“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”
~ Anaïs Nin (debatable)
Being human seems to inevitably involve outgrowing our own metaphorical skin…over and over and over again, like snakes. At least that’s been my experience so far.
It’s tempting to romanticize it more by likening humans to delicate butterflies, and in ways that would be accurate, but I find myself more commonly using the metaphors of onions or snakeskins.
Snakes have to shed their exteriors many times throughout their lives and onions have an almost endless supply of layers, whereas butterflies undergo one or two big and glorious transformations.
We humans often bear multiple death-like shifts in a lifespan, whether through loss of our youth, health, relationships or identity. We don’t just spin ourselves up in silk, melt, re-form and then ‘voila,’ we’re different, beautiful and done changing.
Most of us grow more incrementally and painstakingly than this, even though our bodies stop getting taller. The risks involved in growth can feel daunting causing us to hold on to our old skins for dear life when we would be better off letting go and helping the process along.
Our loss of instincts and lack of healthy models contributes to this fearful holding on.
When a snake feels it’s time to shed, she briskly rubs the skin loose from her nose and takes a journey to aid the skin’s unraveling. When humans in our culture feel the similar tightness in our being, we tend to freeze, ignore, distract, hide, drink, etc.
Human growth can be messy and, unlike caterpillars who transform into butterflies, we still end up human at the end of it.
When I began my journey of personal growth and the pursuit of awakening, I imagined some grand completion where my humanity would no longer exist in the same way. But somehow, with each release, I’ve begun to accept the probability that there’s another wing-less human under the next dried up layer of myself.
This gets easier to accept when we feel more of our wholeness and the gift of our humanity rather than the burden of it. Perhaps part of what needs shed is the belief that the spiritual journey will produce something more-than-human. Even though it does.
…and it doesn’t.
We all know how it feels to be pent up in something too small for us, be it clothes, ideas, relationships, jobs or cultures. We might want to stay in these confinements for fear of feeling alone or fear of the unknown. But eventually we can’t help bursting out, tearing that safe and precious skin.
So we may retreat in order to mourn what’s about to be lost. Or maybe we just don’t want to be bothered as we’re all wild and unraveling. Whatever the reason for the retreat, we have to learn to trust in this process of shedding what’s no longer needed in order to be reunited with our essential selves.
David Whyte addresses this beautifully at the end of his poem Sweet Darkness, saying:
“Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.”
Considering all the things in the world that make us feel small, our essential selves must be truly enormous. No wonder we keep bursting through all these tiny skins. And thank goodness we do.
Refusing to let go of the old, unnecessary parts of ourselves (like certain beliefs, identifications, fears, and expectations) is like trying to continue to breathe without exhaling.
For a snake to shed its skin, it must have a moment as a phoenix; A moment of such deep letting go that even survival is an unknown. Similarly, we risk a kind of death in order to shed old identities, but once we feel the tight hold of too small a skin, we cannot truly feel alive if that risk isn’t taken.
I love the way Bill Plotkin refers to human growth and change in his book Nature and the Human Soul. After discussing developmental stages, he calls each one “the best stage of life to be in.” I find this contradiction to be true.
I’ve had to leave behind or outgrow a million people, places, moments, and stages I’d fallen in love with…or they’ve left me. It’s always bitter sweet to leave and grow. The leaving doesn’t minimize the love for, or importance of that period of life, but holding on when it’s time to move on can feel like the bind of an old skin.
If growth doesn’t mean letting go of things all together, it can involve expanding perceptions to make space for a more holistic and enriching life. Every stage of life is as important as every inhale of breath and none of them can be held onto.
A budding flower doesn’t shed her petals before expanding to touch the sun and shamelessly share her radiance. Similarly, we often have to fully and shamelessly embody the skin and life stage we are in before we can expand enough to break free of it.
Feelings like shame and self-hatred keep us just small enough to leave this dry, dull skin intact. But if we stand tall in our willingness, self-love, and trust, it breaks and we find ourselves in a burst of relief, and sometimes tears. Color finally returns to our fresher skin. At least for a while.
Eventually, what began as death and terror feels more and more like freedom. Sometimes, by allowing ourselves to be only human, we realize we were always more-than-human.
—If this is the journey you’re on and you need help releasing the old and making way for the new, reach out to me to book a free clarity call.
References:
https://www.davidwhyte.com/sweet-darkness
Plotkin, B. (2008). P. 299. Nature and the Human Soul. New World Library. Novato, CA.
