Forging ahead, emerging anew
We’re all going through our own metamorphosis right now. I recently listened to the new book, “Untamed” by Glennon Doyle, and she mentions difficult times can feel like undergoing “metamorphosis.”
This word struck me like a ton of bricks. We all seem to be trying to find our “new normal,” and it is the perfect word to describe our current times. We could very well be in the cocoon – right now – undergoing a transformation. Our very own metamorphosis.
My husband and I found our “new normal” a while ago, after our son’s diagnosis. Our own metamorphosis occurred three years ago, although at the time, we didn’t recognize it as such.
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“Your son had a stroke.”
Those words – the lightning bolt through my heart, caused me to grab for the chair and sit. Words I never knew existed strung together and hung in the open air. In hindsight, I wish that doctor would have told me to sit. I now know why, “You might want to sit down,” precedes bad news.
Perhaps we all would have liked that heads up before the pandemic hit. We would have been more prepared, had we known it was coming, right?
However, with most bad news, you don’t know. It blindsides you. It hits you from all angles, at every turn, and you’re left watching every corner, awaiting more bad news, trying to escape from the challenges that may be coming and positioning defenses around you, hoping no one can breach your safe space.
I recently wrote about “the middle of the journey,” – how this time is “lonely, transformational, and isolating.” I wrote these words on January 14th, right before the pandemic of Covid-19 began sweeping across the country.
I think it’s fair to say that many of us may be experiencing these same feelings currently – isolation, loneliness, and transformation. That’s because we’re in the middle. Right now, we’re in the hard part. We’re undergoing the transformation.
While some of us may be home right now without work, free time abounds. For many of us, however, quite the opposite is occurring.
Those of us with little ones are struggling. We’re balancing jobs, managing our households, downloading preschool curriculum, printing kindergarten site words, and just trying to simply stay afloat (and make sure meals are on the table, we aren’t overeating cookies, and the bottomless pit of dishes doesn’t spill over onto our countertops). My husband and I are juggling a new schedule and another “new normal” and frequently, we are ships simply passing in the night.
There are lots of circumstances out there that make this time incredibly challenging for many. I can’t begin to think about the frontline workers – the ones going to work every day and putting their lives on the line. So many are sacrificing. So many are scared.
And for many of us – we’re surviving.
Oh, how comfortable this feeling is for me. Survival.
I’ve learned this feeling is basically your body’s fight or flight response. Our body is responding and we’re constantly wondering – should I fight? Should I flee?
Yes, this is hard. Hard seems to be a word that defines our circumstances a lot of the time. Hard was overcoming infertility. Hard was undergoing IVF and injecting over 40 needles into my stomach. For those of you #sharingyourstory during National Infertility Awareness Week (#NIAW) right now, thank you. Awareness of such a delicate subject and private matter is hard and scary and for many, we keep our stories hidden. Thank you for being brave enough to share your part of your infertility journey.
Hard was also overcoming a life-changing diagnosis for our son. Hard was handing my child over to a neurosurgeon. Hard was getting through a year-long rehabilitative process. Hard was confronting my PTSD in my therapist’s office. Hard was reliving those hard moments out loud, then sitting down to listen to them on a recording to help lessen my fight or flight response when those memories surfaced.
What I can and want to tell you, though, is you can do this. You don’t have to run.
Confront the hard – and confront it head-on. Running from our feelings right now isn’t going to do any good. Hard things happen – and it’s just a simple fact that we won’t get through life unscathed. Hard things will happen to us, all of us.
I am not the same person now that I was three years ago. I wasn’t the same person three years ago that I was before IVF.
Circumstances, difficult ones, change us. We learn things about the world, and life, and people – that surprise us. We feel ways we’ve never felt before.
One of the greatest gifts of these transformations has been empathy. I saw humanity – vibrant, loving, and full of positivity – shake my belief about what “doing good” really means. Through the various stages of our metamorphosis, I saw people pull together and donate money for my son’s therapy, a meal train started after his initial diagnosis, and random gifts show up on my doorstep when we needed the encouragement the most.
If you can, you may want to look at this time as a metamorphosis. Know that what is happening is beyond our control. Know that it’s OK to lean into our feelings during this time. Acknowledge that there may be gifts during this, as well as gifts awaiting you on the other side. Finding the gifts of transformation will help us through the transformation.
Yes, right now, it may be scary, and dark, and cold. Lonely. Isolating. Perhaps, you are undergoing your own metamorphosis.
But remember, we all have the opportunity to come out on the other side of this different, but better. Changed, but in a positive way.
The caterpillar, when emerging from the cocoon, must be fascinated by how he has changed. He has wings. Gosh, that cocoon was brutal. It was so isolating and lonely. But what it must be like to see the world through a completely different lens. The caterpillar, which used to walk, now can fly.
When we emerge from our homes and lives and greet our friends and family again, remember, we all have the opportunity to begin anew.
Just like the butterfly, perhaps our own metamorphosis will be more spectacular than we can ever imagine.