Catalytic events come when they will, and we find ourselves once more riding the Change Cycle. We’re not in charge of the timing, try as we might to control the uncontrollable. Whee, anyone?

When we were younger, catalytic events were more often positive – graduations, marriages, parenthood. Catalytic events were largely results of choices we made.

As we age, the events that push us onto the wheel are more often unchosen by us – kids off to college, death of a loved one, a serious illness. These catalytic events feel more like grief and loss.

This is okay. This is how it’s supposed to be. Resistance is futile. Resistance to what is only causes suffering. Painful events are holy and full of grace, when we allow them to be. 

A common metaphor for the cycle of change, part and parcel of the Earthling deal, is metamorphosis. In metamorphosis, a caterpillar dissolves in her chrysalis, becomes goo, and eventually emerges as a butterfly.

The caterpillar has no say in the timing. And she must dissolve completely for her cells to reform as a butterfly. These two things are important.

As humans, we have the capacity to resist the chrysalis. This is never a good idea. When your chrysalis calls, it’s best to give in and dissolve. Resistance is futile. All resistance will get you is a gnarly beat-up caterpillar slogging through winter snows, shaking its withering head and muttering under its breath in disgust, eventually freezing to death. Not pretty.

I’m having surprise surgery next week to rehabilitate my right thumb. (Ligament Reconstruction and Tendon Interposition, for you medical nerds.) My right hand will be out of commission for a month or so. Surgery day, September 21, is also the day I outlive my mom – a day I’ve been aware of for a while now. Evidently, to mark the occasion, I’ll be getting my hand retooled for the next forty years, forty more than she had. Not what I would have chosen, and yet it works somehow.

I’m attempting to accept this enforced rest as a gift, a retreat, chrysalis time. I’ll do my best to be graceful about it and be a happy patient, but I’m finding out just how much I resist rest. Who will I be if I’m not working?  Will I deserve to take up space if I’m not productive? Is healing really necessary? Sheesh. 

This newsletter and our Community Conversations will be on hiatus until I can work a keyboard and a mouse again. This means our September 30 Community Convo is cancelled. 

I’ll be back, as soon as I’m back up and running, with updates from the Chrysalis.

PS. Many of you are fans of Glennon Doyle’s Untamed. Did you know Glennon and her sister Amanda host a fabulous podcast, We Can Do Hard Things? I recommend it so highly, and will be catching up on episodes while I’m resting in my chrysalis. (Thanks to my daughter for urging me to listen.)