My Chrysalis Year Unfolding
In this tender shoot of a new year, as delicate as the first crocus of spring, I am nesting. This cocooning is exactly what my first post-divorce year is calling for.
There are phases of our lives that are a whirlwind of activity, moving about our world with no shortage of things to do and places to go and people to see and a big outer life to be lived. Sometimes we do that with a sense of purpose and direction. Other times we are simply going through the motions. The passage of time is on the periphery of our consciousness but we don’t really engage with our inner world—at least I didn’t, for a long time.
And then there are the seasons that cry out out STOP. Rest. That is me, right now. Nesting. For the first time in my life, I am living in a place of my own. Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own has been a source of longing and inspiration since my college days and now I have a whole apartment of my own. Virginia would be jealous.
I have chosen every piece of furniture, every bit of decor and I am still feathering my nest, making it just right. This is a cocoon that reflects the core of who I am. In the silent candlelit evening, my yoga mat laid out on the colorful Turkish carpet, I am delighted with my little altar: the buddha tea light, the call to bloom from the beautiful artistic mind of
, the scent of calming geranium essential oil in the diffuser chosen for me by who knows all about how to soften and cocoon. I leaf through the poetry of Rumi and or turn to a passage of Pema Chödrön’s The Places That Scare You.
As I go through my yoga stretches and poses, I listen to Beautiful Chorus’ soothing “Inner Peace” and breathe deeply.
My heart is open
I am aware
In me is a knowing
Of love, love, love
In this nesting phase of my life, there are moments of peace that I find on the mat and in the resurrected indulgence of lavender-scented bubble baths (it has been years since I had a home with a deep bathtub; how I’ve missed a candlelit bath).
Then there are the moments I stand completely still, dish towel in my hand, looking around the kitchen, the quiet suddenly stultifying, the questions circling me like so many small inquisitors: “Where in the hell am I? How did this all happen? Where is the big house? The husband? What is this life I’m living?” Some nights the questions leave a trail of sadness as I crawl into my cozy but too-big-for-just-me bed. When I confide to my group of soul sisters that I feel lost, one of them leaves a video message, telling me to be compassionate with myself. I dissolve into tears.
These questions and bouts of sadness and conflicting emotions are to be expected. Last year I ended my 33-year marriage. I blew up my life, an act that I had not known myself to be capable of. It was my choice and I don’t regret it. I have chronicled that painful but also liberating journey in this newsletter.
What I think I have underestimated is the grief. I have gained what I longed for—self-determination, freedom, a return to Self—but I have lost a great deal, too and I am still coming to terms with that. I need more time to understand what these huge changes in my life mean for my life going forward—who I want to be in the world now, in late mid-life, how I want to be in a relationship with a future partner, if that’s what I choose.
And that is why this is my season to nest. I like to think of it as my chrysalis year, the form a caterpillar takes before it emerges from its cocoon as a fully formed moth or butterfly. It feels right when I read that some butterfly species spend all winter in their chrysalis before they emerge in the spring. And at the end of that process, there is the final stage, the imago, Latin for image. I love that it’s called the imaginal stage, as a woman whose imagination is her most prized possession. This is the adult stage. For me, the chrysalis might last a few months or a season, perhaps not a full year. I will give it the time it needs. If there is one thing I am now certain of, this adult Amy is still growing into her wings and that’s perfectly okay.
As always on Fridays, I give you a taste of the sources of inspiration from this week’s reading and listening and conversations, all of which nourish Clarity, Connection, Community, Creativity, the guideposts of my life. If you’re in a chrysalis stage, for whatever reason, I hope you’ll find something here to keep you cozy as you wait for what singer-songwriter Allison Russell calls “the springtime of my present tense.”
Clarity
It was my dear friend
who writes who told me to listen to the “Change Cycle: A Space for Dreaming” episode of Martha Beck and Rowan Magnan’s podcast Bewildered episode when I told her I was nesting. Once I began to listen, I knew exactly why. Martha uses the metaphor of a butterfly to describe the letting go of the old self and that undefined time when you become the new self. It is fascinating. I had no idea that when a caterpillar is “full fed” it has precisely enough cells to make the butterfly it is meant to be and then without adding another cell, it makes a cocoon which hardens into the chrysalis and in many species of caterpillar “it melts into an undifferentiated goop.”What happens next is even crazier, as Beck describes it: “When the whole thing is completely disaggregated, it triggers a chemical reaction that activates the part of the beast’s DNA, the imago cell which has the image of a butterfly built into it, and it turns it on and takes all those cells and makes a perfect butterfly.”
I appreciate the clarity of this metaphor and what it tells me about my own unfolding this year: so much is happening inside this little container of the chrysalis, and often we’re unaware of all the tiny, incremental changes leading us to the moment of flight.
Connection
I can think of no better companion for nesting and connecting with oneself than May Sarton’s Journal of Solitude. I have an old paperback copy, with yellowed pages that I like to pick up and sniff because I love the comforting smell of old books. I understand when Sarton tell us that she is frightened when she is first alone again, and yet it is in the writing that she finds the longed-for connection with herself:
“I feel inadequate. I have made an open place, a place for meditation. What if I cannot find myself in it?…For a long time now, every meeting with another human being has been a collision. I feel too much, I sense too much…I have written every poem, every novel, for the same purpose—to find out what I think, to know where I stand.”
As Sarton “cracks open the inner world again” in the solitude of her New Hampshire cottage back in 1973, in the present day author Steven Rowley, delights me and moves me with his latest novel The Celebrants, a tribute to enduring friendship. I was so glad to see Steven interviewed by
in as the first guest in a wonderful new series Authors Over 40,” interviews with authors whose first novels were published after their 40th birthdays (like Kerri herself).I enjoyed this glimpse into Steven’s process but especially this about his favorite part of the writing life: “It’s the little quiet moments of discovery. A perfect joke. A beautifully crafted sentence. The time alone with your thoughts that lead to the right breakthrough.” You can see the results of his discovery in the pages of The Celebrants. It is both laugh-out loud funny and achingly sweet and sad, making me want to call all my dearest friends and tell them how much I love them.
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