I love a good butterfly metaphor and sign as much as the next person. I have a card on my desk from a relationship coach which is covered with beautiful colorful butterflies and says “Embrace the possibilities each day brings.” I have recently been sent a photo of a butterfly from the soil of healing, and have noticed butterflies in the lobby of a building where someone lives who brings me great joy. The more I see a butterfly, the more I am reminded that I am on the right path - gentle, floating, magical and playful.
But what about the butterfly/chrysalis/cocoon references in self-help books? Are we feeling a bit of an overload in this area? Now, maybe because I have read a fair amount of self-help books and coach self-help that I see the butterfly reference so much I may have a bit of an adversion to it now. First off, we are not butterflies. Butterflies are butterflies. We are people. So we can’t really go into a cocoon or a chrysalis. We have too many responsibilities, triggers and prospects. So to try and align with one feels like putting honey on a ravioli. It just doesn’t work. I am thinking maybe it is time we do away with the butterfly references in self-help. If you just came out with a book that references the butterfly, don’t panic. It’s okay. But I do think we need a butterfly-less reference movement to come in self help.
Signs are important. We need to follow signs as they appear. They are too powerful to ignore. They show us we are where we need to be, or point us to where we need to go. When I see the signs, I can open up and relax and be all the parts of myself. I feel like the world is conspiring with me, not against me. That said, the metaphor of nature in the self-help book is tricky. It is less tricky in the essay because time can be spent evolving the nature theme and a whole narrative can be built around it. For example, I had a deep relationship with my trees when I lived in my house in South Central. When I needed to work some stuff out, I got into my little orchard of apple, guava, avocado, lime and orange, dug into the earth and sheared away dead branches. I came out of the trees sweaty and happily soiled, hearing less of the noise of the bad narrative in my head and more congruency with the good of nature.
But one day, I was out there being a bit too aggressive on the trees. I was working out some frustration and the apple tree let me know it wasn’t having it. No longer interested in being the pawn to my mood, in the midst of trying to retrieve one more apple on the tippy top with my extended picker, the apple got caught and then released hard … right into my mouth. If you have ever been hit in the mouth by a softball going at any significant speed, the feeling was the same. I almost passed out. My mouth immediately blew up. I had to drop the picker and run into the house for ice. I sat in the living room looking out the window at the tree icing my face and said “Fine.” Nature won.
These stories integrating who we are and how we communicate with nature are unique and new. I didn’t talk about how a butterfly alighted down on the tree branch and suddenly I knew I was a chrysalis. I would be like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, which is a horrible terrifying movie, if I actually became in a sticky butterfly goo. Maybe a butterfly was in the vicinity but what was more entertaining was the context in which I needed to get that one last apple, even though I was tired and done, and the tree’s reaction was like Cher in Moonstruck. “Snap out of it!”
Write about nature like so may incredible books do… align with locations and animals… but let’s give the butterfly process a break in self-help. You will be doing yourself, and your reader a favor.