On Butterflies & Transformation

Delays, understanding, and learning love from the Earth

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There are butterflies who have taken refuge in the passion fruit vine outside our front door. They’ve taught me that transformation can literally happen over night. The caterpillar attaches its body to a leaf and dangles upside down, very much like the Hanged Man tarot card, temporarily putting itself in an unfamiliar position as it prepares to transform into a new shape.

Transformation can happen over night...Saturday (Left), Sunday (Right)

The Hanged Man shows someone dangling by their foot from a tree. At first sight it looks strange and uncomfortable, but when you look closer you notice that the character is holding the string and observing his own foot with a look of curiosity. This card speaks of temporary setbacks, but it also suggests that they are self-imposed with the intention of creating a necessary shift in perspective. The Hanged Man is a strange pathway to breakthrough, and new understanding. It has the numeric value of 12, the next major arcana card is 13, Death. Once again, it speaks to the natural cycles of life and transformation.

Over the past month there have been many delays, frustrations, a lot of psychic anticipation, and little material world pay out, and in many ways I have never learned so much. I am in the ongoing experiment of surrendering to process, as I learn how to not only trust myself and my own intuition, but to trust in life itself.

I know that I am in a moment of transition because I’ve found myself being visited by memories from different moments throughout life—particularly over the last ten year cycle.

The 20’s were not easy, in fact I’ll go as far as to say they were hard. But when I look at the experiences I gathered, the places I traveled, the things I learned about myself and the world, I am now able to recognize the wish fulfillment that it was. This serves as a reminder that the things I’m longing for are already on their way to me. I just need to be present enough so that I can recognize them when they arrive.

I absolutely hated high school. I felt so restricted, and didn’t understand the purpose of what they were teaching us. It felt like a waste of life, and I was already deeply aware of mortality and felt a fervent desire to see the world and experience something more meaningful than what felt available to me. My big piscean dream at that age was to take a year off before college and travel the world. I had no concept of how unrealistic that was especially considering the socio-economic status of my family. But spirit had a way of making that dream come true, it just took longer than I thought it would, and appeared in different clothing. My 20’s ended up being the wish fulfillment that my teenage self had so deeply longed for. I got to make art, learn, and have life-altering experiences in each of the places I visited. I lost myself in those places, and began the quest of finding myself too.

Some of the places that I traveled in my 20’s:

2013—Spain

2014—Brazil, Ecuador

2015—Cuba

2017—Trinidad, Japan

2018—Japan, Puerto Rico, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece

2019— England, New Zealand

2021— Costa Rica, England

2023— Brazil, Mexico/Oaxaca

2024— New Zealand, Brazil, England, Morocco

I turned 30 in February, and a family friend of mine told me that the 30’s are all about understanding. 6 months in to 30, this feels true. 

A couple of weeks ago I was impromptu shooting a sonic ode to blue birds in Topanga with a friend. Sometimes this city can leave my head buzzing. That feeling has been a large part of what has pushed me to travel over the years. As soon as I ascended into the mountains I could feel my head immediately begin to clear.

A strong message came through—a visceral understanding of the gift of travel as a direct way that the earth/Ayé has shown me her love. As I listened, I heard her say “What is it that you wish to see?” There was a feeling of abundant openness, followed by a recognition that this is what love is. What is it that you wish to see of me? Tell me and I’ll show you. I felt flooded by an overwhelming gratitude for the ways that the earth has allowed me to love her, and has loved me by allowing me to know her. I felt like I might just be doing something right through the work that has increasingly pulled focus, and allowed me to be in more direct relationship and reverence to her wisdom. The earth’s love and the gift of travel is one of the most profound blessings of my life, and I hope only to learn from it and share as abundantly as she has shared with me.

A couple of nights later I woke up in the middle of the night and scribbled down these words:

“Everybody has a story to tell. We are lucky if we‘re around long enough to tell it, luckier if we get to dream what happens next.”

Aging is a gift. Evolution is a gift. Time is a gift. Softness is a gift. My new aim is to move at the speed of softness, and to allow myself to receive the gentle blessings that my spirit so deeply craves. To learn how to move and share and offer and be an active contributor to this world, without the stress that is so normalized and that creates diseases in the body. I pray that I/we get to be some of the privileged folks who can dream up what happens next. I pray that I/we get to experience the fruits of our labor, and the manifestation of all the dreams we have been wishing into existence.

Good things take time. Transformation takes discomfort. Breakthrough takes patience and resilience. I have been praying for the devotion and space to sit regularly with nature and listen to her wisdom, so in many ways these moments of delay have been a disguised wish fulfillment too.

Still, there are butterflies outside my window. This one floats right up to the glass and hovers there to say hello. We live in an era with so many possible distractions, and so many opportunities for confusion, so I cherish the opportunity to look out at the caterpillars on the vine, be grateful that we are able to maintain a safe space for them to live, and pray that they will have the opportunity to turn into butterflies. The butterflies visit this vine every day, and I wonder if those same butterflies were born on this vine, returning often to encourage the others on their journeys. 

Even in the void/ moments of emptiness there is an abundance. In spaciousness comes possibility. We cannot receive without carving out room for the blessings to land. I cherish the sweetness of this time. I cherish the sweetness of this time to listen.