Friends have been making a lot of supportive comments, saying I have what it takes to meet the challenges I’m facing at the moment — a double mastectomy and big reconstructive surgery, which is all coming down the pike in just a couple of weeks.
I know they’re right. As a matter of fact, this will not actually be the hardest thing I have ever faced. But that doesn’t mean I’ve been handling it with very much grace. It will be my most physically transformative experience to date. Motherhood has left its marks, to be sure, but that happens through a natural process. Being rearranged by a scalpel is a different matter, entirely.
A friend and writing mentor recently said something like, “If anyone could hammer their way through a situation like this, it would be you.” Then he amended his statement. “Well, maybe a hammer- maybe a butterfly.”
Yes, I thought, butterfly power! I can get behind that. What better to represent transformation, and the elusive grace I’m chasing? This is the talisman I will hold to for pathfinding.
Not a week after my friend sent me the encouraging butterfly message, I was watering the vegetable garden when something caught my eye in the grass. Fluttering right at my feet were a pair of black speckled wings. Though they kept moving, there was no lift-off. It wasn’t getting anywhere. This was barely visible in the falling light of evening, and I’m surprised I even saw it. I dropped everything and got down on the ground next to a beautiful Black Swallowtail butterfly that I thought might be dying. I was glad I hadn’t stepped on it.
I sat for a while and watched it fan its wings, thinner than paper, then I lay down to try and see the world on its level. Tentatively, not wanting to scare it, I reached out my hand. It climbed right up onto my fingers and lay still. I wasn’t sure if it was dying, or what. I was curious what would happen next. It seemed to be a messenger to kneel to, and I was ready to pay attention.
After a long period of stillness, I brought it inside the house. I’d set its flawless but dead body on top of a small antique hutch I use as a medicine cabinet, in pride of place amongst other wondrous treasures the Universe has put in my path.
But perhaps from the shock of entering into a strange and suffocating atmosphere, the butterfly began to move around again. It was still alive after all, and seemed fretful, so back outside we went. I apologized, and set it in the garden to rest among the just-watered beet greens. This seemed right. I continued to check on it throughout the evening, barely brushing gently against a wing to see if it had passed yet into butterfly heaven. What had I just been saying in a recent poem about checking for breath? It was like that. I turned off the porch light, to allow it to pass naturally and with dignity into the deepening darkness.
Throughout the night I kept going out to visit the butterfly. I monitored its progress like a woman in labor. It lay so still. I thought surely it was dead, but slight movements proved otherwise. Maybe it’s laying eggs. As soon as this thought occurred to me, I felt badly for ever disturbing it. I apologized even more profusely, but pointed out that the grass would have been a lousy place for eggs. In the morning, it was gone.
Maybe this was one of those caterpillars I’d seen growing on the dill. They covered it at one point- I’d counted thirteen one day. They munched it down in no time flat, killing the plant quickly as they grew stronger — and that was good. That was why I planted it.
A man at the nursery had made me laugh one day when we first moved to town. We were putting in a garden, and chatted with him about the climate in South Louisiana. Being from Alaska, I said I was flabbergasted to discover there are two growing seasons here.
“There’s three, actually,” he said. “The cool season, the hot season, and when it gets really hot, all we grow is insects. For that, you just have to decide which ones you want to attract.” So I planted dill, and rejoiced when I saw the green and black caterpillars decimating it.
It’s difficult to bring anything to fruition in a garden here. It’s a hungry world, and everything wants a piece of it. A strawberry that may be barely ripening one day will be half-eaten the next.
“You just have to plant enough for everybody,” a friend said. Seeing that I was learning the hard way about gardening here, she offered this and other valuable advice.
To help accelerate my understanding, I joined a Zone 9 online-gardening group. I find it pretty entertaining. Apparently I’m not the only one in Louisiana having a difficult time. Most posts center around one of two questions: What the hell is this? or How do I kill this ______ (pest, invasive plant, insect population, etc.)?
A post will show a tomato with a big hole bored through it, or a diseased rosebush. There are lots of pictures of bugs, of snakes, and of cucumbers dying on the vine. Discussions range from how to keep armadillos out of the garden, to what to use as a mulch (the answers: you can’t, and pine needles).
Lots of questions arise about caterpillars eating up all the dill, and on this subject, there are decidedly two camps. Let them live! They become beautiful pollinators, some say. And then there are those who come armed to the teeth, ready to kill anything that moves. These ones post pictures of poisonous sprays, and other means they have found of maintaining dominion over the Earth.
A couple of my favorite quotes from this group, for the annals:
“What do y’all feed y’alls chickens?”
and
“The City’s jackhammering is nothing compared to y’alls leaf blowers. Get a damn rake!”
The plural of y’all makes me smile every time.
By now the dill had long been killed, and here was this butterfly, laying still. What trust it had, climbing into my hand. I felt it let go of the need to struggle. It seemed to know it was safe as, briefly, we communed.
And this makes me think. What I’m learning isn’t how to be strong- my friends are right: I already know plenty about that. What life is teaching me now is how to ask for help, and how to be truly vulnerable. Not just in the way of boldly speaking truths to the world through channels like this, laying private thoughts bare, or telling stories about hard times that open a window to my flaws for all the world to see. That takes vulnerability I suppose, yes. But honestly, that comes naturally for me. What’s difficult is the idea of dependence, of needing to rely on others, and having to ask people I haven’t known for very long to help take care of me. I’m building up to it, tenderly, hesitantly.
As I pass the next couple of weeks anticipating what it will be like to go through this metamorphosis, I’m examining my tendency to want to turn away from reality. One hard thing is my core tribe being all the way up in Alaska, and me here, among new friends and people I don’t know well. This is scary at a time like this.
“Right… you can’t just move somewhere and make old friends,” one person reflected. I was explaining what it’s like living so far from home, missing being surrounded by people who know who I am (for better and for worse). They say you go to Alaska for the beauty, and stay for the people, and that’s true. Alaska loves you unconditionally in a way that is rock solid. It’s really something the way people look after each other.
In this new place, I haven’t been feeling my best. It’s been hard to put myself out there to a new community while only firing on a couple of cylinders. With dark circles under my eyes, no energy to speak of, and middle age not doing me any favors, this party town is intimidating.
Hi, I’m me, a new member of your community. I’m really fun. No — really, I am! You want me for a friend, right?
They don’t know the vivacious, unstoppable me. Or that I will show up for them at any hour of any day and all they have to do is ask. We haven’t walked beside each other in all kinds of weather yet (literally or figuratively) the way I’ve done with Alaska friends. So it’s scary to be hurtling toward a situation that will render me physically helpless for a while, not knowing who will show up to help out.
Like a broken butterfly trying to get off the ground in a crushingly big world that moves too fast, I have been unable to face some of the preparations I need to make for the big day, in order to set myself up for successful healing. Somehow, this avoidant behavior does nothing to slow down the turning of days on the calendar. At my last therapy appointment, I started to see what’s really going on.
In my shock over the situation, I have a few go-to moves. I’ll pick a fight with my husband, who is a safe place to dump my garbage-worries (poor dear). Or I might bury my head in the sand, losing myself for hours in a book or an art project, while my to-do list grows longer. Or there’s always laying in bed while taking my own pulse, wondering if my heart will explode, trying to breathe. Anxiety sucks. My most signature move is to start taking care of other people right at the time when I need me most. But these tendencies were programmed in from a very young age, and this is the limited toolkit of an overloaded nervous system. Knee jerk reactions happen lightning fast. (That thing I said about my word for 2024: RESPOND? I’m working on it. It’s messy.)
So many dear friends have been calling to check on me. Midwives I’ve worked with in the past are especially keenly tuned in. They ask very practical questions like: “Who is going to take care of you after your surgery?” and “What is your pain management plan?” One of the biggest-hearted women in the world calls, the one who took me under her wing and carried me through from apprentice to licensed midwife, and promptly became a BFF for life.
“Oooooh, Stella! I’ve been thinking about you.” Her voice sounds pained.
“Aw! Hi. I’ve been thinking about you, too!”
“NO! Not like this you haven’t. I’ve been losing sleep worrying about you.”
She needs to hear again why this surgery is “absolutely necessary.” We go over the finer points, and I hear her relaxing.
“Oh! I just really needed to hear your laugh,” she says, with palpable relief. “From what I’m been reading of your writing, I’ve been picturing you crying in a corner.”
We might be broke and struggling to get through some difficulties right now, but here is one thing I know: I am RICH in friends. People have come out of the woodwork, sent cards and gifts, and astonishingly, have been showering us generously in donations through a GoFundMe campaign another friend kindly set up. She started a group called “A.S.S.” on social media, where friends can keep track of updates. This stands for Association for the Support of Stella.
Love has been pouring through the phone line, through the postal system and, dare I say, through financial channels.
A.S.S. has made a strong showing, with a growing membership that consists of some stalwart humans. I have literally been weeping with gratitude as I watch the numbers tick up on the website, and breathing a lot easier knowing we’re going to have a way to pay some of these outrageous medical bills. My tribe has mobilized. It’s in full effect. And here is a piece of amazing news: even as I’ve questioned my worth to the newer friends I’ve only met since moving here — folks that barely know me — they, too, are showing up in spades, bringing gifts, sending kind messages, making donations, and offering to help. I am just blown away.
I want you all to know: this butterfly-powered effort I’m making to overcome breast disease and come out whole, if transformed, on the other side does not only have me crying in the corner. I’m not just succumbing to panic attacks around the clock. Both of these things have happened, it’s true. But I guess it would be pretty strange if they hadn’t. But not to worry, I haven’t lost my sense of humor. If you’re thinking my writing has been dark and drear lately, just know that’s because I’m using art and writing to transmute pain and hardship into something useful. I’m spinning straw into gold.
Raising my shaky voice to ask for help has been teaching me a lot, and something wonderful is happening: creative juices are bubbling up more strongly than ever during this testing time, like a lotus blossom rising out of unlikely brown muck.
Or maybe it’s like a Louisiana crawfish. One of our new friends here has a T-shirt about those. It says:
We get ’em out the mud.
Yes, I am still full of laughter. Thanks to my loving friends and the deep well of resources I have inside me, I can still face the day. I have total trust that no matter what comes, I am always, always on my path. I will keep climbing whatever hill is next. My sense of humor is fully intact. Don’t worry, I haven’t lost it yet.
Photos by author
🦋🩵
Best of fortune! And yes, those swallowtail butterflies are beautiful.