2021: Our chrysalis year
My girls start looking forward to Christmas in August. That is the month we tend to spend the most time at my mom’s, with the pool, the cousins and as Lily says “OMG an entire room just for TV and toys”. Heaven.
Leaving is hard and so they begin to look forward to Christmas: our next extended visit. My mom does Christmas like Martha Stewart. It’s a thing. My girls think my mom is this magical being who lives in a magical house of fun. Isn’t that what a grandmother’s house should be to kids?
This year felt especially potent. We missed last year due to Covid. My father’s Alzheimer's is continuously progressing and my mom was to start chemotherapy on December 27th with me by her side.
And December 23rd, right after I finished baking these amazing chocolate cookies I was going to bring to my sister's house on Christmas Eve, Amanda tested positive for Covid.
One little line on a plastic test brought down a wave of disappointment that was hard to experience and even harder to watch.
I’m sorry if you had a similar experience. Many of us did.
We are all ok. We cried, we hugged, and we improvised. We worked it out and when she calmed down, Lily said “Jeesh mom, this family can handle anything now.”
And we can. The pressure of disappointment and challenges are making us powerful beyond measure.
I’m reminded of a story:
A young boy came across a butterfly chrysalis and brought it home to his house. He wanted to make it as comfortable as possible. He placed it on a bed of leaves. He watched over it with a full heart. Soon a small hole appeared. A butterfly was emerging and struggling to break free of it’s confinement. It struggled for a little while and then got tired and stopped.
The boy wanted to help. He took a pair of scissors and cut the crystalis to set the butterfly free. He expected it to take flight right away. Instead the butterfly rolled out, small and too weak to fly. It would never fly.
The boy did not realize that the butterfly needed the struggle to become stronger. The process of struggling against the chrysalis filled the butterfly’s wings with blood to make it powerful enough to fly.
This is how I experience transformation: Dissolution, re-assembly, confusion, struggle, effort, exhaustion…freedom.
I find myself wondering; does the caterpillar know what it will become? I suspect not. Perhaps this is what makes us humans different. Our capacity to hold a vision.
Our visions are our becoming. It is my vision that has kept me able to be resilient for my family this year, even when the ground underneath me is moving. My vision and my patience; two powerful facets of the Six Facets of Conscious Transformation.
I invite you to reflect upon your own transformation in the last year or two. If your life has been changed in some way; you have undergone transformation. While so much of it is out of our control, we are not feathers in the wind.
Our visions will steady us in the midst of transformation as long as we are able to release control and allow nature to do it’s magic.
What is your vision for your life? Write it down, create a piece of art, keep it front and center as your LightHouse when clarity leaves the room and you feel lost.
This is how I have lived my life. It is how I have created businesses. It is how I created my family. My life now is the sum total of all I have envisioned.
And my vision continues. It now includes teaching the art of conscious transformation.
In life and in business.
For everyone else the container is Transform, which begins again on January 29th.
Because now that you are a butterfly, it is time to set your sights on where you will be flying.
