Blog Post Eight
Butterflies, Transition, Creativity
December 7, 2025
The monarch butterfly is symbolic of metamorphosis. Transformation, resilience, hope, and the cycle of life and death. Initially nature’s creation, but admirers have represented it in art, murals, music, dance, and writing, as its fiery colors and deep spiritual meaning has impacted many. My grandmother, who we called Nani, on my dad’s side, was deeply connected to the monarch butterfly. As she had received her own spiritual signs from the monarch numerous times in her life, she vowed that this would also be her language of communication when she passed on. Something simple, yet ethereal, fleeting, but impactful. And so, two weeks after her passing, in April 2023, my brother and I were visited by a monarch butterfly. It danced around us, free and joyfully. And then it gracefully landed on my elbow, and sat with us just long enough to snap a picture of the rare event. It was a deeply meaningful synchronicity that reminded us of the interconnectedness of the universe.
So as we enter into the season of darkness…. and as I prepared for a journey home to visit family, I asked my grandma to send me a sign of hope, love, and peace. I asked specifically for a monarch butterfly.
This past week was the Thanksgiving holiday. I flew back home to Colorado for a visit. With being home, it gives you the chance to slow down a bit. And with being home, it brings up an array of mixed emotions. The pause in work creates a space for greater introspection.
November was filled with an abundance of work. I was grateful, but also waiting to catch my breath. Other aspects of my life started to become neglected. I knew it was only temporary. But as we approach the colder, slower season, I anxiously jumped on every opportunity that came in. Preparing for the work to greatly slow down. On top of that, I also purchased a new camera, the Canon R5 Mark ii, as I want to level up for the season ahead. But as that was a big expense, it meant taking as much work as possible was even more important.
As we go into this transition of seasons, like a caterpillar in its cocoon, metamorphosing into its next state of being, there can be some discomfort. Although unlike the transition into a butterfly, breaking free, we are wrapping ourselves back up into our winter cocoons. Fitting our expansive summer state of existing, into tight blankets and warm sweaters as we semi-hibernate for the new season. We have to adjust to new routines, colder weather, and shorter days. A visit home, with the break in my schedule, helped me to fully transition into the new season.
An abundance of love for my family filled my spirit, as a melancholy lingered in the background, rising and falling over the course of the trip, remembering that the time spent home was temporary and passing.
As I deepen my exploration into not only myself as a person, but myself as an artist, I am learning that our experiences are truly made rich by having a great depth to our emotions. Emotional states are not exclusive. Learning to hold sadness and love. Grief and gratefulness. Although I deeply struggle with this. Because I was always taught that you have to “live your best life!” And “make the most of every moment!” …. “Yolo” …. “Enjoy every moment!” And, yes…. but life is more complex than that. It is not a surface level experience of always having one emotional state of happiness, it is a journey into the core of our being and a journey of an experience on this earth. It is nature making art and expressing itself through every one of us.
I’ve learned that acknowledging my wide range of emotional states, and the realization of the layers of different emotions that one moment can have, makes me a much wiser artist as well. The greatest artists don’t capture just the surface level statements like “living your best life.” They capture the raw experience and emotion of being truly human. In the real dirt and grit of life itself. The hero’s journey of pain, adventure, failure, despair, self-discovery, and eventually achievement. That is what makes great art so beautiful and captivating. They help bring us to the depths of experience that we all are searching for. The profound experiences of great destruction and pain, that bring forth the blissful achievement of greater self-knowledge, wisdom, and inner truth.
As the week went on, I flip flopped between joy and sadness. Laughing and then crying. I worked on holding both. The dichotomy of emotional expression makes the experience beautiful. You don’t have to be one plastered smile of an emotion for an experience to be wonderful. To let your body express itself creatively as emotions is immensely more satisfying.
As a freelancer, we learn we need to be all the strong emotions. We have to be resilient and tough. We have to have grit, but also grace. But it is so important that we take care of our souls as well. We need breaks from being freelancers or business owners, and we need to be just humans. To be able to have times of fear, and grief, heart break, and sadness. By taking space to tend to our humanness, we can be much more compassionate, energized, creative, innovative, fulfilled, and passionate business owners.
But I won’t be the first to say this journey is not easy. As I felt overcome by dark emotions, I searched in the universe for my little token of hope and comfort. At least just a whisper to “keep going.” To know the struggles would lead to something. I looked for my monarch butterfly in the sea of art I encountered each day. In art pieces, and music, books, and store fronts.
I asked for the sign two days before my trip. Intuitively, I knew when it would come.
I was with my dad driving home through the beautiful mountain landscape. We were passing into the small town that he lives in. My dad switched conversation topics and said “today would have been Nani’s 92nd birthday if she were still here.” And then immediately after, he gestured to a restaurant he liked which directed my attention to a beautiful mural. And I felt an electricity run up my body because there it was. My monarch butterfly flying free and high above, watching over many smaller butterflies in all different sizes and colors.
I knew my dad would be the messenger of the experience. An experience that was so layered. An experience of connection, awe, sadness, grief, hope, loss, renewal.
The monarch was not only a sign from beyond, but a sign for my own personal journey. A time of many transitions. The transition into a new season.The dark, the cold. A transition in myself. More inner wisdom and emotional depth. A transition in my career. More stability, growth, and maturity. A transition as an artist. More emotion and intuition in my creations.
There has been anxiety, confusion about who I am, the path I am journeying on. But like breaking free from the cocoon, I know that means a new and more expansive self is about to be born. So as I sit with the discomfort of transition, I know it means something beautiful is on the horizon.
After the first monarch butterfly spotting, an abundance of them appeared, everywhere.. Other types of butterflies, but also a spectacular amount of specifically the monarch. On welcome mats, a bartender’s shirt, on doors, on other murals, in pictures, on coasters. I questioned if maybe now I was just primed to spot them? Although, I thought “when had I seen this many monarch butterflies, literally everywhere and all around me?” It was pretty much every time I walked out the door. Not even. They were all over my dad’s house, which I hadn’t even spotted before. We can rationalize or we can feel an experience. And the rational part of me said that I was just extra aware now. But when I settled into the sensations I was feeling, a deeper part of me knew that they were embedded in the language of the universe, prodding me to listen to the messages that they were conveying. Messages that I already knew internally. There is hope. New beginnings. Renewal. Divine interconnectedness. Even in the midst of a journey that has been extremely hard and uncomfortable. Starting a business, healing past traumas and defense mechanisms, and building the life that I want. But if I continue working hard on my journey, I will emerge just like the first beautiful monarch butterfly and all the ones that preceded it into a more expansive, wise, and creative version of myself. A self that is waiting to be reborn.
