A Butterfly By Any Other Name

Yesterday, in the Living Gratitude Blog, I wrote about being willing to let go of the past so that we can be free to grow.   I used the metaphor of the butterfly, who cannot be born without killing off the caterpillar that came before her.  For many years, I have claimed the butterfly as my animal spirit.  A butterfly flits about from flower to flower to gather her own nourishment; in the process, as a by-product, she helps to pollinate those flowers, thereby ensuring that she will continue to have food in the future. 



I am very much like that butterfly.  Although the words in these blogs and on The Attitude of Gratitude Project may ultimately help others, primarily I write for my own nourishment.  Like the butterfly, I had to kill off a caterpillar before I could emerge from the cocoon in my new form. Actually, I've done that more than once. 

This weekend I went through the remnants of those past lives as I was cleaning out the storage room.   When I put my things in storage a year ago, I thought that it would be a temporary arrangement.  It seems, though, that I won't be getting my own space any time soon.  It is time to get rid of everything but the pretty stuff, so that I can be free to fly off, unfettered, to a new life.  It's a slow process; I seem to be discarding things in layers.

As I was going through some paperwork, deciding what to keep and what to purge, I came across something that I wrote almost ten years ago.  An old and stained page of words fell out of the orange folder where I used to keep things that seemed like wisdom.  You could say that folder was the precurser to the Book of Clues.  When I saw what was written, I knew that it was important.  To preserve it, I decided to type it into the blog so that I could keep the words without having to store the paper.

I struggled over whether to publish it on my public blog or whether to stash it away secretly on my private blog.  These words were never intended for eyes other than my own.  But lately, I've noticed that the people who read my words also tend to be people in the process of becoming butterflies.  These are people who seem to receive some nourishment by following along as I work things out on paper.  To those people, I offer this unedited glimpse into the mind of a caterpillar. 

Tuesday, June 13, 2000

Cape Canaveral

I wasn't born with this name, you know.  I shed the old name slowly, like a dead skin.  The Valerie part came first, followed by the Saurer a few years later.  I wanted to kill Betty Gamache.  She was weak and unlovable.  She was a pariah.  She could never fit in or be good enough.

Valerie is confident and competent.  She is the star, center stage.  The queen.  But in spite of the firmness of my conviction in my new identity, in spite of the finality of naming, officially, this newly created entity, it is still just a role.  Like Madonna, living the persona instead of the person.  A manufactured identity designed to market well.  Because I had created Valerie, she could be whoever I wanted her to be.  I wanted her to be perfect.

Betty, however, was a product of working-class French-Canadian Catholics from Lewiston, Maine who would never be quite white enough, quite anglo enough, to be accepted.  She was also never quite stable enough, emotionally, to keep friends for very long; as her moods changed, so did her companions.  She was far from perfect. 

Lately Valerie has begun to realize that ignoring Betty is not the same thing as actually killing her off.  She lies constantly beneath the surface, festering, scratching bloody nails against the coffin lid, trying to get out.  For the past few years, Valerie has had what she thought was an unfounded fear:  that people would discover that she is an imposter and ostracize her.  If she were a teacher, people would discover that she is incompetent and immoral, and unwise.  If she ran a business, people would discover that she is irresponsible and dishonest.  If she were a wife and mother, people would discover that she is negligent and abusive.  So to protect herself, she was none of those things. 

Instead, she borrowed other people's families.  She did other people's work.  She pretended not to be herself.

Finally, one day, Valerie realized that she could no longer remember who she really is.  A weak voice inside her cried out to remind her that even she, who was pretending to be someone else, was once pretended by another, now long repressed.

Betty has tried to get out, and has surfaced on a few occasions.  She gets me thrown into mental hospitals.  She impulsively gets me into and out of relationships, and creates chaos for a diversion.  She causes me to lose my jobs or to throw them away out of fear of being discovered a fraud.  She won't allow me to commit to anything permanent; I think she's jealous.  She doesn't want to be scared any more.  Please help her. 

Spirit heard my cry for help. Today I am at peace with all the pieces of me.  Today I am happy, loved, fulfilled.  I got from where I was to where I am now by learning to see my world through grateful eyes.  This former caterpillar is learning that in order to fly, I must have a grateful heart.

What are you grateful for today?  Come fly with me.