it's hard to become a butterfly (but worth it)
the winter solstice for writers
One of my favorite interviews I’ve ever done, with the brilliant Sara Peterson at Cult of Perfect, is out now. We talk evangelicalism, trad wives and biblical womanhood, Joanna Gaines, and so much more.
If you’ve been looking for support for your creative process: Showing Up to the Work: 12 Weeks to a Viable Draft starts January 3rd. For everyone who wants to start the year with a built-in writing routine and writing community: this is for you. We meet three days a week for two hours a day (some folks inevitably miss days here and there for kids being sick and appointments; that’s totally normal), but folks found this last run to be incredibly productive. I’m so excited for us to do it again.
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The winter solstice arrives tonight at 10:27pm Eastern, and with it, Capricorn season.
The solstice is the longest night and the shortest day of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere, long associated by cultures the world over with sun gods, savior gods, and stories of rebirth and resurrection.
As the centuries have passed, and as dominant western cultures have increasingly relied on Christianity as their colonizing story (with the birth of Jesus often overshadowing the historical Saturnalia, which it was syncretized with, as well as still contemporary traditions like Yaldā Night and Yule), there has been an increased emphasis on the light and life part of this time of year, and less on its traditional associations.
Most notably, Christianity essentially flipped Christmas and Easter, so the birth celebration is during the resurrection season and the resurrection celebration is during the spring (yes, it is scripturally linked to Passover; also notable that the generic commercialization of Easter has clear links to pre-colonization Indo-European deities).
Point being: between the growth of one singular dominant religion, which has been very useful for the European and US empires, as well as the move toward capitalism, which relies on a production/consumption cycle, the west, and the US in particular, have seen a cultural death of winter. There has been a collective turn away from the essential seasons of decay and descent and death that precede it.
Winter is not a season of life embraced in this country: literally, through our elder care, but also metaphorically, through the idea that nature rests and so must we, that life happens in cycles, and that we are not always rising, or producing, or creating, or budding in spring.
Sometimes, we are fields lying fallow. Sometimes, we are descending into the depths: of our relationships, of our daily practices and spiritual lives, of our creativity, of ourselves. For rest. For recovery. For healing. For any number of reasons — precious few of which have to do with immediate output or public work.
How can rest be holy in a capitalist society that exploits labor until the grave? How can grieving, and mourning rituals, be sacred? It is no surprise that, here in the US, despite being a country built on the death cult of puritanical Protestantism, there is such a profound discomfort with the human reality of death and dying and the very real human experience of loss.
Even now, with the mass outpouring of grief over the ongoing genocide in Palestine, I find that I, at least, am continually exhorted by purportedly “spiritual” creators to put aside the sadness — as if grief is not the result of great love and connection. As if mourning does not come with the loss of hope and possibility. As if these two emotions are not co-existent, proof of each other.
We cannot — and must not — love and light our way through the winter.
Capitalism teaches us that more is the answer; and religion has become one of many palliatives that soothe the symptoms without treating the cause of the wound. Those of us who would treat the actual wound itself rather than slurp down the cheap, easy medicine that sedates the masses are not appreciated by the mainstream.
It is not easy to be in descent, to be in winter, in a society that is not built to acknowledge that winters exist. All around you, other people are in varied seasons of life: spring, summer, autumn, and also winter. And yet, your workplace, your IG feed, your TV ads, not to mention legislation act as if it is all spring, summer, and early fall — harvest fall, not late, dying fall — all the time. This is not a society that provides extra layers, or shelters, or buffers, or medicine, time off, or any kind of care or coping for the inevitable winter that all of us go through multiple if not many times in our lives.
And then, when we do experience burnout, or stress, or a big disruption to routine, or a welcome but still major life change like a baby or a cross-country move, or a devastating event like a death in the family or a divorce, we look around and wonder why we are not managing better, when the society at large is not in any way built to support, let alone acknowledge, that this is a normal season of life that happens to everyone.
Why are you not in summer, growing? capitalism asks us. Or in spring, planting? Or in early fall, reaping? Preferably all at the same time!
As if constant growth is possible without rest.
As if Inanna can emerge, triumphant, without having hung on a meat hook.
As if Christ did not hang on a cross and spend three days in a tomb.
As if effigies of Morana, a goddess of winter and death, are not still ritually drowned, to this day, by Czech and other Slavic peoples in order to make way for the coming of her sister Vesna, a goddess of spring.
As if any rebirth is possible without death.
And we all know that the cocoon, the chrysalis, is a catastrophe.
We say goodbye to a self, or a part of self, that was important for us. Whether it was helpful or not, whether it was a pattern old and baked from childhood or a newer bit of scaffolding that assisted us through a recent process — change to a part of the self still changes the composition as a whole.
As artists, we know this. Altering one small bit can change the entire perspective of a piece.
But as artists who work in narrative, it can be tempting to make narrative out of life. To assign narrative beats to the events in your own world as they happen. The result of this is that sometimes it may seem that things are not happening fast enough.
Especially the space between and during death and rebirth, which, in narrative, is often the climax of act II into the satisfying or wrenching conclusion of act III, which may feature an anime- or fantasy-esque physical transformation of the heroine.
The superhero receives their powers. The dead reawaken. Adora and Catra kiss and save the universe. In fiction, or in film, it is obvious. In life, usually not so much. In life, it can be slower.
Consider the monarch butterfly as they emerge from their chrysalis.
The transformation from caterpillar to butterfly requires nine days in the chrysalis. Nine days of solitary isolation, of the body being ripped apart, of a death-like transformation and rebirth. For an insect for whom the average lifespan is only two to six weeks, that is an extraordinarily long time. Some butterflies will spend more time becoming butterflies than they spend as butterflies. And then some butterflies, if they are the last generation of the season, may live for up to 8 or 9 months.
But this is not what I want to focus on. The butterfly must push itself out of its chrysalis. It takes a minute or so to do so. It is gentle, moving its animal body, testing its strength, sensing its limitations. It is wet, still, so it cannot yet fly. It is not an anime scene where the butterfly bursts out of a cocoon, wings alight with the sun’s glory behind it, and immediately takes off. It is slow. Methodical.
It clings, still, to the chrysalis it has shed, so that it has something to grip in the aftermath of its rebirth while its wings spend time drying out so that it can take its first flight. And its first flight is not long — it is short. To get to somewhere dark, where it can be safe from predators, where it can fully dry and regain its strength, can fully be read for flight.
We do not emerge fully formed and ready for adventure.
There is an adjustment period of, oh, I’m out? I’m new? Something is happening? The chrysalis is here, but I’m not in it anymore? The sun is… brighter? These wings are fresh? I feel like my body has changed? My senses are picking up new things? But I don’t feel like I can fly quite yet. I need a little bit to just sit here and get to know myself anew.
This is the early rebirth period that often gets skipped over. The birth that comes after death is not one of hitting the ground running. It’s one of slow emergence, of rediscovering your animal body and what it needs now, of learning yourself again.
Rebirth is messy. And slow. And impacts more areas of life than we often realize at first. But the good news is that growing pains are a sign that we are changing. We are becoming more in tune with ourselves, more aware of what we need and also what we want. More comfortable with articulating our desires. More honed in on what makes our lives worth living. And what makes my worth living is probably different than yours, and that difference is beautiful. There are more than 12,000 species of butterflies on this planet, but no two butterflies’ wings look the same.
No one is going through the rebirth process that you are.
And no one is going to create what you can create.
As our lesbian foremother Mary Oliver once wrote, things take the time they take. So let them.
this is so beautiful and medicinal 🦋
Such a great piece. Thank you, Jeanna. 💜