Everyone sees the butterfly and recognizes its beauty, never realizing what it took to get there.

One day, the caterpillar stops eating, hangs itself upside down, isolates itself from everything else and spirals into a cocoon, much like me after a bad breakup. They stay there for days, in some cases, even months. Inside their cocoon, they are protected from the outside elements. Inside the pupa, they are transforming. They are cased in mucus and all sorts of goo. At this stage, they look nothing like the beautiful creatures they are becoming but they are undergoing a complete metamorphosis. The caterpillar is literally dying and regenerating new cells, during this phase and starting to look different. This is a critical stage for a butterfly as disturbances could effect it’s transformation.

Eventually, the butterfly emerges from it’s protective barrier and learns to fly.

The moral of the story is this: If you’re curled up right now in a ball of tears, snot and mess, it’s okay. It’s all apart of the process.

-TheRealBlackCarrieBradshaw