We are a society obsessed with metamorphosis, before and after, caterpillar and butterfly. A lovely metaphor ignoring the often painful process of transformation. For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with our society’s fixation on the after without acknowledging the often uncomfortable decomposition of self required for our evolution.
We so rarely talk about the brutality of growth. By completely ignoring the messy, less poetic bits, we give the illusion that change is always easy, painless, even beautiful. In my own life, I have often felt ashamed of the unfiltered parts of my story, the parts where I was more anti-heroine than heroine. When everyone else reveals only the best parts of themselves, how can we ever feel compelled to share our own full stories?
We all know about caterpillars and butterflies, far fewer k…