Soul Mosaic

And then, a miracle occurred?

So the question remains. How does a caterpillar go from this…

…to this?

Yes. We all know the basics – the caterpillar hatches from an egg, eats leaves and gets fat, then weaves a cocoon around itself. Then it “sits inside the cocoon” for however long each species needs, until one magical day, a beautiful butterfly (or a moth) cracks open the dried cocoon husk and emerges. Then it pumps fluid from its abdomen to inflate its wings, rests for a couple of days while they dry, then it spreads them wide and flies off to mate and lay new eggs that will hatch into new caterpillars. Seems straightforward enough.

But. HOW does that tube of mostly mushy guts with legs BECOME that butterfly? What SPECIFICALLY happens inside the darkness of the cocoon? Do the legs fuse to become a head and body? Does the outside skin form the new wings? And where do all those gooey insides go?

As many years as I’ve been on this planet, it took me until recently to actually stop to consider the question: “Exactly HOW does that caterpillar TRANSFORM to a whole new body structure?”

I always knew “something” happened. But it had never occurred to me until very recently to dig deeper and not just write it off as “and then a miracle occurred.”

Just like it wasn’t until the last few years that I finally realized I needed to dig deeper into myself as well. Maybe some miracles might be found there, too?

That is the quest of this book section – find the riches of my “Undiscovered Country.” And there is only one entrance to that country: transformation.

The portal of entry

“Thinking the event is the story is the biggest mistake of student writers of memoir. The transformation of the self is the story.”
Claire Dederer quote in Jennifer Leigh Selig’s book, Deep Memoir: An Archetypal Approach to Deepen Your Story and Broaden Its Appeal

To transform is to “metamorphose,” which means to change one’s shape and become a whole different form. It is like “alchemy” – what the medieval chemists were trying to do when they started with lead and looked for ways to change it into something totally new: Gold.

My gold will be the insights and meaning of my life. They will come about through my own “metamorphosis,” my transformation to “something totally new” over the next posts.

These last several years of my life have no longer been about battling my father, surviving crushing trauma after almost losing my husband, or dealing with aging parents. They’ve finally been about ME personally. About finally releasing things trapped for a lifetime. About fully feeling them for the first time, processing what they brought up in me, and then transforming into a new being.

Whereas before I was stuck in fear, self-criticism, and woundedness…

…this part of the book now adds in another part of me: that sorrow-and-rage-filled heart crying for an answer to the question:

It was that hurt and angry side of me, finally realizing that, just like I’d never looked into what happened in a caterpillar’s cocoon, I’d also never asked why I hadn’t been treated better by that whole family system.

So my transformation process became the journey of a fearful and self-critical “caterpillar,” to a whole new being flying into the world with a new power and self-caring that I’d never felt…or allowed before.

Jung’s “Color-coded” journey of transformation

Transformation, whether of a butterfly or a human soul, is a slow process that can’t be rushed, and it has a few stages to it. The psychologist Carl Jung described each step as a separate color, and he used the Latin words from that medieval alchemy process to explain how each works:

Nigredo – Blackening
Albedo – Whitening
Citrinitas – Yellowing
Rubedo – Reddening

For now, I will simply say that for me, transformation was a choice…the willingness to go into my own cocoon as one thing, deconstruct myself through these stages, then emerge as something very different, even as “I” am still here.

I will save these stage descriptions and how they matched my process of growth for the next post, along with the answer to what happens inside a butterfly cocoon…

Note:

I am seeking financial support to complete my memoir, work with an editor, and return home for fact-checking. Your help would mean the world to me as I take this step toward healing and giving voice to my journey.

Please like, comment, and share this post to help spread the word. The link for my fundraiser is on GoFundMe. Thank you for your support.

This entry was posted on April 27, 2026 at 8:00 am and is filed under Memoir - sexual abuse trauma recovery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.