Spiritual Lessons from Nature Part XII: The In-Between Place

(photo Summer, 2018, New England shoreline)

Like any good psychotherapist, I love the overly-used caterpillar- to-chrysalis-to-butterfly metaphor to convey the beauty, process and possibility of transformation.

(photo, Summer, 2017, upper state New York)

However, it wasn’t until about a year ago that I learned a little bit more about that in-between place called the chrysalis (or cocoon) where the insect is neither caterpillar nor butterfly, but rather mush.

That’s right. Mush.

Or, as a Scientific American magazine journalist described it in a 2012 online article titled “How Does a Caterpillar Turn into a Butterfly?”: “Ooze.”

…The caterpillar digests itself, releasing enzymes to dissolve all of its tissues. If you were to cut open a cocoon or chrysalis at just the right time, caterpillar soup would ooze out.

Lovely.

But you know what the truth is?
I’ve been there.

I’ve been in that in-between place when something I was once so sure of in myself or in my life has dissolved into an unformed something that I can no longer recognize, but has not yet formed into something new and unexpected.  

And I must admit, in this in-between time, the possibility of me just totally spilling out into a puddle on the floor has felt really real because the in-between place is a tricky and uncertain place to transition through.

Where, if not for the hyper-structure of my day-to-day life as a working mom--like the structure and safety of a cocoon--I too might have just “oozed out” with even the slightest pin prick to the delicate casing that surrounded me.

To which, looking back now, I have to say: Respect. 

Because the in-between place may not be pretty, but it is part of the journey.

For you and for me.

So the next time you find yourself in a close encounter in nature with a caterpillar, a butterfly, or maybe if you are lucky enough, a cocoon or chrysalis hanging from the branch of a tree, you can add another layer of complexity or nuance into that metaphor of all metaphors that symbolizes the miraculous process we call transformation; a humble in-between place when we are nothing more than ooze.