It’s Monday. The last few weeks have blurred by as I build a massive project that’s arising out of another massive project. The inspiration to serve a higher purpose drives me to create. It’s difficult to explain but if you feel one in your bones too no doubt you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Still, I’ll try describe the feeling. If you can imagine having a constant invisible companion whose voice can only be heard by you. This companion, kind of like an adult equivalent of an imaginary friend, keeps talking to you. The voice varies in intensity and volume over the course of your life. Sometimes it is quiet, lying dormant, by necessity. Other times, when opportunities arrive for its mission to be realised, the voice grows undeniably louder and more urgent. Like, post-childbirth for example. When the newborn haze clears many women perceive (either subtly or overtly) that a rare opportunity to reinvent ourselves becomes available.
But that’s not the butterfly I’m talking about in the title. Yes, we surely do emerge like a chrysalis, different and changed, once motherhood is upon us. But wait, there’s more.
Along with this new opportunity often comes an uninvited side-order of self doubt, uncertainty, discomfort and mystery. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, we think, how can I make sure I don’t squander it? I have to get it right.
What if I make the wrong choice?
What if I think I want to be an xyz and then when I learn it and begin it, I don’t actually want to be an xyz?
It’s all familiar territory for me. With a swathe of post-graduate training, a university degree, many certificates and a whole lot of “inter-disciplinary experience” I can tell you I’ve been wondering for a while what exactly this voice inside me is calling me to do.
Only recently have I begun to get better at deciphering the signs and tuning in properly to the other-worldly echo of my intuition.
So today, when the decision had to be made to invest a large sum of money in the business I’m building to carry out my highest offering, my biggest call to serve other women, I sought out some kind of nudge.
Last night a butterfly flew inside our house. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does they get stuck following the sweeping ark of our ceiling line and find themselves trapped upstairs butting gently against the window above my desk on the landing. So this morning, having forgotten about the butterfly and our unsuccessful attempts to free her last night, I was stoked to look up from my desk in a quandary and see her wings undulating gently right above me.
It immediately felt like my grandmother was around. She died last year but I still feel her presence near me often, like a misty memory cloud tied to me with a silken thread. Gratitude and certainty washed over me. I felt her bless my choices like it was OK for me to spend some savings to make my dreams come true. It felt like she was cheering me on. Shortly after that the butterfly flew down lower than she had since her entry yesterday. I gently cupped my hands around her wings and took her downstairs to release her. Off she went. I felt thankful.
True story.
I invested enthusiastically in this big plan to serve and give in the best way imaginable. The commitment felt right and timely. Thank you my butterfly intuition. Fly free now. I’ll call you back when I need you next.
All of that from just a moment of stillness and contemplation and a bit of that other butterfly effect.
Write in the comments your number one grapple, what would you call on your butterfly guardians to help you with?
Can you give yourself a moment today to connect inwardly and outwardly? Do you even know how to? Time to practice.
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