23/02/2025
Metamorphosis
Meta = big change
Morph = form
Metamorphosis = big change in form
Hello caterpillar.
You look fat and happy.
Munch, munch, munch.
Life is easy.
Eat, sleep, enjoy.
What's wrong caterpillar.
You seem out of sorts.
What's that?
You aren't hungry.
You aren't happy.
You're uncomfortable in your own skin.
Something seems to be happening inside you.
You are hiding from me caterpillar.
I see you.
You are hanging upside down.
You are hanging by a thread.
Dangling.
Oh, you are making a cocoon.
You don't want to talk.
You want to be alone.
I understand.
May I watch?
No, there is nothing to see.
You disappear as the chrysalis forms around you.
It hardens and becomes opaque.
You are gone from the world.
You are dying.
Inside the cocoon, according to Scientific American:
"First, the caterpillar digests itself, releasing enzymes to dissolve all of its tissues. If you were to cut open a cocoon or chrysalis at just the right time, caterpillar soup would ooze out. But the contents of the pupa are not entirely an amorphous mess. Certain highly organized groups of cells known as imaginal discs survive the digestive process. Before hatching, when a caterpillar is still developing inside its egg, it grows an imaginal disc for each of the adult body parts it will need as a mature butterfly or moth—discs for its eyes, for its wings, its legs and so on. In some species, these imaginal discs remain dormant throughout the caterpillar's life; in other species, the discs begin to take the shape of adult body parts even before the caterpillar forms a chrysalis or cocoon. Some caterpillars walk around with tiny rudimentary wings tucked inside their bodies, though you would never know it by looking at them.
Once a caterpillar has disintegrated all of its tissues except for the imaginal discs, those discs use the protein-rich soup all around them to fuel the rapid cell division required to form the wings, antennae, legs, eyes, ge****ls and all the other features of an adult butterfly or moth. The imaginal disc for a fruit fly's wing, for example, might begin with only 50 cells and increase to more than 50,000 cells by the end of metamorphosis. Depending on the species, certain caterpillar muscles and sections of the nervous system are largely preserved in the adult butterfly. One study even suggests that moths remember what they learned in later stages of their lives as caterpillars."
Melt down.
I cannot watch.
Can anything survive this?
You can.
But not as a caterpillar.
Imagine a butterfly.
Make wings.
To survive you must abandon everything you thought you were.
I see you shaking.
Ripping apart.
Emerging.
Crowning.
That's an effort.
Coming out of the cocoon is a squeeze.
Being squeezed out isn't easy.
But wings never unfurl without this last challenge.
Rip a cocoon apart, "help" the butterfly out, and all is lost.
Menopause metamorphosis.
It's a big change.
It's a transformation.
You won't survive it caterpillar.
You won't eat leaves.
You will sip nectar.
You won't crawl.
You will ride the wind.
It's not a life a caterpillar could even imagine.
Yet it does.
Imagine.
And the imaginal cells remember.
I am butterfly.
I was always on my way to being a butterfly.
Goodbye caterpillar.
Welcome Crone.
It is in beauty.
It is a giveaway dance of breath with the plants.
It beats as one wit( the earth's heartbeat.
Surrounded by green blessings.
Gratitude
Joy
