🦋 The Becoming: What a Caterpillar Can Teach Us About Healing

There are seasons in life when everything we’ve known begins to unravel. Slowly, the identity we’ve carried no longer fits, the life we built no longer feels like home, and the path ahead is shrouded in uncertainty.

These moments are often mistaken for endings. But what if they are beginnings in disguise?

In life, we often talk about healing as a linear process. But true transformation is rarely tidy or convenient. It can be messy, uncomfortable, quiet, and invisible to the outside world. Like the caterpillar, we may enter seasons of darkness where everything familiar breaks down, not knowing that something beautiful is taking shape inside us.

This poem is a reflection of that sacred, hidden work. It's the journey from pain to possibility:

The Metamorphosis of Becoming

Once upon a leaf,

a speck of life was laid...

fragile, unnoticed, full of unseen promise.

It waited in silence,

held by the rhythm of time.

Then came the hunger.

Not for wings,

but for survival.

The tiny caterpillar devoured leaf after leaf,

growing, stretching,

shedding skin after skin...

learning that to grow,

you must let go of what no longer fits.

And then, one day…

Stillness. A turning inward.

No more rushing toward becoming.

Only the sacred pause,

the chrysalis covering.

Here, in the dark,

the shape of the old dissolves.

The crawling self is undone.

It is not graceful.

It is not easy.

But it is necessary.

In the quiet cocoon,

the blueprint of flight awakens.

And then…

a crack.

A push.

A struggle into light.

Wings, once imagined, now unfold...

delicate, imbued in possibility.

The butterfly does not rush.

It waits.

It breathes.

And when it is ready,

it soars.

A Gentle Reminder for the Healing Soul

If you find yourself in the “in-between" ... no longer who you were, not yet who you will become, know this: you are not broken. You are becoming.

Healing asks us to be patient with ourselves, to honor the quiet spaces, and to trust the process even when we can’t yet see the wings. There is no need to rush. The transformation is already happening, even if it’s invisible in the moment.

Like the butterfly, your wings will come in their own time, in their own way. And when they do, you’ll rise not just because of what you’ve been through, but because of who you’ve become in the process.

Keep going.

Learn from the caterpillar that transforms into the brave butterfly.

You’re becoming something beautiful.