Lessons from the Chrysalis
What science can tell us about change
This past fall, my son’s class observed a caterpillar’s journey into becoming a butterfly. He came home exclaiming over the caterpillar who was chewing away at leaves and getting bigger every day. Eventually, the conversation shifted to the chrysalis it formed and the butterfly that would soon emerge. In his mind, the process is much like easily shifting a transformer from a car into a monster.
Little did he know that what was really happening inside that chrysalis was far more strange and difficult.
Metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly isn’t a gentle or easy process. A caterpillar doesn’t just grow wings and start flying. It lives one part of life crawling and another as a beautiful flying creature, and it took a whole lot of work and change to get there.
Inside the chrysalis, much of what made the caterpillar a caterpillar is broken down. Muscles, jaws, legs, tissues needed for crawling and chewing, all the other things that are no longer useful are destroyed. Enzymes digest these parts, and the materials are recycled to fuel the metamorphosis.
But not everything dissolves. Some things remain needed. Other things, known as imaginal disks, were hidden inside the caterpillar all along. These cells grow the wings, eyes, antennae and legs. In the chrysalis, these cells begin to multiply and grow into the structures needed for the adult butterfly.
Science tells us that the birth of a butterfly from a caterpillar isn’t gentle or kind. It is a breaking apart of many things the caterpillar once needed in order to build something new. It is destruction and rebuilding happening at the same time.
This is science.
This is change.
Change is hard
We can often hear people saying things like…
I changed my mind.
They’ll never change their mind.
People can’t change.
Change is hard.
I don’t want to change
Change is something we often talk about without really thinking about what we mean, whether we think it’s actually possible, what it looks like, and what it costs.
I know change is possible because I have lived it, and because I see evidence of things changing as part of biology and chemistry every single day.
As we turn on the news, scroll our phones and witness the destruction happening across the globe, I have to lean into this conviction that change is possible. Because otherwise, what am I working towards?
Maybe you, like me, need this reminder.
Change is a part of life
Science is full of examples of change being necessary. Here are just a few more….
Enzymes: The job of an enzyme is to help turn one molecule into another. In this process, there’s a brief point where the molecule is neither what it was nor what it will become. This is known as the transition state. This stage is unstable, high-energy and usually short-lived. On the other side, a new product is made.
Digestion: When you eat a lovely plate of pasta, your body breaks down those nutrients (proteins, fats, carbohydrates etc.) into usable energy and materials to fuel your body. But, in the process, the starting material is destroyed to make something new and needed.
Cells self-eating: This is a process known as autophagy that gets rid of cells. When parts of a cell become damaged, the cell breaks itself down and pieces of it can be reused to make new cells or for other purposes. If this didn’t happen correctly, damaged cells could cause cancer or other issues later on.
I could go on, and on, and on. So many examples exist of where change is needed in science for our very existence.
Human Metamorphosis
The destruction and rebuilding needed to go from a caterpillar to a butterfly feels really familiar to me.
I grew up in a home that carried many beliefs I no longer identify with. I thought vaccines were dangerous, that medicine was never good, that God was one of exclusion and anger, that scientists were people with hidden agendas and deceived by the enemy. I believed all of these things (and more).
And then something changed.
Not all at once, but slowly. Through pain. Through loss. Through new classes. Through new friends. Through stories that showed me new ways the world could be.
Piece by piece, the old explanations for life started to fail me. For a long while, I lived in that uncomfortable and highly unstable transition state. I could no longer defend all of the things I’d been raised to believe, but didn’t yet understand who I now was or what I now knew (honestly, I’m still rebuilding).
It was disorienting. It was lonely. It was risky. But that breaking down stage was necessary for me to rebuild into who I am today.
This was what my chrysalis looked like. And boy did it teach me a lot (keep scrolling for those lessons).
Societal Metamorphosis
When I look around right now, I see so many horrors. I see people being murdered in the streets, the destruction of public health and science, the harm being done to people next to us and across the ocean, and I could go on.
This is our societal and institutional chrysalis moment.
A chrysalis isn’t a place of quiet rest. It’s a place of destruction and restructuring. Old structures dissolve, others adapt. Cells recycle what no longer works. What remains is used to build something new.
I want to believe we can use this moment to do the same collectively.
What is happening right now is scary and horrific, I wish the harms happening weren’t happening, but they are. So, now we need to use this moment.
With care and intention, we can form something better. Something that actually serves all people the way it needs to. Because if we are honest, as I’ve written about many times before, our systems have failed many people far too many times.
Science tells us that new and beautiful things can arise from hard and challenging change processes.
I am holding onto this certainity as I enter a period of change myself, and as I walk alongside many others who are also working to help spur this kind of collective change.
The work is not easy, but I also know it’s possible. Because I’ve lived it.
How can you apply this?
I can feel some of you rolling your eyes at me. I know, I know. Please know I will continue to balance these types of pieces with more traditional science pieces. But, this all I could write at this moment, nothing else could coalesce out of my heart or brain. So, here’s the lessons I hope you take from this.
On individual change:
Don’t rush the process. Real change takes time.
Expect instability and confusion. Change is hard and scary.
Create safety. Metamorphosis requires a protected space. People change more easily when they feel safe to question, doubt, and experiment.
Offer nourishment, not control. Like recycled nutrients in a chrysalis, people need support, stories, relationship and good information to build something new. They don’t need coercion, dismissal or anger. Conversations tips here.
Be patient. Change takes time. You may not see progress right away.
Focus on what’s being built, not just what’s being lost. Point people toward what they are becoming and gaining, not only what they are leaving behind.
You cannot transform someone for them. The work happens inside, but you can help make their environment safe for them to change.
On societal change:
Change requires seen and unseen work. Change takes work. Some of it is very visible, some of it may happen quietly behind the scenes. Both are needed.
Be intentional about what is rebuilt. Not everything should be preserved. Choose what values and structures you want shaping what comes next.
Hold onto hope without denying difficulty. Science shows us that new forms can emerge from breakdown, but the moment has to be used wisely.
I fiercely believe we can do this. With work. With intention. With people who are willing to take the risk and put in the effort. This is our chrysalis moment.
I’m in. Are you?
Onward,
Liz
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Brilliant breakdown of how metamorphosis works. The part about imagianl disks being hidden all along really stuck with me, like when I was shifting careers a few years back and realized skills I didn't even know I had just started showing up. The simultaneous breakdown/rebuild is genuinely what makes change so disorienting.