Becoming Butterflies

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Looking back at my life, I think it’d be safe to say that there’ve been times when I was more beneficial to those around me than others -and it’s those “other times” (when I may have even been a pain-in-the-side) that have haunted me with record-keeping, memory-slinging proof-points that I am good-for-nothing.

There is a ghost within me that regularly tries to convince me that I’m no better than my worst memories (and that I’ll never be), that I’m defined by every moment of pride and greed, every time of ignorance and behaving selfishly; every time I tripped and every time I was weak: those are the moments this ghost uses to name me:

Butt Munchie (BM for short, and conveniently interchangeable with: Bewildered Monkey, Buldging Malarky, Bumbling Meanie…)

Unwilling to be destroyed, I do fight back with my charitable memories, but the tough thing about this ghost is that its weapon is the kind of purity where no baby can ever survive the bathwater. Most recently, for example, I was sent to the sewage treatment center on pizza night after a loved one made me a very special gluten-free pizza dough, and got me a kazillion-dollar (pourable) vegan mozzarella, only to have me resource-guard each bite as if asking for a taste was actually trying to steal my survival.

That being said, surviving this ghost of purity has been a daily battle, in which, overtime, I’ve accumulated some of my own irrefutable counter-points, of which the majority have been found in nature (which, thank goodness, is everywhere, and can easily fit into my pocketbook of songs and poems that I carry to protect me).

With that in mind, one particularly helpful (and ubiquitous) ally in the fight to maintain my dignity is the butterfly. Found on almost every continent (sans Antarctica) and “almost every terrestrial ecosystem from sea levels to mountaintops and from deserts to tropical rainforest,¹” the butterfly (and its caterpillar shadow-side) are here to remind me that the even the most beneficial parts of the ecosystem have stages when they’re utterly destructive.

With that in mind, here’s an overview of the butterfly’s life (from an awesome video on PBS):

First of all, let’s get some nature-nerd vocabulary right: 

Holometabolism is any process where an animal totally changes into a new form. Not to be confused with the weight-loss plan that it might sound like, it’s less about losing cellulite and more about growing wings (who said jiggly thighs can’t fly?). Imagine, for example, the dragonfly who starts life in the water and ends up in the sky². Surprisingly, in terms of survival strategies, it’s a super successful and popular approach, with 8 out 10 insects (which is 60% of all Earth’s species) who have evolved to be transformers.

Metamorphosis³ is the process of transformation itself. Some insects go through an incomplete metamorphosis where they change and get a little bigger every time they molt (dragonflies and crickets are in this group). Butterflies (and moths and beetles, and many more) go through a complete metamorphosis which includes a pupa stage (a cocoon for moths and a chrysalises for butterflies) in which their first form dissolves almost entirely to feed their reformation into an utterly unrecognizable new incarnation.

Now, with that overview as a foundation:

Butterflies start as eggs that get fertilized when mom and dad do-the-thing by connecting their abdomens. Once the egg’s been activated, it has everything it needs to become a butterfly already within it. These building blocks of becoming are called “imaginal discs” that are made of cells that eventually grow into the body parts of a butterfly. 

From here, the eggs become caterpillars, who “are basically stomachs with mouths on a mission to get chonky.  Their primary goal as a larva is to consume and acquire as many calories as they can to really fuel their process of metamorphosis.⁴” As such, this stage is one of endless consumption (sound familiar?) wherein caterpillars grow “100 times their original size [and] in a matter of weeks...get more than five times longer and nearly a 1,000 times heavier, sometimes eating more than 100 leaves a day.”⁵ (Needless to say, it’s in this greedy stage that caterpillars have gotten their bad name amongst gardeners and farmers).

In the meantime, caterpillars go through multiple phases of molting where, in the process, they start growing the butterfly within them. That’s right: if you were to slice a mature caterpillar open, you’d find butterfly proto-wings and organs already forming within.

Then, on the second-to-last molt, a hormone is released that signals the caterpillars to “stop eating and look for a good place to hang out, literally, for a few weeks.”⁶ Here, they use a little bit of silk to attach themselves to a branch, where they can start the pupa phase. 

This butterfly puberty (which, apparently, is just as awkward for them as it is for us⁷) starts with a very special molt in which instead of emerging with new caterpillar skin, their skin becomes the chrysalis. In this stage of metamorphosis, the pupa is able to use the energy that they stored as a caterpillar to fuel their transformation. Here’s how it works:

As a pupa, one of the first things that happens is that all the caterpillar parts that they don't need anymore start to dissolve (can you imagine???). Then, this larva goo becomes food for the forming butterfly (that’s right: they basically eat themselves). From there, the butterfly parts start forming from the imaginal discs and proto-parts that were already there. Once all the parts are fully formed, the butterfly is ready to bust out of the chrysalis in a process called eclosion (in which another big burst of hormones signals for it to break through). 

Finally free from the constraints of becoming something so brand-spanking-new, the newborn butterfly hangs upside down for a while, expanding its wings by pumping blood through them. As the wings fully take form and dry off, the butterfly is ready for flight -and pollinating life. 

As an ally for my internal fight, the butterfly’s metamorphosis reminds me there are stages of becoming, and some of those are real game-changers that totally transform our way of being and how we serve the world. Butterflies start as hungry caterpillars who take and take without giving much back (except, of course, when they’re eaten by birds -which is no small contribution to the ecosystem, but not ideal for their dreams of becoming butterflies). Still, despite their greedy beginnings, in the end, they’re a keystone specie, with “three-fourths of the world’s flowering plants and about 35 percent of the world’s food crops depend[ent] on animal pollinators [like butterflies] to reproduce.⁸”

At any stage, there’s no way to judge what they are versus what they will become; every part is essential to the making of their gift. 

What would happen if all the farmers and gardeners decided to eradicate all those hungry caterpillars?

Backfire: No more fruit. No more flowers.

Now, when I meet the goodiey-two-shoes ghost within me (hovering over my shoulder disparagingly), I no longer refute its memories. Instead, I remind it of what I’m becoming. I point to the imaginal discs growing under the surface as proof that I’m made to be of great service:

See those wings?

We’re just getting started.

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1. https://www.xerces.org/endangered-species/butterflies#:~:text=Butterflies%20and%20moths%20come%20in,from%20deserts%20to%20tropical%20rainforests

2. https://www.mndragonfly.org/html/life-cycle.html#:~:text=From%20this%20vantage%20point%20he,eggs%20over%20a%20suitable%20habitat.

3.  https://australian.museum/learn/animals/insects/metamorphosis-a-remarkable-change/#:~:text=These%20insects%20are%20often%20called,(hemi%20%3D%20part)%20change.

4.  https://www.pbs.org/video/the-truth-about-butterfly-metamorphosis-its-very-weird-8bzdvz/

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/general-information/initiatives-and-highlighted-programs/peoples-garden/importance-pollinators