Raising butterflies helped me out of my cocoon

Recently, I was walking with a friend/mentor. I confided in her about my challenge of secondary infertility over the last four years. Like many people in my life, she was surprised to hear that I struggled with anxiety and depression because I seem like such a happy person. She knew me when I was going through it, but also like many people I was able to completely shield them from my dark inner workings. 

As we walked, she asked how I was able to heal from my depression. I started talking and realized I hadn’t really reflected on what it was that made me better. I had tried medication very briefly, but that wasn’t for me and didn’t help beyond giving me the inertia to do something to get out of my hole.

The boiling frog

Really, there were many “self-care” type acts that helped me climb upwards. I prayed a lot, went to therapy,  tried to meditate, listened to podcasts, read self-help books and tried to surround myself with the right people. The way I always thought of my depression was through a mashal, a parable. 

If you take a pot of water and bring it to a boil and a frog jumps in, the frog will immediately jump out. However, if you put the frog in a pot of cold water and then slowly bring it to a boil, the frog won’t realize it’s being boiled until it’s too late. 

That’s exactly what happened to me. In the past, I had traumas like losing my father, the passing of my sister-in-law and a miscarriage at 12 weeks. I remember learning about how there is trauma and secondary trauma, all of the changes to life and the effects of the actual traumatic event. 

My therapist put it best: I had been plowing through trauma and just when I was really starting to recover a new form of trauma hit me. This time, it wasn’t an actual event, but a slow drip of trauma and pain. My struggle with secondary infertility happened slowly over a long period of time. All of a sudden, I felt like I was being crushed by some sort of invisible, but very powerful weight. 

This weight kept me from being me. I remember looking at myself in the mirror and just not recognizing who I was. I had a friend that I became very close to at this time, and one day I realized that she didn’t really know the real me, but had just known “Dark Adina.” Unlike “Adina Light,” “Dark Adina” hated being around people, felt sad and was barely able to enjoy even her favorite things. Those are true friends, that stick with you even at a time like that, and I’m so incredibly grateful to have them.

On the other side, the way that I healed from that dark time in my life was also just as gradual. Side note here for my fact-checking readers: I looked up the accuracy of the frog metaphor and it seems that it is not scientifically true. But I still think it’s a powerful metaphor so that’s what I’m going with. 

Catter-baby steps

After this walk, I started really thinking about what steps I took that got me to this mostly emotionally healthy place in my life. I thought back to a shiur by one of my all-time favorite speakers, Ms. Chevi Garfinkel (check her out on Torah Anytime if you haven’t already!) 

She came to Chicago and gave a beautiful emuna (faith) class about how life is not a race. We so often think of it as one, and it takes a great deal of rerouting thoughts to get out of that race track, I mean, cycle. See how hard it is?!

In that class, Ms. Garfinkel said something seemingly shocking.  She shared that by age 30 everyone needs to have a baby. *GASP!* Ms. Garfinkel also said that people look at her funny when she says that because she herself is not married yet. She goes on to explain that what she means is that by age 30, no matter what, you should have something that gives you meaning and that you pour yourself into.

I found what Ms. Garfinkel shared empowering because it can allow anybody to rise above their challenges and life circumstances to find fulfillment. For some people, that could be a meaningful job, time spent volunteering, a hobby or anything else that infuses meaning and purpose into life. 

I have good friends that are single, divorced or struggling to have a baby. At first, I admittedly never wanted to share my darkness with the fear that it would come across as overshadowing theirs. Then I realized the tremendous power that comes with finding parallels in our own unique chaos.

No challenge is exactly the same and the way each challenge affects individual people can be radically different. However, there is something beautiful about being able to connect to someone else’s darkness by using your own painful experience. In her incredible short, Brene Brown says, “Empathy is feeling with people.” 

Empathy is the path to connection. Once I got over my fear of making people feel worse I found that recognizing how struggles can be different, but the shared elements allow me to feel closer and connected to those suffering around me. Even just sharing with others and helping lift each other up could be the “baby” Ms. Garfinkel was referring to.

Growing pains

Though I do strive to find other areas of life to find meaning, Thank G-d, I was blessed with a son. Without question raising him gives me a tremendous sense of meaning and purpose and I do feel very grateful for that.

Having him in my life kept me from initially joining support groups because I didn’t know that I would fit in. I didn’t fit in with my friends having a bunch of kids and I didn’t fit in with people not able to have them yet. 

What I think is so painful about the struggle of infertility, specifically secondary infertility for me, is that I have this intense yearning to give even more. And that it hurts so much to not be able to. At least I wasn’t totally alone. I had Rachel Imenu, one of our spiritual mothers who got what I was going through: 

 וַתֵּ֣רֶא רָחֵ֗ל כִּ֣י לֹ֤א יָֽלְדָה֙ לְיַעֲקֹ֔ב וַתְּקַנֵּ֥א רָחֵ֖ל בַּאֲחֹתָ֑הּ וַתֹּ֤אמֶר אֶֽל־יַעֲקֹב֙ הָֽבָה־לִּ֣י בָנִ֔ים וְאִם־אַ֖יִן מֵתָ֥ה אָנֹֽכִי׃

When Rachel saw that she had borne Jacob no children, she became envious of her sister; and Rachel said to Jacob, “Give me children, or I shall die.” (Bereshis 30:1) 

That’s how painful it can feel. As painful as the trauma of loss, because there is a loss of what could be. 

Just at the right time, my healing hobby of raising butterflies soared into my life.  Now that I think about it, the time I started raising butterflies and the time I had the most personal healing coincided with each other. 

Spreading my wings

During the pandemic, one of my friends said she was ordering caterpillars to raise with her kids. I thought it was a great idea, but felt strange about paying for worms. It got me thinking and I remembered that in my garden I saw tons of monarch butterflies flying the previous summer. 

My son and I went out to the garden on an adventure to find which plant the monarch likes. We fairly quickly identified their host plant as “common milkweed” of which I was blessed with an abundant supply. We took a look and almost immediately found eggs and caterpillars. 

It was so fun and exciting to share this fascination with my son. Every day we would go check our caterpillars and watch them grow.  A great science project and it was free! Well, it was great until we went out one morning and watched a spider eat every single caterpillar. 

At this point, I went on Amazon and ordered a cheap enclosure. We started collecting leaves with the eggs on them and watching the caterpillars grow safely away from the webs of nature. The chrysalis they make is a beautiful emerald green with shimmering gold on the top. 

Butterfly meaning

Releasing our first butterfly was a spiritual experience for me. The Pathway to Prayer book for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur has a beautiful connection from the Tiferes Yisrael (Or HaChaim 2a.) It says that butterflies can help us connect with the concept of techiyas hamesim, revival of the dead. A caterpillar seemingly dies when it goes into its chrysalis, but then emerges as a beautiful butterfly with a whole new life ahead of it.

I think that’s part of the reason this hobby helped me out of my depression. Seeing something that turned into a blob was much like my own depressive state. But then it emerges as something so incredibly beautiful and that gave me hope for what I could do, too. 

Over the summer, I researched the most effective and safe way (for caterpillars and humans!) to raise and release butterflies. On days where I felt awful and didn’t even want to get out of bed, I was forced to go check on my cater-babies (what my friends and I lovingly refer to them as.) 

It also makes me feel pretty good that I am helping a species that is headed toward being endangered. The actual raising doesn’t really help the population, but keeping the milkweed in my yard and planting pollinator-friendly plants is helpful. 

This year, I am even participating in a study through Chicago’s Field Museum to see what makes an urban garden beneficial for butterflies. I have a patch of milkweed in my backyard that is dedicated to science. I go out and check each leaf and report my findings. 

Funky caterpillars and butterflies

After experiencing how amazing it was being a part of the monarch butterflies’ journey, I also decided to plant other plants to attract different kinds. I planted parsley and within a week had swallowtail butterflies laying eggs on it. 

I had four swallowtail caterpillars that made their chrysalis in September 2020. The caterpillars are so funky looking and when you bother them they have a defensive organ that comes out with an odor. I like to think their funkiness helped me out of my funk.

My four swallowtail caterpillars “over-wintered” which means they stayed in their chrysalis until May 2021! Honestly, it was a pretty crazy year so can you blame them for sleeping through it?! 

I would tell people about these caterpillars and they would say there is no way they are coming out and that I should just throw them out. I patiently waited and checked on them almost every day from fall to winter to spring. Then it finally warmed up and they made their glorious appearance in late May. 

I imagine that every day I went out to check on my garden and butterflies, I was slowly letting the healing in. I would sit out in my own little nature and sift through my thoughts as I worked. Raising butterflies actually helped me out of my own depression cocoon, and also taught me that it’s actually called a chrysalis – cocoon is for moths (gross!)