What most people don’t know, is that when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, it first has a complete meltdown. It doesn’t just sprout wings – it first turns into a little glob of jelly inside that cocoon. After the meltdown, it is ready to become something new and incredibly beautiful. Not before.

There are many of us who have experienced various forms of meltdown over the last few years. Old structures fall away. Long-term relationships fall apart, jobs disappear, and even identities that we had held most sacred – such as a religion – evaporate before our eyes. Sometimes we come to the point in our lives where nothing seems to work any more. Everything we had identified with is gone.

We end up alone, broke, scared, without the beliefs that once gave our world structure.

Actually, we don’t “end up” there. It may seem like the end, but like a caterpillar turning into a little pod of liquid on a tree, it is only one stage in a larger process that we can’t see clearly yet.

After our old, limiting beliefs and identities have been melted away, we have an amazing opportunity ahead of us. Stripped down, we now stand unencumbered by the old clothes that no longer fit us. We can now become someone new, bigger and more joyful. We have the opportunity to reinvent our lives based on the Truth that we have discovered about ourselves.

So many people have had unhappy marriages fall apart, and dead-end jobs end abruptly, and it seems like the end. Who am I without this person? Who am I without this career? Who am I now, in this moment?

The truth is, I am not my relationships, I am not my career, and I am not my possessions. Who I am, underneath it all, is someone far greater. The material things of life had obscured that, and needed to be taken away for me to have a clear view.

Once I get clear about who I am, and the life I choose, there is incredible joy ahead. Without the unhappy, limiting attachments I used to have, I am now free to choose commitments and activities that best serve my soul and the souls that I connect to around me.

If you’ve just had a meltdown, it may seem like the end. And it is. But not the very end. A new world awaits.

And it’s more beautiful than any caterpillar can imagine.