If you've experienced abuse, you have likely spent at least a season living in silence.
Maybe you've spent years without a voice. 

Isolated. 
Disconnected. 
Unsafe. 

Not that the opportunities have never been there, but you haven’t felt the safety of connecting—so you simply don’t share much, or anything. 

Imagine with me for a moment... the process of metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly. 

The caterpillar tends to be blissfully unaware of the situations surrounding it. Catty is focused on eating the leaf in just ahead, then crawling down the stem and eating the next leaf. Catty is doing perfectly fine as a caterpillar, but she possesses no bird's eye view of her surroundings. She cannot, because she is consumed with surviving, just doing the next thing that’s right in front of her.

Each waking moment, she's just taking the next step she sees. She can't see further ahead than that, even if she wanted to. And that’s fine.

Survival mode is a good way to survive.
Survival mode is better than not surviving.
Survival mode keeps Catty alive.

But at some point, Catty begins to realize things are not as limited as they seem. More exists beyond the scope of her view. She begins to long for a broader horizon that isn't just about survival alone.

She awakens gradually to the awareness that she isn't actually meant for merely eating the next leaf at the end of this stem. The world is bigger than that, there is a freedom she hasn't known before, waiting for her. This dawning understanding is scary and exciting and thrilling, but she cannot experience that freedom as a caterpillar.

She cannot function in that world as a caterpillar. The idea is so incredibly terrifying that she wants to hide away. She craves walls to protect her from the fear that freedom brings.

Catty pulls away from her potential future because she doesn't know what to do next. She is aware of just the brink of recognition that she was created for more than survival mode, but before she can fully comprehend it, her instinct is to retreat.

For awhile she spins a hard shell around herself. She puts up walls, barriers between herself and the world. When she goes into the cocoon, it’s kind of a withdrawal from the world, and it may actually feel good to pull away from the world at that point. It feels like she's creating safety for herself. She's weaving this wall around herself for protection.

And while she is behind that wall, she falls apart.
Behind that barrier she melts into liquified goo.

She completely deconstructs.

The process of this metamorphosis in nature is shocking. How does a crawly creature completely liquify and then re-form into fantastical beauty? 

It is the same for us. Only Divine creative power could carry us through this process, forming a butterfly out of the cocoon of survival pain. 

But in the middle of this journey, when we are hidden away in silence behind the hard shell, when we are undergoing deconstruction from caterpillar into liquification -- it feels dark and isolated and lonely, as though you will never see the sun again. It feels like the only thing available to you is to stay safe behind hard shell walls.

But this is not the final stage. 

Cocooning does not have to be your permanent reality. It is only permanent if you choose to stop living and stop growing and stay goo, while you’re hidden within the walls of the chrysalis.

In the goo, the liquification time, it’s almost kind of like a time of rest. You’re just not engaging with the world. It might be rest as in depression, or it can be rest as in choosing to withdraw... or it can be some combination of both. 

If you stay with the process, then your wings begin to form. Your wings and thorax and abdomen takes shape. And your antennae—your danger radar—begin to form. Now you have tools for sensing and experiencing aspects you could not have been aware of as a caterpillar.

Then, after all that, you begin eclosion—the struggle to emerge.

Eclosion takes time. And it is even more risky than becoming liquified. Any well-meaning helper who comes along and tries to just break your cocoon open, who takes away your voice and personhood again, who tries to spare you the struggle of shedding the cocoon yourself... can leave you crippled.

When a butterfly first breaks free of the chrysalis, her wings are crinkly and soft. The struggle to emerge sends meconium through the veins to the edges of each wing, to harden and strengthen them. Her strength is a direct result of her struggle.

Helpers: if your approach to support takes away a survivor's voice or encourages dependency on you instead of empowering and strengthening her, you are at great risk of crippling her process of healing.

But when the time of goo is gone and you have emerged from your cocoon, your entire existence becomes a completely different dynamic. Now, instead of just seeing the leaf and the stem, you can rise above to view the broader picture. 

You can see the birds-eye view. 
You can choose where to land. 
Your antenna warns you of danger. 

You are still delicate. You are still easily harmed. You are not invincible simply because you've gone through the darkness and emerged from the chrysalis into the light. 

You are not untouchable. You are still sensitive and delicate but you have the ability to interact with the world from a completely different vantage point. 

However, each person must experience each of those crucial stages in order to become a butterfly. Every individual who possesses beauty and delicacy and gentleness has experienced some form of this metamorphosis.

Mature beauty and strength of character is forged somewhere between the goo and the exclusion, in the struggle to emerge.

It’s the emerging, I believe, that is the hardest... when the butterfly is formed but has not yet struggled to emerge from the cocoon. During eclosion, you are wrestling against the forces that bind you, the outside world, to become a creature of freedom that can engage with the world on your own terms, that can fly.

We tend to fear the struggle as though it were the endgame.
But the struggle is not the endgame.

Regardless of being fully formed inside the chrysalis, the final creature will still remain deformed without the struggle. When you’re in that place, you’re beginning to ask those questions that initiate the struggle that will ultimately break you free of your walls.

Where are you on this journey right now? 

Are you a caterpillar focused on survival? 
Are you hidden away inside the cocoon? 
Are you struggling to emerge as a new creature? 

Every stage of the process is crucial to the healthy forming of your identity and freedom.

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