Born to be a butterfly.

I was born to be this way! And yes, I'm a girl, haha.

I found this card in an old box of my baby things about 5 years ago. Now there is no argument that I was born to be a butterfly. As you can see, before I even had a name, my cradle was labeled with a butterfly with a big red heart underneath.  And if you look closely, there's also a big sun shining underneath the heart and butterfly. Just in case you ever wondered, according to the book of Baby names, my name is a French pet form of the name Elizabeth. Its meaning has Hebrew origins with translations that mean "God's promise; God is my oath; oath to God."

Seven years ago, I sat on a bench in-between my classes at UCLA in the Sculpture Garden and a beautiful Monarch butterfly glided around me as I sat there thinking how I was going to get over the depression that had taken my life hostage. I felt so lucky to have this beautiful creature hanging around me. And when I finally smiled in its direction, it landed on my left knee. Only for what seemed like half a second, it slowly fluttered its wings as if it were telling me that I was not alone. I found myself instantly fascinated and inspired by the idea that what I was going through was like the metamorphosis of a butterfly. I felt like my depression, PTSD and pain were like the darkness of the cocoon. And I kept telling myself that one day I would come out of the cocoon stronger than I could ever imagine and I would have wings to accomplish anything I set out towards. But I was so angry, afraid, ashamed and haunted by the PTSD that it took me a long time to realize just what I had to do. One day I read a quote by Anais Nin in the book Broken Open, “And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”  This single sentence gave me the exact direction I was so desperately seeking. It was going to require a great risk. I had to tell everyone I cared for what happened to me and what I was going through but it had to be done and I desperately needed professional help. It took five years but with God, therapy, Lexapro (anti-depressant), Broken Open, meditation, my friends, and my unabated desire to be as free as the Monarch butterfly that inspired me, I metamorphose into the butterfly I was born to be.

 

 

 

 

I am proud to say that I have overcome the darkest of my days and I’ve done it in such a way that you would never know that almost nine years ago I survived a woman’s worse nightmare. Primo Levi says it best, “The butterfly's attractiveness derives not only from colors and symmetry: deeper motives contribute to it. We would not think them so beautiful if they did not fly, or if they flew straight and briskly like bees, or if they stung, or above all if they did not enact the perturbing mystery of metamorphosis: the latter assumes in our eyes the value of a badly decoded message, a symbol, a sign.”

 

 

After the darkness of the cocoon is broken open, the butterfly emerges as a symbol of the beginning of a new life.