The Night I Grew My Butterfly Wings

I was so strong.

Stronger than I’ve ever been before.

It came so easily this time.

I said “no.”

Full stop.

One sentence.

Clear and direct.

This pattern is over and I’m not going back.

What did that life get me?

It got me strung out and stressed out.

I gave up on so many of my favorite things.

I’d lost myself too many times to count.

Everything that made me, me was gone.

A lifeless being wafting away.

Grief.

Depression.

Addiction to unhealthy things. And people.

Lost trust in myself and others. In the world too.

I didn’t even understand God sometimes.

But through it all, there was still a tiny spark.

An internal flame that kept burning.

And kept me alive.

I had been on the healing journey for some time.

It started from a desire to get my life back.

I wasn’t willing to wait for people to die.

I wasn’t waiting on other people anymore.

Eventually, it became about safety.

I wasn’t safe, anywhere.

Not in my body. Not in my home. Not out in the world.

The cortisol levels were sky high.

How did I start?

By asking questions.

By asking a lot of really deep, hard questions.

Only of myself.

I kept asking and asking and asking, until the patterns emerged.

At some point, it all just started to click.

I learned about trauma and ancestral patterns. My patterns.

I faced myself and didn’t like what I saw.

Who was I?

Then I started to remember.

I remembered all the things they told me I couldn’t do. Shouldn’t do.

And I started doing them.

This was my life to live, not to be commanded by some puppet master.

I’m the master of my life.

And when you truly comprehend that, there’s nothing you can’t do.

Every mountain can be climbed because of two things.

Faith. And belief.

Faith in a higher power and belief in yourself.

It’s amazing how one small change can cascade.

Not really an avalanche. It was an inferno.

I say what I mean and I mean what I say.

I’m not sugar-coating to keep the feelings at bay.

I said I wanted to blow up my life.

And blow it up, I did.

But what I didn’t know?

Was that I was breaking my own heart open.

It had been closed off for far too long.

I asked myself, how did I get here?

And then I learned about predators.

And all the different shapes, sizes and forms they come in.

They target you because of the energy you carry.

The light they can see in you, but none they have themselves.

My heart was closed so that I didn’t feel.

And because I couldn’t feel, I went numb.

And because I was numb, I didn’t create.

It was a dangerous loop, with no magic to be found.

My heart was disconnected.

Isolated.

Broken might be an understatement.

More like shattered into millions of glass shards.

Shards that cut.

That cut everything around me.

I didn’t understand how to hold the sword I had.

How to control its power.

But now I know, because I took my power back.

And when I took my power back, everything started to change.

That day, I was free.

I was so happy and I was free.

And I talked to so many people.

I even met an angel named Lucinda.

What a beautiful, light soul.

Everywhere I went that day, I connected with people.

I was back home with myself.

I had been working up to it for weeks. Months.

For years if we’re being honest.

Things started to taste different.

Smell different.

Feel different.

It didn’t hit the same anymore.

It became so clear how it was crushing my soul.

At the sink that night, I stood up differently.

I could feel them on my body.

They were my wings.

My butterfly wings.

I burst forth from that long-baked cocoon I was in.

And took my power back.

Took my power back from something that had been robbing me for far too long.

That night, I grew my butterfly wings.