Set Your Inner Butterfly Free

A friend of mine drew a card one recent morning that had a stylized image of a butterfly on it, along with some powerful words about being our unique selves. The card spoke of releasing our fears so that we can be like the butterfly. As she always does, she evoked questions for reflection which led to this blog post.

When I was a teenager (yes, it’s one of those back in my day kind of stories), I learned to play the guitar and I learned that I had a pretty voice thanks to my music teacher at school. I loved folk music and spent much of my free time playing and singing. My anthem song was called “If I Had Wings” performed by Peter, Paul and Mary, written by Peter Yarrow and Susan Yardley.  The lyrics:

If I had wings no one would ask me should I fly
The bird sings, no one asks why.
I can see in myself wings as I feel them
If you see something else, keep your thoughts to yourself,
I'll fly free then.

Yesterday's eyes see their colors fading away
They see their sun turning to grey
You can't share in a dream, that you don't believe in
If you say that you see and pretend to be me
You won't be then.

How can you ask if I'm happy goin' my way?
You might as well ask a child at play!
There's no need to discuss or understand me
I won't ask of myself to become something else
I'll just be me!

If I had wings no one would ask me should I fly
The bird sings, and no one asks her why.
I can see in myself wings as I feel them
If you see something else, keep your thoughts to yourself,
I'll fly free then.

Fifty-plus years later, I still love these lyrics. Living them hasn’t always been easy.

The ideal of being our unique selves is attractive to me. I seemed to find a way to express my uniqueness in my clothing, my music, my hobbies, and I didn’t follow along with the crowd. My sister told me she thought I was weird when we were in high school. When I think back on those years, I was happy. I found something I truly loved doing, plus I loved school, and I had gained a lot of freedom.

Off to college where I learned a lot about my cultural heritage. I went off to school as a smalltown white girl and came home a proud young woman of Polish heritage. A memory relevant to this post is during a conversation with some friends while at school, about what exactly I don’t recall. But, this one sentence remains with me to this day. I can recall it like it was yesterday. This friend told me I was like a social caterpillar.

What kind of friend says that, you ask? I don’t recall being offended. I now know that friend was right. I was a caterpillar looking for my place, unique when I was in the presence of butterflies, not realizing that I could be one of them. What took me a long time to recognize is that the power to be a butterfly was always inside me, 

if I was willing to let myself transform into one.

Yes, that’s right. The power to become a butterfly was always within me. I needed to learn to trust in the Universe that I could become the most glorious butterfly ever, as long as I was willing to put the work into transforming.

That is what our journeys are about. Transforming from a little caterpillar, crawling along, unseen by many, cute maybe, but nothing truly special, or so we would believe. Perhaps we were taught that we could only be a caterpillar.

Here’s the real truth though…..

Every caterpillar has the ability to become a butterfly.

You just have to want it enough to work at it. 

Transformation means a metamorphosis during the life cycle. It means a process by which one figure, expression, or function is converted into another that is equivalent in some important respect but is differently expressed or represented. It means change. Perhaps not in the essence of who you are, but in the expression of how you live, what you do, how you feel about yourself. Transformation isn’t for others, it is for ourselves. 

And that means becoming introspective, figuring out who you really are so that your wings can develop and push you free from the pupa shell, taking you soaring into your most beautiful, unique, wonderful self. We can’t fly if we don’t know who we are, what we want in life. Where we’re going is an adventure and by using our wings, we can get there.

Fear keeps us from this transformation. It is safer to remain the caterpillar. It allows us to remain in the known, the comfortable, the expected. There’s nothing wrong in being a caterpillar – if that’s what you want to be.

But if you are a butterfly looking to emerge, then it is time for you to manifest that - I am a butterfly. I can be who I want and live my dreams. 

Let’s start working on that together with your initial card reading. We’ll ignite your insight to begin your journey to becoming the most glorious, free, wonderful, fantastic butterfly ever.  It will be amazing.