1. I was sitting on the patio when her hearty pings caught my attention. A moth was ramming herself into the above skylight, the sound quite loud because of her substantial size. She flew from corner to corner, desperately trying to escape, wings buzzing as they collided with the glass. She was frantically looking for an escape route, not grasping why this frustratingly clear surface that looked like the sky and freedom felt like a wall. She would stop out of exhaustion and rest for a bit on the ledge before getting all wound up again and continue what she did not realize would soon be her end if she didn’t stop.
2. (Moths, the nocturnal cousins of the butterfly, have been seen by indigenous cultures as messengers from the underworld and symbols of death. Guided by the soft light of the moon, moths encourage us to trust the darkness (which we sometimes forget is where the mysterious ways of our intuition and inner wisdom lives and thrives).)
3. I winced seeing her run into the edge again and again, as if I could feel her frustration, her fear. Seeing her ramble around was familiar, my muscle memory twitched in knowingness. When you feel trapped and the blinders are so high and the panic is both deafening and completely silent. You aren’t actually trapped but you are because every cell in your body feels suffocated and so you, in a sense, are trapped by yourself because your thoughts create your reality.
4. “If the ego is anything, it is the very voice that is screaming at us to get rid of it.” – Richard C. Schwartz in his book ‘No Bad Parts’
5. Fellow animals sharing an experience. I see you, I wanted to say as pity deflated me and then slowly melted into compassion. Like when you see a friend exhibiting some detrimental behavior that you used to do and it kills you but it’s not your place to try to fix it or prevent her from your same mistakes, because she has to run into the fire, you had to run into the fire. You can’t protect her from the hurt by giving her the lesson because the lesson is learned through the hurt itself. All you can do is love her. And so you sit back and you recognize that your judgement is just you still not fully accepting that past version of yourself and that when you let go of that judgement and remember, I’ve been there too, you transform it into compassion both for her and for that recent version of you. For they’re all one anyways.
6. Judgement is the perfect radar for where we need to give our own souls compassion.
7. I call our dear moth “her” because I feel like a terribly uppity human when I refer to other fellow animals as “it.” Our Western grammar puts the human at the center of all existence. He/she/they for all human entities and ‘it’ for any non-human thing/object. Self-centered and outright dreadful if you ask me. You can start to understand how the exploitation of our environment and lack of care for our animal brethren happened when you see that the very way we are taught to speak puts our experience as humans above everything else. Everything that is non-human becomes ancillary, existing only in relativity to our own existence, and never on its own.
8. The patio was quiet for a few minutes, longer than normal, so I looked up, and just as my eyes reached the skylight, the moth dove down and circled the patio above my head for a moment as if in glee. My mouth was agape, for never in our 18+ years of living here had I witnessed a skylight victim make their way out. She paraded around as if she too couldn’t believe she had escaped the confusing fake sky rectangle above and was flexing her wings again, feeling how good it felt to do what she was born to do in her lifetime.
9. After her final victory lap, she flew out to the garden and landed on the rosemary, sitting there for a moment, probably taking a few deep breaths thinking damn what the fuck did I just get out of, thank god. I wonder if she inhaled the aroma and thought to herself, I knew I’d never give up just so I could smell this again. I figured it out and it was actually so fucking easy, I can’t believe I was just ramming my head in the wrong direction the entire time thinking that would work when all I had to do was fly down.
10. (All we have to do is fly down?)
11. The overthinking, the overdoing, the excess force. I am resting on the ledge, tired, so very tired, once again questioning this knee-jerk, wounded masculine behavior that has (questionably) ‘worked’ in the past but doesn’t seem to fly anymore.
12. My friend said to me, “it sounds like life has been life-ing,” and I have since found no better description.
13. “The discomfort with uncertainty brings this behavior to surface but we forget that the unknown is where our feminine ways reign supreme. That the pause and the trust and slowness and the patience is what we need when we feel trapped,” said the moth to me as she sat on the rosemary bush, wise beyond her years because she dove deep into the fire and made her way out.
14. Maybe you’re thinking, Kristen, if you see every interesting animal that comes across your path as a spiritual messenger, aren’t you still putting your human experience at the center of it all by saying these animals are guides for you? To that I would say 1) touché + booooo, and 2) I’m a romantic, I can’t help it. I can’t help but seek meaning in everything, sometimes to a fault. I took a personality test and scored in the 82nd percentile for neuroticism, the 89th percentile for openness, and the 80th percentile for conscientiousness––together they mean that I need a creative outlet, an alchemical process for how I experience reality or else I will internally combust. I’m also an INFJ, so what is there to expect from me other than a near obsessive search for patterns that, thanks to writing, can be expressed in an arguably healthy(ish) manner?
15. What you can expect from me is that 1) I will dive into the dark depths and murkiness because that is where the truth lives and that is what I’m interested in and it will be uncomfortable but I will still do it, and then 2) since hope is the strongest medicine, I will end with the subtle undertones of an optimistic realist because I also can’t help that.
16. So we can think that our dear moth was just a moth just stuck in a skylight. OR We can think that the universe was winking at me, seeing if I was too caught up in my own shit to notice this profound lesson from an unlikely teacher, or if, for just a split second, I could wake up and feel the consciousness of everything around me, the intentionality of this coincidence which was never random to begin with.
17. Life is too short to choose anything but the latter.
18. Wink: (verb) “to close and open one eye quickly, typically to indicate that something is a joke or a secret or as a signal of affection or greeting.”
19. The secretive nature of a wink intoxicates me so. It is an intimate shared moment between the winker and the winkee and, if done with even just a lil finesse, I will A) melt for you if I’m attracted to you, B) potentially become attracted to you if I wasn’t already, or C) not be attracted but still respect the fuck out of you. If done by the universe, I will stand there, mouth agape with tears rolling down my cheeks. Because, oh lord, to receive a well-done wink, by human or creator, is one of the greatest human experiences to exist. It catches you off guard and brings you closer in relation to the winker, like a mini bullet train carrying a blip of intimacy that’s gone by the time you blink back but its essence remains.
20. And so I am on the verge of my metamorphosis, dancing with this new version of self that lives in a new city and goes to yoga on Sundays before the farmer’s market and writes everyday and spends the weekend in nature and speaks to strangers with calm confidence and makes friends easily and is open to possibility.
21. (Nothing changes if nothing changes. If you keep doing what you always did then you will always have what you’ve always had.)
22. She is but a hands-length distance away, and sometimes our fingers mingle as I find myself striking up conversation with someone on the street, realizing that must mean I look approachable after years of trying to not look so aloof. Or when I find myself having a blast role-playing a local and buying leafy greens at the farmer’s market so they poke out of my bag all cute (and I guess for nutrients too).
23. And, somehow, right beside her exists a penetrating fear of loneliness. But I no longer shy from her because I am a human that craves connection: the most natural, innate urge of my species that is ingrained in all of our DNA. And so the thought of lacking that basic need is, of course, scary.
24. My body gnaws for more trust as I unknowingly look for a sign, any sign, from a psychic, from a friend, from a coach, from a [insert anything here] to say, it is okay, everything is going to be okay, remember, I am always looking out for you.
25. (It is okay to want to be told this. It may be coming from our inner child but that doesn’t make it childish. Ask for reassurance from others and tell it to yourself, dance back and forth between the two until the new truth feels less like a stranger and more like an acquaintance who you’re excited to hang out with more. Find a friend who knows your ways and says you can text her when you need her to virtually hold your shoulders and shake you out of your sometimes-destructive thinking.)
26. Trust is in your house sitting on the patio in the sun sipping on a cup of tea, waiting patiently to embrace you when you decide to finally come on home.
27. Let the universe send you five bunnies during your trip to the new city and have it mean that abundance, rebirth, and luck are orbiting you and wow, you just happen to buy a pyrite stone that day which too symbolizes luck! Let the bald eagle flying over you FOUR times in a residential area showcase the strength and wisdom and resilience you have been cultivating within yourself over the past 8 months. Let the backyard resident squirrel that stared at you for 2 minutes today symbolize resourcefulness, adaptability, and playfulness and fall further in love with your mushy self when “bye I love you!” comes out of your mouth as Mr. Squirrel scurries down the fence.
28. It is in the final moments before metamorphosis where our fears are shouting the loudest when we can catch the universe winking at us instead. A secret whisper from trust herself. And thank the gods that our hearts were open to hear it.
Love,
Kristen 🌈 ☁️ ☂️
Edited and published on The Back Patio after my shower post Sunday-morning yoga and before heading out to farmer’s market for berries, asparagus, broccoli, sauerkraut, and whatever else catches my eye. Maybe she isn’t as far away as I think…! This post was pushed back a lil because I had a work retreat during the week that threw off my writing schedule, but alas, we are here, still showing up, still keeping promises to myself with some more flexibility due to life, and giving ourself grace + a pat on the back throughout it. Anyways, spring is in full swing in LA and you can feel the hints of summer to come. Life is life-ing and it feels so good. ☀️ xoxo
Always look forward to your beautiful observations of the life that is life-ing around us. 🫶🏼