Some things in the world never change and that is a beautiful thing.
When I was a little girl, I used to look forward to the end of summer all year long, when I'd run on tan, bug-bitten legs through meadows of milkweed plants as tall as me, searching for the tiny white dew drop eggs of monarch butterflies on the undersides of leaves.
I named them all French Fry and waited patiently for the weeks that felt like years to pass until this very moment: when they emerge dizzily from their golden green shadows, pause a long moment to find their wings, and then, when they are ready - move forward.
Some things never change: home, late summer and its storms, this process I've had the joy of seeing a dozen times. But to the orange butterfly now lazily drifting outside my window, everything is new.
It takes courage to lean on the constants in life when the world seems entirely upside down, but maybe my monarchs are exactly the lesson I needed today - in practice, in unraveling, in trust.
