Did you watch Reading Rainbow?
I recently showed my children the first episode of the show. If you haven’t seen it, the show stars a young LeVar Burton and encouraged kids to dream, explore, and discover the world through reading.
Plus, it had a catchy theme song which started with the lyrics: “Butterfly in the sky. I can go twice as high.”
Like many people, I have always been fascinated by butterflies. Watching them flutter around, they always seem so light, happy, and energetic. As a girl, I would sit in the park in the Spring, holding as perfectly still as I could, in hopes that one would land on me.
Has a butterfly ever landed on you?
Butterflies have long been viewed by religions and cultures around the world as a symbol of hope, new beginnings, rebirth.
Growing up as the granddaughter of a Holocaust refugee, I was introduced to the book, I never saw another butterfly. It’s a book of poems written by kids who were interned in camps. The butterfly was a symbol of freedom, of a colorful, playful world they could not reach inside the camp walls.
After my first miscarriage, a woman in my support group told me that every time she saw a butterfly, she believed it was the soul of her unborn child coming back to check up on her; to tell her that it was ok and that she was going to be ok.
Butterflies, for me, are a symbol to celebrate my strength, my transformation, my survival, and my freedom. When I see a butterfly, I also think about my loved ones who have passed. I like the image that they’re coming back to visit me.
This is why the butterfly was part of the logos for my business in the beginning.
This peacefully floating insect is considered majestic. We chase after them with nets; hope one will land on us.
But, before it was fluttering by, the butterfly was a wiggling caterpillar. And, few people sit in the grass waiting to it to crawl on them.
The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity.
-George Carlin
The making of a butterfly
Like newborns of any species, the hatchling caterpillar has one driving instinct: to grow. So it needs to eat. And as it eats and grows, it has to shed its old skin. A caterpillar does this by molting. Hormones in the caterpillar’s body signal its body when it is time to molt.
In caterpillar talk, each new stage of a caterpillar’s growth is called an instar. Caterpillars molt 4 times (resulting in 5 instar stages).
Once they enter their last instar stage, the caterpillar starts to build its chrysalis, a cocoon. A hormone called juvenile hormone gets turned off. Without this hormone, the caterpillar’s body can develop imaginal discs (groups of cells that will form the butterfly parts).
But here is the amazing part: In order for these butterfly parts to grow, the insect has to destroy its caterpillar parts. Chemicals in the caterpillar’s muscles, gut, and saliva are released which cause the caterpillar’s cells to self-destruct.
Talk about hitting rock bottom.
A caterpillar is designed to destroy itself so it can transform itself.
If you were to break open a chrysalis during this stage, you would just see an icky, sticky mess! No caterpillar. No butterfly.
Inside the chrysalis, the imaginal disc cells become the building blocks for the butterfly. The material from the destroyed caterpillar cells is used to build the butterfly’s eyes, antennae, legs, wings, etc. The very same DNA is used to create not only two organisms that look very different, but which behave differently too! And the process of the transformation is tightly controlled. There are many steps, and lots of room for error. If the process is altered in any way, the butterfly will not reach its potential. If you try to help the butterfly emerge from its chrysalis early (because, you are just trying to help!), the butterfly will not be able to fly properly.
I’m sure you know where I’m going with this….
Lessons in transformation
After learning more about the science behind a caterpillar’s metamorphosis, I have to say, I am more intrigued by the slinky, hairy work-like insect. George Carlin was right, the caterpillar does do all the hard work and deserves our respect. While I’m not sure this will lead to me letting any caterpillars crawl on me anytime in the near future, here are 5 lessons about caring for ourselves that I have learned from these creatures:
1. Sometimes you have to let yourself completely breakdown before you can pull yourself back together.
2. Transformation is a multi-step process and each step along the way is important and necessary for reaching your full potential.
3. You cannot rush these steps. Each stage is a building block for the next. Only by being patient and gentle with yourself, will you be able to grow your best wings.
4. And these steps take up a large part of the butterfly’s life cycle. While it varies by species, a butterfly spends about 1/2 of its existence going from egg to larva to chyrsalis. Here is the monarch butterfly’s life cycle as an example. In its butterfly form, it lives 20-32 days. But it takes just about the same amount of time (17-27) days for a hatched egg to grow and transform.
[This has me reflecting on 2 things: First, Eric Carle wasn’t too far off when he has the Very Hungry Catepillar eat for a full week before becoming a big, fat caterpillar. And, second, like humans, caterpillar’s transformational growth happens around mid-life. We’re not that different, really.]
5. A big chunk of the caterpillar’s transformation takes place inside the chrysalis, hidden from the public’s view. While I am a big proponent of making sure you have a supportive and caring network of family and friends by your side, remember that most people will not see the work that you are doing. And may not even be aware that you are doing it.
[Ok, I am not joking about this. A light yellow butterfly just fluttered by my window as I was typing that last paragraph. I looked up just in time to see its pretty and peaceful body dart past against a background of green grass and blooming trees. But then I noticed that the branches of the trees are swaying fairly consistently. A reminder that life may not be as calm for that little butterfly as I would like to imagine?]
Monarchs, for example, often migrate 700 miles in their lifetime. Sometimes arriving wind-swept with damaged wings.
Bonus lesson…
6. Once the butterfly does emerge, the transformation may have ended but the work doesn’t. Just like the butterfly, we, too, will continue to face the elements. We will continue to encounter bumps along the journey.
What the caterpillar calls the end, the butterfly calls the beginning.
-Unknown
Here’s to your ongoing transformation and growth!
