no punishment in this ending, nor is there anything to fear. There may be pain; there may be grief and loss. There may be uncertainty and even insecurity. Yet you have a heart big enough to bear such growing pains. Your heart is even big enough to receive the joy that is lying in wait for you as you stumble across her in the course of your clumsy, inspired travails into new life. You can scoop her up in your arms and spin her wildly about as she delights in your embrace, throwing her head back and laughing her vibrant, contagious laughter, filling you with exquisite ecstasy. Yes, you shall know the truth, the knowledge that the Divine is with you, guiding every unfolding moment of your life journey. No matter how dark it may first appear, the Divine is with you in unflinching generosity, with compassion, and with fierce passion for your blossoming into all you are, all that you can be.
So what must you do to receive this divine grace, this new life? You must be willing to face death. It may be that death has come to you in the form of loss of a beloved one, a physical loss that takes you into the darkest despair or depths of your grieving heart. It may be death that comes to you in the ending of a financial or professional situation you once relied upon. It could also be in the sense that you don't really know who you are anymore; old identities having shown themselves to be inadequate, inaccurate, mere ego masks too small for the great being that you are starting to suspect you may be!
Your death may be a choice - to let go, to take a step in a new direction, to move house, to end a relationship, to change career, or to step away from a religious or philosophical tradition, or a group or teacher. Your death may not feel as though it has come by choice at all. It may be a sickness that leaves you feeling helpless, a relationship or other life circumstance changing when you wish with all your heart that it would not. Your transition through this death may be triggered by an inner feeling that you cannot quite pin down. Nonetheless, it powerfully propels you away from what has been and towards untapped possibilities, perhaps even towards great confusion as you encounter life in a new way, feeling even somewhat unprepared and uncertain as to what may lie ahead of you now.
How you deal with this grace, hidden though it may at first appear to be under the cloak of crisis, is up to you. You have enough spiritual intelligence to shift perspective and to choose, if you wish, to rest your inner gaze upon what lies beyond the death. Gaze instead upon the new life that is calling you. When you know deep within that, no matter what experiences you have had in your life, you are untainted, you will be more easily able to trust the love the Divine has for you. You won't question your worthiness and therefore you will trust in life more easily and more fully, no matter how much it asks of you at times. The Divine is a relentless lover. It wants nothing less that your total being to be held in its embrace. Sometimes that means we will have to give up lesser loves for the greater lover, the divine one that calls us to remember our true nature.
You are a beautiful blazing soul having a human experience that defies explanation and opens you up to divinity. That is what is happening in your life now, whether the death is obvious and painful to you, or whether you are uncertain as to how it is as yet showing up in your life. Either way, there is an ending imminent and new life coming to you, with greater opportunity for your radiant soul to shine its beauty in the world. Grasp it eagerly, beloved. Now is not the time for fear or hesitation. Focus on what is becoming, whilst honoring what is no longer to be.”
—From splendid.yoga
Resources on Navigating Liminal Spaces
Michael Meade Courses and Podcast
- Poetry and CoursesOther favorite poets for times of transition: Mary Oliver, John O’Donohue, Rainer Maria Rilke (terrific podcast episode), Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (Rumi), Khājeh Shams-od-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī (Hafez or Hafiz)
The Artist's Way - gateway to reclaiming our inner artists, for creativity is the language of our souls
Big Magic by
So very beautiful and so incredibly happy for you as you “say farewell to something I love, purely born from the intuition that something bigger awaits me”
What divine inspiration and reinvention 🦋au revoir!
This is inspirational ! So happy for you and the magic that awaits you in Europe !!!!