The Chrysalis

It’s Thursday morning in Elyria. January cold—the kind that settles into your bones and makes the world feel brittle. I’m at a job caring for two of the sweetest fur babies, both rescues. Billy, black and white, tilts his head the way dogs do when he hears his name, as if language itself is a gift worth savoring. Sophie barely opens her eyes from her couch-side siesta, just enough to acknowledge she’s heard her name, just enough to stay connected without leaving rest behind.

There is something holy in that kind of presence.

I’m grateful this morning that my uncle picked my 82-year-old mother up so she wouldn’t have to drive to his home in Brecksville—forty minutes away—in her ancient car on icy highways in these freezing temperatures. Gratitude doesn’t erase the anxiety she’s been carrying: about finances, about yet another disability denial, about the long string of hardships that arrived without invitation, training, or consent. Hardships that were simply thrust into her life when illness entered mine.

Caregiving is rarely chosen the way we like to pretend it is.
Often, it’s assigned.

She’s been anxious about the cold snap.
Anxious about the state of the world.
Anxious about what tomorrow might demand.

And I find myself wishing—quietly, lovingly—that she shared my deeply ingrained core of spiritual faith. Not because faith erases anxiety (it doesn’t), but because it gives anxiety somewhere to rest. We’ll unpack that more another day. For now, the truth can stand on its own.

One of the most consistent undercurrents of my life has been the fear of losing those who matter most to me. Sometimes that loss has been literal—death, relocation, job loss, estrangement, separation. In the world of rare disease, it is often the loss of life as we once knew it: the sudden, ruthless pulling of the rug out from underneath everything we had cautiously and purposefully built. Sometimes the loss takes the form of anticipatory grief—the constant bracing for impact, the quiet calculation of what might be taken next. Most often, it is both at once. A wound and a calling, intertwined so tightly I can no longer tell where one ends and the other begins.

Maybe that’s the lesson I’m meant to learn in this lifetime.
Maybe it isn’t.

We don’t get to decide what the universe—or God—assigns to anyone else’s journey.
What we do get to decide is how we show up inside the one we’ve been given.

We can choose the gifts.
We can practice gratitude.
We can look for the opportunities and lessons hidden inside moments that don’t look like blessings at all.

And then we can work—really, really hard—to pay it forward.

The beloved badass of Yellowstone, Beth Dutton, says it more colorfully. And honestly, sometimes language like that fits.

We try.
We fail.
We try again.
We fail better.
Learn better.
And do better.

We don’t do it perfectly, and we don’t do it just for ourselves.
We do it for the children.
For their children.
For future generations of this beautiful planet we’ve been entrusted with.

There are very few people—if any—whose lives have turned out exactly as they imagined.

That was never the point of the journey.

This is why the caterpillar has always felt like such a faithful metaphor for being human.

Scientifically speaking, a caterpillar’s life unfolds in stages that mirror our own more closely than we like to admit. There’s the egg, then the larval stage—an intense season of eating, growing, developing. In human terms, we might call this childhood. Then come the instars: growth phases marked by molting, by shedding skin that no longer fits. These stages parallel adolescence, which has changed drastically over time. What once ended in the early teens now stretches well into the late twenties for many of us.

During these years, caterpillars grow and shed repeatedly.
So do we.
The skin splits.
Growth demands discomfort.

But the stage I’m most drawn to—the one we talk about least—is the chrysalis.

Once fully grown, the caterpillar forms a chrysalis (or a cocoon, in the case of moths). Inside it, the body doesn’t simply rest. It breaks down. Cells dissolve and reorganize entirely. The creature becomes something unrecognizable before it becomes something new.

In human terms, the chrysalis is isolation.
It is darkness.
It is solitude.
It is quiet.

Sometimes it’s chosen.
Sometimes it’s imposed.
Often, it’s both.

If we fight that stage—if we demand productivity, visibility, or proof of worth while we’re still dissolving—we don’t emerge well. We risk never emerging at all. But if we rest within it, if we listen, if we discern what this season is asking of us, something extraordinary happens.

We don’t just pop out one day and fly.

Emergence is a process.

The chrysalis falls away slowly, and that shedding often mirrors what happens with our families of origin. Differentiation hurts. Separation costs. Becoming who we are meant to be sometimes requires distance we never planned to take. I can be honest about that without being cruel. I can acknowledge fracture without denying love. The emotional cost is real—and so is the necessity.

As inhabitants of this planet, we all have a responsibility. I believe we pay rent here not with perfection, but with intention—by choosing, moment by moment, to do the next right thing.

I’ve learned to ask myself, with uncomfortable honesty:
Is what I’m doing in this moment adding to the vision I have for my life—or quietly pulling me away from it?

As a person of faith, I understand this as living in alignment with God’s teachings, or at least striving toward them. Others may frame it differently. What matters is the shared truth underneath: the next moment is not guaranteed.

So how I spend this one matters.

I live under the authority of something greater than myself—a power fueled by love, trust, connection, and mission. When I forget that, anxiety tightens its grip. When I remember it, fear doesn’t disappear, but I become steadier within it.

If there is comfort here, let it be this: the quiet seasons are not wasted.
The fear does not mean failure.
The chrysalis is not the end of the story.

And if there is a challenge, let it be this: stop rushing your own becoming to make others comfortable.

Choose meaning anyway.
Choose purpose anyway.
Choose love, even when it costs.
Rest when it is time to rest.
Emerge when it is time to emerge.

I am not meant to fly all the time.
But when I do, may it be with wings formed by truth, patience, and grace.

Author’s Note

This essay was written in a season of quiet becoming—shaped by caregiving, chronic illness, faith, and the slow, often unseen work of transformation. It is not meant to offer answers so much as companionship, language for experiences that are often lived but rarely named. If you find yourself in a chrysalis season—waiting, grieving, listening, or learning to trust again—may this piece remind you that rest is not failure, and becoming is not wasted time.