The Gruesomeness of Growth
Growth has looked so different throughout my life. We often think of growth as rigidly positive and intentionally acquired; but so often growth is a circumstance of life - unwanted and unearned. When my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer I was catapulted into a transformation I didn’t ask for but it was what the circumstances of life required.
It makes me think of a butterfly but not in a cheesy way. The transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly is a gruesome process. The caterpillar doesn’t sit down one day and say, “you know what? I think I’ll turn into a butterfly today!” - transformation is in the caterpillar’s DNA.
To live is to grow.
But it’s up to each of us what growth looks like. Growth can be grotesque just as it can be beautiful. If you don’t choose it for yourself others will choose it for you, and when you finally turn around and look in the mirror, you won’t recognize the person you’ve become.
Growth, intentional growth, isn’t easy. It can bring you to the most challenging experiences of your life. Worse yet, it demands suffering. It demands you break down the bones of who you used to be, to feel your flesh melt away and reform into someone new, and yet somehow the same.
Learning how to suffer is one of life’s most bitter medicines but it has the power to heal in astonishing ways. My mom showed me the incredible courage required to take that medicine even as death came calling her name. Everything in us demands we resist but that medicine can help you build the strength to find meaning in suffering, and if you can find meaning in suffering you can find the energy to thrive and the courage to bloom.
That kind of healing transcends death. It punctures the crust of the Earth to emerge in the light of truth - the deepest truth of who you are.
