Molting

Apparently becoming a better version of yourself requires looking like hell for a while.

I used to call it “chrysalising” because butterflies are so much more acceptably beautiful than reptiles (even though I am good with and even a fan of reptiles).

Of course, the act of turning from a caterpillar to a butterfly is objectively more… gooey.

Gross, some would say.

So maybe molting – the act of shedding your skin for a more mature you – isn’t all that bad. Even when it’s a cicada shell, or the skin of a snake you find next to your house and wonder… venomous or not? (True story. 2017, Orlando horse farm.)

For several years now, I’ve been rooting in the dirt, literally and figuratively. Both of my parents loved landscaping, and without sporthorses eating my entire calendar (and budget) I now have time to do it.

In spending time out with the flowers – and the weeding that goes with it – I have become a bit of a birder now.

Using the Merlin app, I have now learned what $#&^! bird does not let me sleep past sunrise (for the record, cardinal). And that mockingbirds have a raucous cry that put a New Jersey housewife finding out her man’s been cheating on her to shame.

Not a pretty voice.

But that’s during nesting season.

In the winter, sitting out front, I have a mockingbird directly overhead, maybe 15 feet up in the tree, singing his or her heart out like it’s opera. Across the street, a dueling diva mockingbird singing their heart out.

And me? I’m just enjoying my coffee and reading, while being serenaded.

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This year, I have not tended my flowers like last year. They are there, but not nearly so glorious.

But my birding has risen to the occasion.

In photographing the same birds day after day, week after week, trying to ascertain – yes, with AI’s help, but me also arguing and often winning that ChatGPT is (ahem) an idiot – am I looking at a molting mother, or a fledging daughter?

I have opinions. As does cardinal mama.

I say mama had a most excellent spa day (done molting after nesting).

But being still new to this, correct me if I’m wrong. Which generation the boys are is a bit easier, I think, with the brilliant plumage they sport.

In watching this transpire… incubating, feeding, fledging, and (still!) feeding bebbies… then molting and growing new feathers… I see parallels with what’s going on with me.

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My life was upended in 2020 with a new direction in my work life.

Dad warned me, “I don’t think you know what you’re getting into”.

That’s a different story I will write.

But suffice to say, my life has been one gotta-level-up moment after another for six years now.

Exhausting.

Especially flying solo. After every stressful day, I come home to an empty house.

Thank God for my tribe of friends.

And those challenges haven’t just been career. There was heartache, significant physical issues, and now, a t-boning level of grief at losing my friend Trish.

She was my first Very Close Friend whom I’ve lost.

We expect to lose our parents eventually. “Appropriate age” is a ridiculous concept when you love someone, but there is at least an order to things.

But a contemporary?

Now it’s getting personal.

Not because I’m thinking, I’m next.

But because Trish was supposed to still be here.

I relied on her slightly-older wisdom. Her on-point humor. Her guidance. Her ability to understand something without requiring the 47-minute director’s cut.

And far-far-far beyond my loss, I’m angry about hers.

She loved Mark. She loved her kids and grandkids. She loved her life. She had only just gotten to retirement a few years ago.

She was robbed. They were robbed.

So let’s get to the point, shall we?

I’M MAD.

PISSED.

After well more than her official 25 years of public service, she deserved a lot more years of a great retired life, and I’m really f’ing angry she didn’t get them.

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So back to molting. We all do it. For various and sometimes compounding reasons.

2020 career change was a complete upending of my life.

2022 losing Dad and Casey two weeks apart at Christmas. At their respective ages, neither loss was a surprise, but both were massively impactful nonetheless.

2024 don’t even get me started on that list of dating heartache, community crisis, and abject f’wittery.

2026: with the angry community vibe, Trish’s death, and neighbor betrayal… apparently it’s time for me to pull on the big-girl panties and molt again.

That whole fire-forges-steel, pain-forges-maturity thing?

Gotta say, it sucks while you’re going through it.

You’re uncomfortable. You’re vulnerable. You put pressure on yourself and relationships, sometimes to the point of breaking. Those behaviors that leak through aren’t what you stand for, but the stress makes you not yourself, until you realize it’s your own molting season again.

Time to level up again. You were proud to be at level 229 in the game of adulting… until you realize there are 500 levels.

Dammit.

Like our bird friends, you can look decidedly worse before you look better. And occasionally you find some discarded piece of yourself lying around and wonder who the hell that belonged to.

But eventually the new feathers come in.

And then, because life has a vicious little sense of humor, someday you’ll have to molt again.

Still…

Maude looks fab-bu-lous, does she not?

I mean, those tail feathers… gurllllll?

Just, wow.

Makes ya wanna start plucking feathers and becoming the new you.

Almost.

🩵

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