From the Editor’s Desk

Winter 2024 Issue

By Justine Sutton

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”             ~Anais Nin 

Winter brings us to stillness, darkness, a place ripe for contemplation and inner growth. As the seed germinates in the earth, the baby gestates in the womb. Darkness can be rich and fertile for transformation.

In a more active metamorphosis, think of the striped monarch caterpillar happily munching milkweed leaves in the sunshine, growing big and fat. Eventually it becomes a hanging green chrysalis dotted with gold. This is where the caterpillar basically melts into goo, its entire being rearranged. Once this inscrutable transformation has occurred, a butterfly emerges.

“Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over,” a wise person once said. “She became a butterfly.”

So transformations can be confusing and messy. But the butterfly shows us how seeming catastrophes can lead to previously unimaginable serendipity. This may happen without our awareness or understanding, completely out of our control.

Our butterfly must then sit for some hours, drying off and pumping body fluid into her wings until they are strong enough to fly. If someone decides to “help” the new butterfly by picking her up and launching her into the air, she will fall to the ground and die.

Sometimes transformation requires us to do for ourselves what no one else can. Whether we are in the mysterious, unknowable part of the process or the phase where we take action on our own behalf, introspection may take us to a deeper place. And in this place, quiet in the dark, we may learn something about our own path of transformation. 

Wishing you all the best for this winter holiday season. Perhaps in the spring you will transform from bud to blossom. Say hello to the butterfly!