1. Truth: I’ve been thinking a lot about the lifecycle of a butterfly. It started because I was thinking about how it’s becoming clear to me that while I’ve done lots of study and made efforts to “heal,” I’ve skipped a step — a big step. I gathered all the information, the knowledge, and the help, I’ve done the practice, read all the books, but I didn’t actually allow the unraveling, the breakdown required to breakthrough and transform, to internalize and embody what I know, what I’ve experienced. I’m afraid I’m a caterpillar who put on a pair of fairy wings, those kind you can get at a costume store or in the kid’s toy section, made of wire and mesh and glitter and ribbons that you strap on by putting your arms through elastic loops. I think I’ve evolved but I’m still a caterpillar, wearing fake wings and believing I can fly. 

2. Truth: For a long time, I’ve thought what I’m feeling is burnout. And it was, in the way Andréa Ranae describes it: “Burnout is the result of consistently overriding who you are and what you need.” It’s the “why” that I got wrong. I blamed my job at CSU, then came COVID and losing Sam & Ang, then it was menopause, then my Dad dying and his death, which coincided with my mom’s stroke and resulting dementia. And yes, those things all contributed, but they aren’t the true source. It’s me, my insistence that I’ve dealt with it, that I’m through it, that I’ve “moved on.”

3. Truth: The only cure is to feel what I am feeling. Stop running from it, stop avoiding it, and let the crash happen. I have been afraid to feel the true depth of all those things that happened, thought I could name them, see them, and be done without the full heartbreak, the ruin and reorganization required to undergo a complete metamorphosis. I wanted to skip all that, the mess and the discomfort. And yet avoiding it is exhausting and no longer even workable (if it ever was), certainly not sustainable. 

One wish: May I keep my heart open to all of it, the grief and the grace.