Into the Chrysalis: Fragile Power (Offering 7.1)

Butterflies, plastic, and the unraveling of armor.

And so we enter a new phase—Into the Chrysalis. This offering begins with a butterfly, a hurricane, and a puzzle on the table. It’s about believing in the power of small choices, and what happens when the armor we’ve carried begins to crack.

(If you’re new to Eclosion: An Artist’s Path to Power and Peace, start at the beginning. Or visit my Memoir Hub for a full table of contents with links.)

Fragile Power

Chaos theory, commonly known as the butterfly effect, says that even a tiny, insignificant event can have an outsized influence in shaping the way a large, complex system evolves. A common example is that the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings on one side of the earth could result in a hurricane on the other side of the earth.

I used this theory with my colleague, friend and fellow artist Jennifer Johnson as the basis for a large-scale collaborative Art in Action Project called Rise above Plastics: The Butterfly Effect.

On the surface, the Butterfly Effect was about understanding how plastics impact our bodies, as well as making commitments to use less plastic. Instead of approaching this directly, we married the theory of the butterfly effect with the power of our own individual choices. We invited participants, about 700 youth and adults, to consider the possibility that their choices have power—that even if they can’t see the results right away—their choices could still have positive effects on the world, rippling outward in much larger ways than they might ever know. We then asked them to make a decision: to believe that their choices have power.

In a world where we are often overwhelmed with our smallness, choosing to believe in the power of our individual choices is a radical and daring concept.

At its core, this project was about transformation, and it had a profound effect on participants and viewers alike. As is so often the case in this work, I was the one who was transformed the most.

My realization about my dependency on alcohol slammed into me like a hurricane—or maybe like the gentle kiss of a butterfly’s wings—while I was well into the planning of this project. Rise above Plastics: The Butterfly Effect was a high-profile collaborative art installation. Due to the success of the Plastic Whale Project, there was already media attention on it and our county representatives were talking it up. One way or another it was going to happen.

And I was so afraid.

Wrapped in Darkness

It was winter when I admitted I was an alcoholic, accepted that I needed help, and made the decision not to drink. With this admission, I felt myself breaking into a thousand tiny pieces.

For the first time in a long, long time, I was fully sitting in my own discomfort.

At home in our cabin, wanting to crawl out of my skin, I work alone on a 1,000-piece puzzle. I sit at the table, searching for pieces that fit together. Each piece that slides into place is one more piece of myself coming back together.

But the pain and discomfort build and build. When they get too great, I head out into the cold. There, I sit, drinking scalding hot spicy ginger tea and smoking cigarettes, trying to hold myself together. It’s only about eight degrees outside, so eventually, I head back in, directly to the puzzle, where I continue my desperate search for pieces I can put back into place.

What I didn’t realize at the time is that I wasn’t breaking into a thousand pieces. Instead, the armor that I’d wrapped around myself was cracking, breaking, and falling away, revealing aspects of myself that I kept hidden from the world—hidden even from myself.

As my armor fell away, I was left raw, vulnerable in a new, all-encompassing way. It turns out that being vulnerable, which I’d been taught to equate with weakness, was my biggest fear. I was afraid that if others could see my true self, they wouldn’t want me. I was afraid of my own darkness.

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What’s one “small choice” you’ve made that felt fragile—or even insignificant—that ended up shaping your life in a larger way?

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