The Butterfly Doesn't Go Back to the Cocoon

Shedding Who You're Not to Be Who You Already Are

Jul 16, 2025

Sunsets, text messages, car accidents, and cups of coffee. There are these little moments of God — Spirit, the Universe, Higher Power, whatever name speaks to you — happening everywhere, all the time.

“Oh, look — there’s a monarch butterfly,” I heard myself say aloud as a flash of orange and black fluttered across my visual field.

“Oh, funny, I’m looking at one right now,” my coach replied, her voice coming through my AirPods mid-session.

We both stopped — mid-thought, mid-coaching — and just witnessed.

I couldn’t think of a more accurate metaphor to adequately describe what was spiritually, ontologically, and even professionally in that exact moment:

You don’t get to be a butterfly and go back.

Transformation means there’s no returning to the old way — “The old has gone, the new is here.” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it’s stretchy — it’s good.

Over the weekend, we graduated the participants in the Coaches Training and Leadership Development Program I’ve supported for the last year. It’s the moment when the wings are finally dry enough to fly.

And in the hours or the days that follow moments like that — whether it’s graduation, a promotion, or a profound shift — it can be tempting to crawl back into the cocoon. It’s familiar. It feels like safety.

This is the real spiritual work of endings and beginnings. It’s the moment of remembering who we’ve always been — by shedding who we’ve tried to be.

In that moment of, “to return to the cocoon — ack! I can’t!” a deeper question emerges: What do I offer (and who am I) when I am not performing?
When it’s not polished? When it’s not perfect?

Truly: If I’m not performing, people-pleasing, perfecting, producing… then what exactly do I bring?

That’s the conversation — and let’s be honest, the umpteenth iteration of it — that I was having with my coach when this beautiful, buoyant, orange-black-marigold-colored monarch caught my eye.

She (and I like to think she was a she) didn’t have to go be butterfly she just is butterfly.

Whether in a leadership space, in a relationship, or at your high school reunion, there’s an opportunity to let go of trying to “be the leader,” “be the partner,” “be the whoeverIwasbackthen.”

Instead, you get to be the truth.
You get to tell the truth.
Me too.

The truth for me?

I feel like I need to find solutions and fix things to be valuable.
I’m scared of being too much and not enough at the same time.

Each year I do this leadership development work, it’s transformational — just like it is for the butterfly.

There’s no going back.

Only forward.

And sometimes into a different chrysalis where something else is being stripped away — only to emerge with a new, different kind of power and presence.

This year, it’s been about surrendering the script.

(True story: in my last TV producing job, my anchor Ron Corning told me to jar quirk “ad-lib” in the script for certain stories he already knew well. I panicked — questioned the integrity the structure, and the rightness of it. What if he missed something?

Now, I can see I just didn’t trust that something true could emerge without a script. Turns out leadership presence is that — being present and speaking from authenticity and trusting that what’s meant to be said will be heard.)

If you’re feeling like you’re in your own cocoon moment…

If you’re to sure who you are without the script, the job title, or the performance
If you’re ready to emerge but don’t know how…

I’ve got two invitations for you:

Coming Back to Life - a consecutive 3-session coaching experience to help you reconnect to your truth. Whether you’re in a life transition, a season of questioning, or just ready to stop performing, this space is for you. ($333.00 + agreement & intake paperwork).