The Chrysalis Years

On dissolving, re-forming, and learning to live the middle.

Every spring, the butterfly kit arrives — a small cup of caterpillars and a thin layer of food.
They eat. They grow. They wander the edges of their small plastic world.

And then, one day, they climb to the top and begin to wrap themselves in stillness.

We watch them, day after day.
Hanging there. Motionless.
Becoming something we can’t see.

And then, suddenly — they emerge.
Wings wet. Bodies trembling.
They rest at the threshold, waiting for the air to teach them how to fly.

There’s something about that quiet middle — that space between what was and what will be — that speaks to every one of us.
Because at some point, we all find ourselves there.

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The Middle

The chrysalis is not punishment.
It’s not failure or pause.
It’s protection — a container that holds the work of re-formation.

We tend to treat stillness like something to escape.
But transformation often begins with surrender.

In the middle, everything familiar dissolves.
The shape that carried us this far no longer fits.
We stop moving, not because we’re broken, but because motion can’t carry us where becoming will.

You can’t climb your way into flight.
You have to dissolve into it.

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