born again...

The Chick being born ~

Every crack is also an opening.


When in the midst of great change, it is helpful to remember how a chick is born. From the view of the chick, it is a terrifying struggle. Confined and curled in a dark shell, half-formed, the chick eats all its food and stretches to the contours of its shell. It begins to feel hungry and cramped. Eventually, the chick begins to starve and feels suffocated by the ever-shrinking space of its world.

Finally, its own growth begins to crack the shell, and the world as the chick knows it is coming to an end. Its sky is falling. As the chick wriggles through the cracks, it begins to eat its shell. In that moment – growing but fragile, starving and cramped, its world breaking – the chick must feel like it is dying. Yet once everything it has relied on falls away, the chick is born. It doesn’t die, but falls into the world.


The lesson is profound. Transformation always involves the falling away of things we have relied on, and we are left with a feeling that the world as we know it is coming to an end, because it is.


Yet the chick offers us the wisdom that the way to be born while still alive is to eat our own shell. When faced with great change – in self, in relationship, in our sense of calling – we somehow must take in all that has enclosed us, nurtured us, incubated us, so when the new life is upon us, the old is within us.

i know i have posted this in the past, or at least i think i have, but when i discharged from laureate my therapist wrote this out for me and i've held onto it ever since. i've heard various metaphors for change and transformation but this one stands out. maybe it is because it is more visual than the others, or maybe it is more representative of the painstaking process involved in changing, or maybe it is because it accurately represents all that is involved in life-altering transformation. i'm not exactly sure what it is, but it has made a difference for me and so here i am, posting it again because i'm finding it helpful and meaningful yet again.

i think changing patterns and ways of thinking, dealing, and coping that have been default for over a decade has got to be one of the scariest things i've ever been asked to do. it means completely defying nature essentially, going against all logic, and doing things that are totally out of my comfort zone. it means giving up the familiar to leap into unfamiliar territory without knowing what lies ahead. it means jumping off of a perfectly good cliff into mid air and having no idea if i will even gently land, feet first, on solid ground or if i will just fall flat on my face. it is terrifying, to say the least.
yet it is necessary.
i think one of the big reasons that i prefer the comfort of the familiar, even if it is a painful sort of comfort, is because is assures me that i will not have to face the big unknown. i will not have to potentially encounter things i am unsure if i can handle or deal with. i will not have to worry about if i am smart enough or strong enough or responsible enough to conquer the great big world. fear holds me back from moving forward. i've come to realize this over the past few years and it is a sad realization.
i want to change this. i want to be that chick that, though scared and unsure, continues to chip away at its shell until it breaks free and breaks into a brand new world.
it involves a long and tiring process of change and i often find myself getting frustrated that the transformation doesn't just happen overnight. i guess if it did happen overnight i would never learn anything about myself or the journey and wouldn't become any stronger throughout it.
okay, i will quit rambling now.
change is inevitable, but it doesn't have to be a miserable process. yes, it is often hard and can seem daunting from time to time, but if we adjust our lenses and change our perspectives just a bit it can also be a beautiful journey.

much love,
LB