Today was no ordinary Monday, I spent a bit of time reflecting on an email I got sent from Sophie Bashford around how she discovered her purpose and before I even read that I had been sitting writing random stuff in my journal when the concept of butterflies came up. I love butterflies, all of them, and I do recall reading about them a little over 12 months ago for some reason, probably when I had begun gardening for my own consumption and enjoyment and was wondering how they fitted into the ecosystem given bees pollinate and birds help with insects etc and worms but, yeah, butterflies would often come into my veggie garden and around the flowers and Raffy loves chasing them but they don’t really do much.
during that time was went I learnt they don’t live very long, maybe 4 hours or up to 4 weeks but that some species can live longer but generally that’s it.
Well today while reading it dawned on me just what my purpose may be and it came from thinking about what Sophie had written (I’ll get to Stephanie soon). You see in her email, Sophie explained simply that often our purpose in life lays in the challenges we have had or are working through or the problems we have had to solve that have taken the most from us..... I’d actually never thought of it in this way before, but after the last lot of shifts in 2020 and the massive amount of journey work I’ve done since 2009 and really intensely in the last 3 years, it dawned on me that transformation is it. And again the butterfly came up, even to the point of remembering one of my old mentors and directors giving me a book with corporate butterfly in the title, which I didn’t throw away but still have never read, because at the time I was tough and an exec and didn’t need to be reading that girly shit HA!!!
anyway, that’s it - it’s the journey work, it’s the complete transformation from being one creature into another. Like imagine all the growth and development a caterpillar goes through, and then it blocks the outside world out to totally transform itself into this amazing species which no longer needs to do anything except fly around and be free for the rest of its life!
the butterfly doesn’t grow, it’s growth is in the caterpillar stage and I believe that is what I understand - like totally!! Humans can change but they must be committed to the whole process, it’s natural but we have been deprogrammed and that’s ok, because we just need to recode you and start the growth process and totally transform from being who you were into who you can be, and this I feel is cool. It’s been fucken intense and so dark at some points and really ugly, facing you as the demon and then learning to dance with all of you to then unlock the shackles and release the drudge is not for the faint hearted. But if we think about the fact that not everyone is playing full out, not everyone is doing what the stars of sport we watch are doing then, that’s ok. To be your best version you need to have a desire that you can no longer deny - this is where Stephanie comes into the story.
Stephanie used to be a man, or so she thought, she was raised that way and the doctors and her parents at her early birth stage decided her sex for her, this isn’t rare by the way, but in this amazing woman’s case she lived her whole life knowing something wasn’t right, but assumed there was just something wrong with him, but one day, when she met a general practitioner who knew enough to refer her to a specialist her whole life unravelled and he became a her but was able to finally understand what was wrong and the reason for the body hormone issues and every other feeling. To her credit, Stephanie shared this with me after I asked her if she was ok and how long she had lived here in Aus and WA for. Her blog is called becoming Stephanie and really to me it is another example of a caterpillar turning into an amazing butterfly. At the time, she didn’t know any different, she just thought she was a man with boobs that wasn’t happy, but during her deep questioning and a guiding light her inner journey of transformation begun and the rest was really just a process.
You may not relate to this story, but look at it this way - imagine living your whole life believing something that just didn’t seem quite right to then be given the opportunity and guidance and support to transform into what totally is you 💚👍
that’s what transformation really is. I know, I’ve been there, I’m in the process of breaking out of my hard incubation and it now makes so much sense. You can do it too, just hear the hearts desire, find some good friends, go on a journey and become you.