Into the Chrysalis: Uncovering the Nest (Offering 7.2)
Vulnerability, vision, and the fragile creatures within.
In the chrysalis, we enter the hidden landscapes of my early sobrietyāwhere what I feared was darkness revealed itself as something far more fragile, and far more alive.
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Uncovering the Nest
When I was just a few weeks sober, I had an experience that forever changed my understanding of the darkness within my own inner landscape.
I lie in my counselorās office with my eyes closed. She is an energy worker. With her hand resting on my solar plexus, she says she feels a very old resistance. Thoughts begin to move through me, thoughts of middle school, of my art scars, of the daily sexual harassment I enduredāhow no one should have to go to middle school.
I lie there, breathing easily, wrapped in calm, watching lights flicker and dance behind my eyelids. My perspective shifts, and I see a hard parcel inside of me. Itās in my lower back, where I have had a knot for years. The parcel is the shape and size of a chicken egg, wrapped in a pure white scarf and tied with an impossible knot.
I think to untie it but hesitate. The knots are so tight, and maybe Iām not ready for it, not ready to see whatās buried deep inside of me. As I watch, the knot transforms. Now it is only loosely tied. It looks so ready to open, like it might untie itself. I reach forward, gently pull, and it falls openā¦
With a sharp intake of air, I gasp. My breath stops.
A wave of emotion crashes through meāterror, alarm, distress. I feel I might drown. Tears stream from my eyes. I canāt breathe. I donāt want to see. I canāt look away.
I watch in terror as the cloth falls away to reveal a jumble on the white cloth, dark and hard, like small chunks of asphalt with bits of bright, shiny fragments mixed in. No, the jumble is more like crushed coal and crystals.
This instant becomes the next as I struggle to find my breath, and the coal dust and crystal are no more. In their place is something impossibleāa nest of three baby birds, eyes blind, beaks opening and closing as they cry out to be fed.
So precious. So fragile. So ugly and beautiful and helpless. These babies are the kind of thing I only want to protectāfragile creatures that canāt survive on their own, but if well cared for, will soon be ready to fly.
Calm descends once more, and my breath comes easily as I marvel at this discovery. This is what Iād been so afraid of seeing. This fragility. This life filled with potential.
After, still lying there in a dreamlike space, I said aloud: āI am so grateful to have lived through this much life and to be so whole.ā Until that moment, being whole was not something Iād felt since I was a child.
Then I said, āI knew there were baby birds inside of me, but I didnāt know where they were.ā At that, Kirstin said there had been a most un-robin-like robin outside the window the entire time I lay thereāthat in all the years she worked in that space, she had never seen one acting like this.
Robin spirit guide. There to bear witness, to ease the way, to pull the veil aside and reveal what lay underneathābaby robins.
In the following weeks, I drew these baby birds and a mama bird holding them so gently, again and again. I was still afraid, but I had a shred of hope, something to hold onto. I now knew that the thing inside that I was so afraid of was not evil and dark. Far from it, it was scared, helpless, and hungryāin desperate need of love and acceptance.
And so, I began to practice vulnerability. Through this gut-wrenching practice, I learned that vulnerability was not weakness. That in fact it took more courage than I could have imagined to be vulnerable, to let others in, to share the parts of myself that seemed too dark to share. When I did, I let the light in. When my armor cracked and broke and fell away, the light flooded in. Our darkness canāt reign when we bring it to the light and share it with others who are able to hold space for it.
What hidden part of yourself have you mistaken for darkness, only to discover that it carried vulnerability, beauty, or potential?