The Chrysalis
This is how Google AI responds when you ask it ‘what happens inside a chrysalis?’
“During the pupa stage, or while inside a chrysalis, a caterpillar undergoes a remarkable transformation into a butterfly:
Digestion
The caterpillar uses the same enzymes it used to digest food as a larva to break down its own body. This process is known as holometabolism.
Cell regeneration
The caterpillar's cells are broken down into undifferentiated cells called imaginal cells. These cells can become any type of cell in the new butterfly's body.
Organ formation
The imaginal cells form the new butterfly's organs, wings, antennae, and legs.
Recycling
Some parts of the caterpillar, like the mouth, are recycled into other parts of the butterfly. For example, the caterpillar's mouth becomes the butterfly's proboscis, which is a tube for eating.
Emergence
After 5–21 days, the chrysalis changes color and the butterfly is ready to emerge. The emergence can take as little as a few minutes, but can take up to 45 minutes for weaker butterflies.”
The process!
It’s the week for annual self-reflection. The chrysalis is a handy metaphor to describe the change process. Coaches and self-help gurus often evoke the emerging butterfly and the mysterious process of transformation. The real process seems grisly, uncanny, mystical. It’s not the story of most change processes, which might be more gradual, iterative, less dramatic. For me, however, this metaphor sticks for 2024. It has been weird, messy, and hard – and I think I’m just about ready for emergence.
Almost a year ago, we arrived in New Mexico. The first time I saw Ghost Ranch, it was a steely cold day in January and snow laced the ochre of the mesas and the variated cliffs. As we rounded the final curve to our new house, an adobe chrysalis of my own, nestled under impossibly intricate cliff chimneys and hemmed in by the lunar outline of Cerro Pedernal, I felt immediately at home. It was like the click of a magnet adhering to metal.
The move was seismic. Shifting our two boys, Lily the Golden Retriever, and all our movable assets from Chiang Mai to Abiquiú, NM, took all my energy and focus for the first few months. We had been drawn here by a job offer at Ghost Ranch for my husband, and the role quickly settled upon him as if he had always been destined to be here. Part of me celebrated his perfect fit, the delicious alignment that comes when someone is just where they should be in the world. Part of me chafed under the unfamiliar role of second fiddle, and the weirdly trad wife vibes that accompanied the role of being the CEO’s wife.
When the dust settled, though, I found myself in chrysalis mode.
Unable to work for most of the year, as I waited for immigration to approve my work permit, I had plenty of time to engage in my own form of holometabolism. The last twenty years of my life have been spent as a humanitarian aid worker in a variety of conflicted countries across Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
During the last four years, our family was buffeted by the pandemic, seven house moves, three different countries and a family evacuation following the military coup in Myanmar.
I spent aimless days staring out the window of our house at the unforgiving outline of Cerro Pedernal, letting go of who I thought I was and allowing the memories to surface. Without a job, without aid work, I had lost my story. My identity was in the swamp of the past, the broken marriage, the lost loved ones, the burning anger at all the injustice and violence in Myanmar, in Gaza, in Sudan. The swirling soup of it washed around me. I slept a lot and cried a lot.
The imaginal cells started to emerge as I walked endlessly around the Ranch. Sometimes with my friend Juniper, always with Lily the dog, I traced the same route repeatedly, down to Padre Jim’s bridge, through the fence, up the arroyo, following the footprints of mule deer, elk and coyotes, past the twisted ancient junipers and piñons.
Ideas circled around my head wildly as I grasped for a new sense of who I could be, here, safe, with this past and these experiences, in this new place. I tried out some things that didn’t stick. I had a shot at volunteering (annoying if you can’t tell other people what to do). I got involved in a lot of pro bono coaching and started to build connections to foundations and non-profits here in New Mexico who are doing essential, inspiring things in our community. I started to swim in the nearby lake and allowed the muddy waters to soak into every part of me.
Many deep, old friends came our way and stayed for a while, connecting me with their love, and my past and sharing the romance and wildness of New Mexico with us.
After a while, recycling began. I started to see how some of my old experiences could become part of the new story. How I could be myself here, my real self, not hiding behind a carefully constructed identity as an aid worker but still as someone who wants to add value to the world, as a coach, as a writer, and as a convener of like-minded folks.
As winter settled and darkness closed in, I grew increasingly frustrated with the process of waiting. My planner brain was ready to get on with it! As the election results were confirmed, irrational fears about immigration set in. Finally, I turned to writing to provide a sense of purpose while I could not formally get on with setting up my business or connecting with clients. I was not yet fully cooked.
As the year closes out, the wait is finally over. I can start 2025 with a new business and a new sense of belonging to this place. I might still be slightly sodden from caterpillar soup, but the first cracks in the pupa have formed and I have started to emerge.