The Evolution of a Pupa

Day 31 – back home with Michelle and Lian. I was moved by a message from a friend of old today. Without revealing who she is, I thought I would share her words with you below so that you get the flavor of someone else’s thoughts and heart. From the messages that I receive from the few who read these thoughts of mine, it is clear that the ties that bind us together can often be the simple, honest words of struggle and self-doubt. These are the ever-present and sometimes overwhelming challenges of identity, of responsibility…or simply, of life.

My father spoke with me today and shared with me that he also had struggled with the identity of hunter and nurturer in our family. Who should bring home the bacon between a man and a woman? Who should be there for the children? And what sacrifices are made when the twain meet somewhere in between?

A colleague at work today shared with me that his wife went from uber-professional management consultant to pilates instructor and mother, and has yet to fully emerge from the transformational cocoon she built for herself. It seems that she is a butterfly struggling to shed her own chrysalis.

Looking at Lian tonight, and holding her tightly in my arms while singing what sounded to both Michelle and I like a native American rain chant (I don’t know how the tune popped into my head – that’s jet lag for you), I felt a similar struggle in this warm pupa of mine. It’s no stretch of the imagination to imagine that your child, swaddled tightly, is a fragile chrysalis of her own (chrysalis – from the Greek “khrusos”, meaning gold).

Arms and legs tightly tucked against the body in a form of cotton cocoon, Lian’s gurgles, squeaks and moans in half-sleep, and her first-hesitant, then wailing, cries seem to be a clarion call for her changing body and mind.

But let me dawdle no longer. She is sleeping now, fed only 30 minutes ago by her doting mother, and if the last two days are any indicator of the transformation that she will endure tonight, then I have only 1 hour of sleep before this little pupa sounds the wails of change.


A letter from a friend in Africa ….

Deano
As I sit in my small office in Benin working since the small hours thismorning...your blog fills me with such a mixture of feelings...It isrefreshing....really.

I spent the day considering the latest aspects of a collaboration with theDanish Agency for development and I stopped to pause to read the lastchapters in your life back in New York as a single man caught in his trinityof roles and identities I smoked a cigarette and I feel that you arebringing me back to another level of life and that makes such a difference..Since you send me the web site contact, I have entered it in my specials andlate in the evening before I go back home. I read and read...your latestmoods and reflections...You are a beautiful writer and you share yourfeelings and enquiry in this new becoming....in such a special way...

You are touching of so many vital issues...and I want to say that it isspecial.

The single life, the getting to find a balance between career fulfillmentand all these choices that are always on one side of the line....Thanks again for these contributions I feel that I know you better through all of this ..and I am proud to call you a friend...

I will close my computer now ,will fill myself up with another level ofhumanity… much food for thoughts in your share...wish you good evening andwill go back reading later on this week...

All my love and friendship with you and thanks for the beautiful message toMimi ....it is about your special story together but also such a universalquest that is about something universal for all of us in the end to work outand work on.

Je t'embrasse