April 2024: The Butterfly Effect

Posted on Apr 29, 2024

I had every intention of writing a blog for the month of March, but suddenly it was April 1st and the joke was on me. 😊 So here I am trying to compose April’s entry before May encroaches too closely on my space. I know, cutting it a bit close. But I wanted to wait until after the Kickass Women’s Day on the 27th before writing something. That has been such a huge event in my mind since I decided months ago to have a table to promote my counselling services. And before I began writing this blog today, I had a traffic ticket from October to contend with via a phone call…only to have it levelled-up to an in-person court date! Yikes! It’s beginning to feel like the never-ending traffic ticket that eludes resolution. This is the same ticket I mentioned in October’s blog.

After the phone call, I composed an opening paragraph for April’s blog that I was pleased with; so I selected the appropriate icons to engage the Save process—only to have my laptop crash while selecting where to save it to. Sigh. While the laptop was rebooting, I made a pot of loose-leaf tea…without the requisite strainer…and proceeded to pour myself a cup before I recalled my error. Only a couple floaties for the first cup, note to self for the second! But at the rate I’m going, I might forget again.

Recognizing I needed a pick-me-up before things got really out-of-control, I started playing my “Be Good To Yourself” music playlist. Scrolling through Facebook with my floaty cup of tea while waiting for my laptop, I see a post with a delightful frog perched upon the classic polka-dotted mushroom declaring: You got this, Fuck Face (not for everyone, but it tickled my fancy). At which point, my music mix was playing Trooper’s “Raise a Little Hell.” Well, who could stay discouraged long with that particular blend of aural and visual stimulation. 😊

And with simply recalling the last hour or so, suddenly I have consumed half the space for a blog when I had so much to say about this month! I suppose I could delete the previous paragraphs, but then you would miss a little of what it’s like to have a “Barb moment” 😉 – which actually brings me back to my original blog and what happened yesterday that prompted my busy brain to process. At the risk of “too much information,” I will share a mind-body connection that I know I am not alone in experiencing.

I have been in a lot of pain since helping my parents move into a senior’s apartment in their small town, three hours from mine. My brother drove out from Saskatoon, so I was looking forward to spending some time with him. He arrived before me as I had a 4-hour, multi-person, work-related meeting in the city on Sunday; and knew I would need Monday to recuperate. He spent Monday and Tuesday with the parents; and I showed up around suppertime Tuesday after the volunteer movers and shakers had left. Good timing, eh? 😊 The move continued Wednesday and Thursday also involving unpacking and organizing in the new apartment. Met some wonderful people and had good conversations with my brother and a cousin who came out with her husband to help.

Not unexpectedly, I was very stiff, sore, and exhausted by the time I was home Thursday night—and maybe a little grumpy. 😉 I knew the next few days would be challenging physically, emotionally, and mentally. I was in such rough shape, that I moved my massage appointment from the end of the week up to Monday. But the pain wasn’t letting up, even if my brain and energy were somewhat revived. I spent the week doing as little as possible to help my body recover so that I could reasonably function at the Kickass Women’s Day promoting my counselling services. By Saturday I felt I could manage if I kept everything to a minimum. The day went well, but not life-altering in any obvious way; and I committed Sunday to doing very little.

After walking the dogs Sunday, I journalled a little of what I was experiencing; but felt I was still a little ‘dissociated’ or checked out. Withdrawn into myself. Cocooned. At any rate, I hit upon something as my intestines and colon experienced a thorough cleansing without any indication of tummy ache or indigestion of any sort. As this has happened before, my brain suddenly clued in that something needed releasing – which my body was able to do even if my brain was a little slow on the uptake. The mind-body connection. We are multi-faceted creatures, we humans. It’s all interconnected. So my journalling had hit upon something that prompted a physical release. Now to get my brain on the same page. My persistent back pain also eased up after this cleansing. It worsened again overnight, so I am taking care of my back with heat again and gentle yoga stretches. However, the pain is now localized to one spot making me curious about what that part of the body represents emotionally. I will look into it.

My Facebook scrolling this Monday morning prompted some musing while walking the dogs that built upon yesterday’s concept of cocooning. How to condense 10 pages of journalling into a few paragraphs for a blog? The meme stated: “If the Universe is making you wait…Be prepared to receive much more than what you asked for.” A concept that prompted an internal conflict between excitement and dread. Sitting with the dread generated the multi-page journalling.

It’s no easy task processing what surfaces when you realize you’d rather remain in the messy goo of the cocoon than emerge a beautiful butterfly. (I might have to rewatch “A Bug’s Life” after this. 😊) I will spare you the goo to get to the conclusion: I need to release all the previous negative experiences of being a butterfly and acknowledge that this rebirth as a butterfly will be on my terms, not anyone else’s. I will have “new and improved” self-protection skills and awareness – of myself and those around me. I am not responsible for how others react to my “butterfly-ness” – only for how I react, respond, or disengage from those others.

I have to release those memories of being taken advantage of, admired then discarded, contained in a butterfly cage, swatted away out of annoyance, or had my wings damaged, clipped, or even removed. And I have to rework what it means to “butterfly” this time around. My internal conflict sees the “more” that the Universe is offering as an expectation to do more, be more, try harder, push myself farther. Yet, it is the exact opposite. Emerge. Fly. Go where the wind takes me. Weather the storms. Luxuriate in the sunshine. Rest in calmness. Feed my soul. Share when I have excess. Replenish when running low. There is nothing to accomplish or achieve or prove. Just live one moment at a time as it unfolds.

Breathe. Trust. Relax. Much like a real butterfly. Share and replenish. Repeat. I need to do better at replenishing – which now makes sense of the trend in social memes that have caught my attention lately.

One of the issues that I had to sit with in the goo was that of being caught, captured, constrained as a butterfly. How would I handle that differently? I thought of various actions that seemed insufficient to the task of being overpowered as a fragile butterfly when my mind fixed upon the image of the burning Phoenix. And suddenly I knew how I would protect myself as an exposed butterfly: I would tap in to my fire as a Phoenix forcing the hand that held me to let go. And all that will be left in their hand is ashes.

I am not powerless, even as a fluttering butterfly. May I emerge from this time in the cocoon as beautiful, brilliant, and brave.