The job (and career!) that I thought I’d love has become a box I no longer fit into.  For a while I tried to fit. I tried to squash myself up and squeeze in while banging a bit on the box here and there, hoping that we could be made to fit one another. Eventually, it became clear. I don’t fit in this box and the box won’t grow to fit me. And given that, I have no desire to reshape myself into a shape that will fit in that box. I’ve worked too hard to become this new creature.  It doesn’t matter anyway, a butterfly cannot go back to being a caterpillar, no matter how hard she tries.

And so I am letting go of the box; I am letting go of the day-to-day that no longer fits. It’s a scary, perched here outside the box that served me for many years. But it’s right. I know the shape of that box. I know how to navigate it. There is the comfort of familiarity there, sitting alongside of the discomfort of being wedged in where I don’t fit. But, when you don’t fit, you don’t fit. No amount of pretending will make you fit.  Instead, it only does you a disservice. Why on earth should the butterfly try to be a caterpillar? There are more caterpillars there to fill her spot and she has butterfly work to do. The time for looking back is done. I am not a caterpillar anymore.

Are there forms you have outgrown? Are you holding yourself from your work (and from yourself!) by insisting that something you’ve outgrown still fits? By trying to squash yourself to fit it?  Be bold. Step outside that box with me. The air out here is exhilarating.