The Summer the Butterflies Came Back

For three or four summers, I barely saw a butterfly. Then this summer, they came back. Not just once, but often enough that I started paying attention.

Butterflies make transformation look gentle. But transformation is not always gentle. Before the wings, there is crawling. Then comes the cocoon, a season that looks like stillness from the outside while everything inside is being rearranged.

That is what this summer has felt like to me.

I have been thinking about all the versions of myself I have already lived through: the woman I was, the woman I had to become to survive, and the woman I am still becoming. Growth does not always announce itself. Sometimes it looks like isolation, confusion, endings, or simply knowing that an old version of you no longer fits.

The butterfly does not apologize for leaving the cocoon. It does not crawl back inside because flying feels unfamiliar. It opens its wings.

Maybe that is why I notice them now.

Maybe they are simply butterflies. But sometimes something keeps crossing your path until it becomes a mirror. This summer, I saw myself in them.

I am not going backward. I am becoming.