The other night I went to a party with one of my best friends. We have been friends from high school. She too has encountered a huge change in her career as a mortgage broker for over 20 years. She transitioned this year into insurance sales which has required a tremendous amount of studying. It is a sales job in a whole new field. She shared with me the stress the prior job loss caused and huge effort it has been to support her family. Even though she made a lot of money in the past and had to start from scratch again, she is dedicated, focused and confident that she will succeed. And I know she will.
I told her to take a break for a week to gather her energies up again because she was feeling a bit stressed. She hasn’t exercised in a while or gone out too much in nature to zen out lately. Her main focus has been studying to learn the new business. One of the ingredients in my de-stressing that I mentioned in my last post is being in nature. We are lucky to have beautiful sunshine and beaches here in Miami. I push myself to go there a lot when I get frazzled. Besides that, one of my greatest joys has been my butterfly garden.
I planted it a year and a half ago. Prior to that, I hardly ever set eyes to my backyard because my garden was neglected. I had never seen a chryssalis in real life. That is the stage in between a caterpillar and a butterfly. I have gotten not only great joy, but great peace observing the process of transformation starting from the butterfly laying its eggs on the milkweed to the emerging butterfly taking flight. I have extensive videos and pictures from my excitement of seeing all the stages. Now I have four different kinds of butterflies in my garden. The caterpillars are all completely different. But the differences end when I see them flying in their myriad of colors as they all flitter about freely in the air. It is so beautiful to watch.
Just this week I discovered, for the first time, baby swallowtail caterpillars on my pipevine. I had planted this pipevine near a tree at first on the north side of my garden. But as it was growing, I realized it should be near a fence to be able to expand more. I transplanted it to the south side of my yard at a spot abutting an open fence area. I made sure it was a place where it would get sun. The first few weeks, I got dismayed as many of the leaves turned black. I feared that by transplanting the pipevine, it would end up shriveled and lifeless.
But as time went by it started flourishing. Until one day, I caught my neighbor’s gardener neighbors chopping off a palm leaf that the pipevine had entangled itself in on the other side of the fence. I pleaded with him to only cut off the palm leaf. I had to explain that it was a butterfly vine and not a weed. That following week there were more dead leaves. But again, it eventually flourished.
Just this week I discovered for the first time, over a dozen baby caterpillars in clusters on this vine and a few adult ones scatttered about. Today I went back to look at them and saw two dazzling swallowtails flittering about. I saw one resting on the pipevine as if laying eggs. I imagine it is a pipevine swallowtail.
Many of us are going through huge transformation processes. The economy is shaking things up on every level. Stress sets in. For those of us out of our regular income, it feels like everything is operating in a snails pace. The best thing that I have done for my sometimes anxious mind is to see the changes in my life like the process of a caterpillar transforming into a beautiful butterfly. I am able to observe this every day. Though this simple act of being in nature, I can mimick the process and be patient as I allow events to unfold peacefully and beautifully…just like these amazing creatures. They moved very slowly as caterpillars. But once in the air, you could barely take a picture of them in flight because they move so fast. They can’t fly unless they hibernate in the chryssalis to form their wings.
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