The Butterfly People

I saw it before I made it.

Not with my hands.
Not with paint.
Not even with a plan.

I saw it somewhere deeper first.

I was talking to Caleb about passion—about following what lights you up, about paying attention to what makes your spirit lean forward, about how your soul has a language and joy is one of the ways it speaks. I was pouring motherly wisdom into him, trying to encourage him to trust himself, to notice what feels alive, to honor the things that call to him naturally.

And while I was giving that encouragement away, something rose up inside me.

A picture.

A butterfly.

Not just any butterfly, but a butterfly stretched across four small canvases, split into pieces and still somehow whole.

At the time, I thought it was simply a neat creative idea.

I thought maybe I would do it eventually.

I thought maybe I could use pages from some old book to create the wings.

I didn’t know yet that the words inside the butterfly would need to be mine.

The Pieces Arrive

Around the same time, I had been thinking about printing my writing so I could begin organizing it into books.

My thoughts were becoming chapters.

My healing was becoming language.

Things I had once only carried internally were becoming tangible enough to print, hold, rearrange, and eventually share.

Then I gave a coworker one of the tea towels I had sewn.

There wasn’t some grand plan behind it. I had simply been dabbling in sewing that week—because apparently I refuse to have only one hobby at a time. 😂

When I handed it to her, I told her that I dabble in all kinds of creative things and that sewing happened to be the thing lighting me up at the moment.

She told me she had once dabbled in painting but quickly lost interest.

Then she asked if I wanted some supplies she still had.

Of course I said yes.

The next day, she brought them to work.

Four five-by-seven canvases.

Four.

I had originally imagined one large canvas.

But the second I saw those four smaller ones, I knew.

The butterfly could be divided across them.

Four separate canvases.

One image.

Fragmented and still whole.

Suddenly the project had the exact physical form it needed.

And then I noticed something else.

I had been giving when both pieces of the project arrived.

I gave Caleb encouragement, and while doing so I received the vision.

I gave my coworker something I had made, and she gave me the material needed to bring that vision into form.

Every time I opened my hands to give, they came back holding another piece of the butterfly.

Maybe generosity doesn’t empty us.

Maybe it creates circulation.

Maybe what moves through us makes room for what wants to come through next.

I Made Wings Out of My Own Story

Once the canvases arrived, I knew immediately that some random old book would no longer do.

If this butterfly represented becoming, then the words inside the wings needed to come from the transformation itself.

So I chose one of my own chapters.

My own words.

My own healing.

Sentence by sentence, I cut the chapter into strips.

Some remained intact.

Some became fragments.

Some overlapped others.

Some were turned sideways.

Some eventually disappeared beneath paint.

Some could still be read.

Others became texture.

Then I began building the wings.

I glued the strips down.

Added outlines.

Painted the butterfly black.

Added white dots.

Washed pale blue through the text.

Then darker blue began dripping down across the canvases.

And, naturally, there was glitter.

Because apparently profound symbolic transformation still benefits from irresponsible amounts of sparkle. 😂

But while I was creating it, I realized what I had actually done.

I had taken something painful and turned it into understanding.

I had taken the understanding and turned it into words.

I had taken the words and turned them into a chapter.

Then I cut the chapter apart and made wings out of it.

The original story wasn’t erased.

It became material.

Some parts remained clearly visible.

Others disappeared beneath what came afterward.

But nothing was wasted.

The old story became the texture of the new thing.

I had made wings out of my own story.

And suddenly I understood why the butterfly had been following me.

The Butterfly People

Months earlier, I had said that Wildflower Whimsy was a garden for the butterfly people.

At the time, I loved the phrase.

It felt whimsical.

It felt right.

It fit the flowers and the butterflies and the entire little world that seemed to be assembling itself around me.

But I didn’t fully understand what I meant yet.

Now I think I do.

The butterfly people are the ones waking up.

Not perfect people.

Not finished people.

Not people who never had a caterpillar stage.

They are people who lived the caterpillar stage fully.

They know what it is to crawl.

To consume.

To survive.

To feel limited by what once seemed like the whole world.

To live inside identities they inherited before they were conscious enough to choose them.

To shrink.

To conform.

To perform.

To spend years becoming whatever they believed they needed to be in order to belong.

They know the not-yetness.

And then something begins changing.

They start noticing that survival is not the same thing as living.

Fitting in is not the same thing as belonging.

Performing is not the same thing as being known.

Perfection is not the same thing as peace.

Control is not the same thing as love.

Something deeper begins calling them.

Something softer.

Something truer.

Something freer.

And little by little, they begin becoming.

That is what I mean by the butterfly people.

People outgrowing old versions of themselves.

People learning to trust what lights them up.

People healing publicly or privately.

People becoming softer and truer.

People remembering that they were made for more than survival.

Humanity Had a Caterpillar Stage Too

And lately I have been wondering whether this same metaphor applies beyond individual lives.

Maybe humanity has had a caterpillar stage too.

A long one.

A stage defined largely by survival, hierarchy, fear, control, domination, conformity, and separation.

A stage where difference became threatening.

Where entire systems were built around determining who belonged and who didn’t.

Who was powerful and who wasn’t.

Who was superior and who was inferior.

Men over women.

One race over another.

One religion over another.

One class over another.

One nation over another.

Us over them.

Racism.

Misogyny.

Religious superiority.

Violence.

Control.

Conformity.

The endless human impulse to turn difference into hierarchy.

And for a long time, I looked at those things as evidence that humanity had somehow gone terribly wrong.

That perhaps the original system had been hijacked.

That we had forgotten who we were because something had malfunctioned.

But now I’m entertaining another possibility.

What if the forgetting was part of the experience?

What if consciousness had to experience separation deeply enough to understand what unity really means?

What if duality was not the mistake?

What if it was the classroom?

That doesn’t mean the suffering caused by racism, misogyny, violence, domination, or oppression was somehow morally good or that harm should be excused because it served a spiritual purpose.

Harm is still harm.

People still suffered.

Human choices still matter.

But perhaps spiritually, humanity can take even the darkest expressions of separation and ask:

What did this teach us about what happens when we forget our shared humanity?

Because difference was never the real problem.

The problem was turning difference into division.

The Caterpillar and the Butterfly

The caterpillar version of humanity says:

Become like me so I can feel safe.

Think like me.

Believe like me.

Love like me.

Live like me.

Look like me.

Worship like me.

Agree with me.

If you become similar enough to me, then I won’t have to confront the discomfort your difference creates inside me.

The butterfly version says:

You are allowed to be you.
I am allowed to be me.
And neither of us has to disappear for love to exist between us.

That is a different kind of love.

A mature love.

A love that can hold difference without turning difference into threat.

A love with boundaries but not hatred.

Discernment but not dehumanization.

Individuality without disconnection.

Strength without domination.

Softness without self-abandonment.

That kind of love does not demand sameness.

It recognizes something deeper underneath the differences.

We may have different bodies.

Different histories.

Different cultures.

Different personalities.

Different beliefs.

Different ways of experiencing life.

But perhaps difference never required separation.

Maybe that is what humanity is beginning to remember.

Not Going Back

If awakening is real in the way I’m beginning to understand it, then we are not returning to what we once were.

We aren’t moving backward into some state of unconscious unity where individuality disappears.

We are moving toward something new.

Conscious unity.

We have experienced separation.

We know individuality.

We know difference.

We know what happens when difference becomes hierarchy.

Now the invitation may be to remain fully ourselves while remembering that we belong to something larger.

Not:

Oneness → separation → back to oneness.

But:

Unconscious oneness → separation → conscious oneness.

That changes everything.

The butterfly doesn’t emerge from the chrysalis only to become a caterpillar again.

It becomes something capable of doing what the previous form could not.

It flies.

Maybe humanity is doing something similar.

Maybe we had to experience separation deeply enough to discover a kind of love capable of holding difference without turning it into division.

Maybe the awakening isn’t about returning to who we were.

Maybe it is about becoming something we could only become after having lived through separation.

That feels very different.

The Return of the Feminine

I also think this helps me understand why so much awakening language seems to revolve around reclaiming qualities historically labeled feminine.

Not because women should replace men.

Not because masculine qualities are wrong.

But because humanity has often become deeply lopsided.

Control.

Domination.

Constant productivity.

Hierarchy.

Aggression.

Conquest.

Suppression of emotion.

Strength defined as hardness.

Those qualities have often been rewarded while receptivity, intuition, nurturing, creativity, emotional awareness, collaboration, softness, embodiment, and cyclical living have been dismissed as weak.

Maybe awakening includes restoring what we pushed away.

Not rejecting the masculine.

Integrating the feminine.

Structure with softness.

Action with receptivity.

Discernment with compassion.

Strength with tenderness.

Boundaries with love.

Maybe humanity becoming whole requires both.

Love With Boundaries

That last part matters to me because I no longer believe love means unlimited access.

I used to confuse love with rescuing.

With tolerating.

With overgiving.

With understanding someone so thoroughly that I excused whatever they did.

I don’t believe that anymore.

Real love can say:

I see your humanity and I still say no.

I can recognize that you belong to the same human family without inviting every version of you into my home, my heart, or my life.

I can disagree with you without needing to hate you.

I can walk away without needing to make you evil.

I can protect myself without denying your humanity.

That may actually be one of the most important lessons of the butterfly stage.

Unity does not mean the disappearance of boundaries.

It means boundaries no longer require hatred.

Love doesn’t demand that either of us disappear.

A Garden for Becoming People

And suddenly Wildflower Whimsy makes even more sense to me.

Maybe I wasn’t creating a website.

Maybe I was creating a garden.

A garden for the butterfly people.

Not perfect people.

Not polished people.

Not people who have healed every wound and mastered every lesson.

People becoming.

People trying.

People creating.

People healing.

People learning to trust themselves.

People discovering what lights them up.

People reclaiming softness.

People stepping out of survival.

People willing to begin again.

People who understand that small things can carry big meaning.

A handmade magnet.

A bracelet.

A tea towel.

A funny little clay creation.

A quote.

A chapter.

A butterfly made from the words of your own healing.

Maybe none of those things are trivial when they are made with love.

Maybe creativity itself is one of the ways becoming moves through us.

And maybe every physical creation becomes a little seed carried outside the garden.

Someone sees it.

Someone smiles.

Someone gets curious.

Someone follows the trail.

Someone enters the garden.

Someone reads a sentence they needed that day.

The second creation points back toward the first.

The art points toward the writing.

The writing points toward the healing.

The healing points toward possibility.

Everything feeds everything else.

An ecosystem.

The Butterfly Is Evidence

When I look at the butterfly now, I don’t only see something beautiful that I made.

I see evidence.

Physical evidence of my own becoming.

The words underneath those wings came from a woman processing her life.

Some of those words describe wounds I no longer live inside.

Some describe realizations that have become so embodied I barely think about them anymore.

Some are still readable.

Others are buried under blue paint and glitter.

But they are all still there.

That feels important.

Healing did not erase my past.

It transformed my relationship with it.

The old story is still part of me.

It just isn’t the entire picture anymore.

Now when I step back, I see wings.

And maybe that is becoming.

Not pretending the caterpillar never existed.

Not destroying the cocoon.

Not denying the struggle.

But realizing one day that the things that once seemed like evidence of brokenness have become part of something beautiful.

The Butterfly Stage of Humanity

Maybe awakening was never about becoming less human.

Maybe it is about becoming human enough to love each other without requiring each other to disappear.

Maybe the terrible years of separation taught us what separation creates.

Maybe we have experienced enough hierarchy to begin wanting equality.

Enough domination to understand collaboration.

Enough shame to value authenticity.

Enough control to appreciate freedom.

Enough hatred to understand the necessity of love.

Enough sameness demanded of us to finally recognize the beauty of difference.

And maybe now we are learning something humanity could not have understood in quite the same way before.

Difference does not require division.

You can be completely you.

I can be completely me.

Neither of us needs to shrink.

Neither of us needs to dominate.

Neither of us needs to disappear.

And love can still exist between us.

Maybe that is the butterfly stage.

And maybe the butterfly people are simply the ones beginning to recognize it.

The ones willing to let old identities dissolve.

The ones willing to question inherited rules.

The ones willing to choose love without abandoning discernment.

The ones willing to trust what makes them come alive.

The ones willing to stop crawling simply because crawling is all they have ever known.

The ones willing to open their wings.

Maybe that is why I saw the butterfly while telling my son to follow what lights him up.

Maybe that is why four canvases arrived after I gave away something I had made.

Maybe that is why I built a garden for butterfly people before I completely understood who they were.

Perhaps sometimes the symbol arrives first.

And then we live our way into its meaning.

All I know is that I understand it now.

This is not a garden for perfect people.

It is a garden for people becoming.

For people waking up.

For people remembering.

For people learning to love themselves deeply enough that they no longer require everybody else to become the same.

For people discovering that their caterpillar stage was not the end of the story.

For the butterfly people.

And if you are becoming—

there is room for you here. 🦋🌸

Closing Reflections

Maybe becoming was never supposed to look polished.

Maybe the caterpillar stage mattered.

Maybe the confusion, the survival, the inherited rules, and even the years we spent trying to become acceptable were all part of what eventually taught us to recognize freedom.

So ask yourself:

• What version of myself am I beginning to outgrow?

• Where have I confused sameness with safety?

• Can I let someone be different from me without making them wrong?

• Can I love someone and still hold a boundary?

• What lights me up enough that I can feel myself leaning toward it?

• What part of my life still feels like survival when I am ready for something more?

• What would it look like to stop crawling simply because crawling is familiar?

You do not have to hate the caterpillar to become the butterfly.

You do not have to erase your past to grow beyond it.

And you do not have to become someone else in order to awaken.

Maybe the invitation is simply to become more fully yourself—and to give everyone else permission to do the same.

Because perhaps the lesson was never that we should all become alike.

Perhaps it was that difference never required division.

And maybe the butterfly stage begins when we can finally say:

You are allowed to be you.
I am allowed to be me.
And neither of us has to disappear for love to exist between us.