As a child, a favorite book of mine took the form of Hope for the Flowers by Trina Paulus, published in 1973, two years before I was born. The book boasted line, ink, & watercolor illustrations, accompanied by hand-lettered text. The story was allegorical, about caterpillars searching for meaning in the world & needing to appear to die in order to transform into something else entirely. When the pandemic hit most of us in the United States, we were ill-prepared for what would lie ahead, unable to foresee what life in quarantine would actually mean. Certainly, I didn’t anticipate being cooped up in a condo with a toddler, two cats & a dog, on the third floor of a complex with no elevator & steep staircases. The arid climate of Utah combined with drought, inversion, & smoke from states’ worth of forest fires introduced an ubiquitous film of dust that’d never leave, no matter how much cleaning. The need for masking, the constant barrage of precautionary measures recommended, & the forever increasing ticker racking up the numbers of the infected did much to heighten my anxiety. The changes to daily life were subtle, even sneaky in the small ways that led to more & more inactivity & not-so-healthy coping mechanisms.

Flash forward to the present, & I’m faced with a body that’s been compromised by over two years of a sedentary lifestyle consisting of binge-watching & streaming movies & shows, reading, & building Harry Potter LEGO sets. As one writer recently wrote re: her 70 lb weight gain during the pandemic in the Huffington Post, “While I had noticed my weight gain when working from home, I wasn’t aware of it on a minute-by-minute basis, and I certainly didn’t have to worry about what anyone else thought about it.” (You can read the whole article here.) As I now start to acclimate to life again, I’m confronted with the discomfort of unwanted physical changes.

Maybe what worries me most is the moral judgment & disappointment that meets my gaze when people witness the negative physical effects the pandemic has had on me. I’m once again back on the road to wellness; yet, I still feel vulnerable, even overly sensitive, to every nonverbal cue that telegraphs disapproval. Thankfully, my employer has made certain apps available as a benefit, apps like Headspace & Noom, which focus on cognitive behavioral approaches to mental & physical wellness. I’ve written before about how introverts with anxiety rely on cocooning as a form of self-care & coping mechanism. Little did I know we’d be taking that to an extreme with the pandemic.

As a result, I think many of us experienced serious reevaluations of life & overall happiness, examining the role of mindset & its influence on the body. The incremental yet steady changes COVID-19 has systematically effected have accumulated subtly & almost imperceptibly so that when faced with the result of two years’ worth of atrophying & calcification it can be overwhelming.

And I’m sure most of you must know the oft-cited story of the butterfly coming out of the chrysalis, where a well-meaning human intervened to “help” the butterfly by expediting its escape from the cocoon. As the story goes, a feeble, shriveled & transfigured butterfly bitterly emerges & swiftly dies, unable to spread wings or acclimate to its new body. You see, the butterfly required the struggle of releasing itself from the cocoon to squeeze out the moisture trapped in its wings & body as a natural process; by “helping,” the human who wanted to spare the butterfly the pain & hardship of that struggle inadvertently brought about its inevitable demise. The moral of the story teaches that life requires necessary struggles & even incredible pain in order to create beautiful transformations wrought out of suffering. So, too, as many of us struggle to emerge from our homes once again, we will likely experience setbacks & moments of pain. The pandemic, as many other plagues before it, has irrevocably changed life as we’ve known it.

As I wrap up a second week of a professional development workshop that WGU has just launched to train administrative directors within leadership, I’m finding that I’ve needed to take a hard look at myself & my influence or impact on others. I’ve had to consider whether I have had a fixed or growth mindset (Goleman, Dweck), which 5 Dynamics quadrants tend to my go-to, whether I favor an inward or outward thinking mindset, & process my assessed EQ with all its strengths & weaknesses. Lots of reflection & introspection has occurred as a result, & there have been some surprises along the way. Next, I’ll be reviewing feedback from my direct reports & various folks who will speak to my leadership style & qualities.

Like the newly emerged butterfly, I’m finding myself quite vulnerable as I live out of suitcases, awaiting movers who have been abysmally late in driving our things out from Utah. I’m all for constructive criticism & feedback that will help me grow; yet, I’m finding several weeks of living with in-laws has made me more sensitive than usual, given that so many things are out of my control right now. I’m in this weird liminal state of being home but not quite home, preparing for life at the farm (a farm which itself is in the process of several repairs & upgrades, such as all new decks & a new washer). For someone like me, an introvert who prefers to cocoon & nestle into a home with hygge abound, being unsettled is, well, unsettling. I’m not a fan. I feel like a hermit crab without a shell.

All of this to say, we are all works in progress, & that liminal space in between things—whether changing jobs, homes, romantic relationships, physical states of health, parenthood, etc.—can feel anxiety-provoking for those of us already coping with clinical anxiety. The best thing to do is to focus on the end goal, as one would with a vision board, & trust that whatever you’re enduring will lead to something better. Will that positive future into being. What more can we do, as we await that transformation?