The Emergence of the Butterfly

Everything Changes.

When you begin to realize who we are, what we are, why we are; everything shifts. It may start with a tiny whisper or it may start with a big bang. For me it was the latter. The implosion of my life as I knew it. From the dust of who I had been sprang a seed, which sprouted into something so incredibly beautiful that I sometimes still have to shield my eyes from it.

What I am going to tell you is the beginning of my story. But the story of my journey is only a small part. “Capillaries” is what I have been told. My story is just the surface. A way to bring the essence of what is pumping from the heart, through the arteries and the veins, closer to where you can see it. My story yes, but underneath that is the story of Us.

Everything Changes.

When you begin to understand. When you begin to unravel the plot line that we have built and encased ourselves in. When you gaze up to the night sky and realize that there is no truth in a story about a ‘galaxy far, far away’ because everything that you need to know is right here, right now.

Everything Changes.

Change, then is the essence of my story. Change is a beautiful thing, but often we struggle against it. There are times when it seems so difficult. When change is heralded by pain or loss and all we want to do is ‘curl up’ until things are back to what they used to be. But we can’t escape change. Even if there was a way to wall ourselves up so that we did not have to experience loss, or a change in a job, or a scary move…change would still continue within us and outside of us.

It is who we are.

Rebirth is constant.

I think of the butterfly as a symbol of rebirth and change. Emerging from the cocoon of life’s worries and heaviness and spreading wings to embrace who we truly are and fly. But how often do we think of the caterpillar? I am not sure that the process of building a cocoon to enfold you, knowing that you will be turned into a pile of ‘goo’ and then reconstructed, is necessarily a pleasant process.

But ohhhh the end result is just so beautiful isn’t it?

I don’t know if I ever knew who I was when I was the caterpillar.

My true self.

Me.

I look back on my life, and I don’t really see a time where I truly knew, truly understood who I was and why I was here. My life seems like a batch of vignettes. Pretty, yet slightly worn pictures that are slightly blurry around the edges.

I remember a day many years ago.

Just an ordinary day.

There is no memory leading up to it. Nothing that sticks out as having triggered it. But, the moment is so clear to me. I can picture exactly where I was standing in the hallway when I was stopped in my tracks, overcome by a wave of sadness and a feeling of worthlessness. The thought in my head was extraordinarily strong,

“I have accomplished nothing with my life”.

I shook my head to try and clear the fog. I thought about how tired I was and decided that I just didn’t have enough energy to tackle the meaning of that statement, much less change the direction of my life. My next thought was

“Oh well, it’s too late now. I will try harder next time”.

***

What does it mean to be real? To be our true authentic selves.

Who are we really?

What are we here for?

What are we meant to be doing?

Are we defined by our jobs, what we do for a living?

“I am a manger, a hairdresser, a housewife, a police officer, a writer, an artist, a doctor, a CEO”.

Do those statements reflect the real us?

How many times have you asked a child, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. Does society really expect that every child should have a clear vision of what the next eighty years of their lives is going to look like?

***

I spent my childhood living in an imaginative world, one that catered to my desire to be many different things and many different people. So my ‘I want to be’s sprang from that theme of fantasy and pretend.

The first thing that I remember wanting to be when I grew up was a ballerina. A beautiful dancer who wowed everyone with the grace and the poise of her movements. Never mind the fact that I am really not that graceful and my short and stout stature don’t lend themselves to a dancer’s physique.

Then I remember, very briefly, wanting to be a teacher, like my mother.

Next, I wanted to be an actress. Portraying someone else. Playing out the characters from the books that I read or the movies that I watched.

As I got older and society began to intrude on my cozy little world of imagination, I realized that I couldn’t depend on the blurry dreams of my childhood. I wasn’t going to be a famous actress or a prima ballerina. I had to come up with something more concrete.

The time came where there was no more hiding from it. I was getting ready to apply to colleges, so I needed to decide what my adult goals were. What did I want to be when I grew up?

And I really still had no idea.

I had participated in a couple of speech contests and had done pretty well. So it was decided…I was a good public speaker. And what could I do with that? Well after some research, I decided that I wanted to be in Public Relations.

But, that wasn’t really it either. Nope. Not really.

It sounded good at the time, but I really had no interest in that field. After college I became various things from a certified nurse’s aide to a bartender and eventually, I landed in the financial industry.

And if I am going to be honest here, the only reason I ended up there is because I was looking for a job that was 9-5 Monday through Friday where I could dress up and look the part of a professional.

***

So it seems I couldn’t really define Renee by what she does for a living. That was consistently shifting and I really hadn’t found a career that brought me joy or really felt like it fit me.

So maybe I could be defined by my relationships…“I am a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend”…that feels more concrete. More like the real Renee.

***

I met Ken when I was in my late twenties. I had spent most of my young adulthood searching for someone to be in love with. There had been a couple of serious relationships before him, but none lasting longer than a year or two. Ken and I met at a bar; I was a bartender, and he was imbibing.

For someone who had spent so long looking for love, I really wasn’t in any rush to get married. We moved in together, got engaged, bought a house; but it wasn’t until the year I turned 41 that we finally decided that it was time get married.

There is a ton that I could tell you about our marriage, our love, and even my life before Ken. But for now, all you need to know is that we found each other, fell in love, and with that love as a foundation we set about constructing a life together.

And then he was gone.

One minute I was a princess on a beach in Key West, getting married to my prince; and the next thing I knew, it was midnight and the coach turned back into a pumpkin. Well, it was almost nine years later, but to me it seemed like minutes.

The initial villain was a nasty little cancer.

***

I remember the doctor telling us that there was only a 10% chance that it would be cancer.

It was.

When he went in for surgery to have it removed, the doctor said that there was only a slight chance that anything would go wrong during the surgery.

It did.

***

The surgeons had to perform a tracheotomy because they had difficulty getting him off of the breathing tube and out from under anesthesia. But, technically, the surgery was successful and the nasty little cancer was removed.

The first night after the surgery was spent in the Intensive Care Unit. But on day two he was moved from the ICU to a private room and was gleefully using a text to speech app to tease the nurses.

I sighed with relief and started thinking about the number of visitors that would be showing up the next day.

That second night, the phone call came.

My husband, my right arm, had coded. I rushed to the hospital, but by the time that I got there he was gone.

And with him, half of me.

Just gone.

Life went on.

A strange concept really.

When your world disintegrates, you really expect... life to end.

Or at least to stop for a while.

But it doesn’t, it just keeps moving on.

***

So apparently the real Renee isn’t defined by her relationships either. I thought that I was a wife, but suddenly I was a widow. No one had asked my permission, but that relationship had changed without a warning.

***

Immediately following a ‘death’ you are not allowed to shut down. There are services to plan, government offices to be visited, vacation plans to be canceled, bills to be paid. The next week I was back at work. Working seven days a week at two jobs, and doing what I could to stay out of my lonely house.

After work I would go to the gym, or the casino, or shopping.

Anything to keep moving.

To not have to think.

To not have to feel.

I suppose that I was running from the grief, but it felt like I was just trying to survive. And that survival wasn’t easy. It was as if I had been thrown to my knees with such a strong force that I couldn’t get back up.

Nothing made any sense anymore.

I just had to keep moving, because if I stopped then I was pretty sure that I would never get back up again. For almost a year, I continued in this haze of movement. Running, moving, going, but not being able to really pull myself up off of my knees.

Looking back now, I realize that there were a few things that happened to give me a hint as to what was to come. But, at the time I didn’t realize what they meant.

Ken and I leased two vehicles; both were in his name. Mine was new; we had gotten it less than a month before. But I no longer could afford the lease payment for that vehicle, much less for both.

So in addition to everything else, cars had to be returned and I ended up with a new, less expensive car.

I wear glasses when I drive. That is the only time that I wear them so they stay in the car.

One day I pulled into the driveway, took off my glasses and tossed them into the drink holder. Nothing unusual about that, the drink holder had always been my normal spot for them.

Suddenly a compartment above the dashboard popped open…on my brand-new car. I instinctively reached up and slammed it shut. A little voice inside cleared its throat. I looked over at the empty passenger seat, smiled and thought, if Ken were sitting there he would tell me in his own funny, slightly sarcastic way,

“Renee, you know these days they make cars with a place to store your glasses” and he would have reached up and opened it to show me.

But Ken wasn’t sitting there. I reopened the compartment anyway and put my glasses inside, snapping it shut again. From that day forward, it never popped open again!

My thoughts had drifted in the right direction……….but I brushed them away.

When he had decided that it was time to upgrade, Ken had given me his old smart phone. It had a little stylus attached, that functioned like a pen, and an app that you could use as notepaper. As neat as that was, I didn’t have a ton of use for pen and paper on my phone. The only thing it seemed useful for was grocery lists. So I used it for grocery lists and nothing else.

Well, except for once.

A short time after he had given me the phone, I discovered that it could write in different colors. That begged for a little creativity! So I sketched a heart in hot pink that said ‘Ken + Renee’ inside and excitedly showed it to Ken.

His response was lukewarm, at best!

After he passed, I was still using the phone for tracking my grocery lists…because as noted…life goes on. There surely weren’t as many grocery trips as before, but even a widow has to eat.

One day sitting in the parking lot at the mall, I pulled my phone out of my purse, gave it a quick glance, and then tossed it on the seat next to me.

Suddenly, up popped the hot pink heart.

Ken + Renee

I immediately swiped it away (after we received an exorbitant cell phone bill, my husband had showed me that just closing out of something on the phone didn’t necessarily do what one would assume that it should. Stuff kept running in the background still eating up data. So, like the dutiful wife that I had been, I trained myself to always swipe away browsers, apps, etc. to ensure that they would not remain running).

After my initial ‘swipe’ reaction, my heart fluttered for a moment, realizing that this experience had been a little strange. If the notes app on the phone had just accidentally pulled up, it would have opened to a grocery list. I hadn’t even remembered that little heart was there and hadn’t looked at that page in over two years. So why that heart?

“Hmmm”, I said, and then went on with my life.

As I mentioned, I continued this way for almost a year. ‘This way’ was the frenetic pace. Working, shopping, exercising, gambling; any activity that I could think of to keep me moving and out of the house.

Somewhere right around 10 months into this journey, I started to feel slightly human again. And I knew that it was time.

Time to begin slowly and carefully getting up from my knees.

Time to allow myself to feel and to heal.

So I dropped one day a week at my second job. That was it. One day a week where I wasn’t just running. One day a week where I was allowing time with myself. And that is apparently all that it took. A tiny moment of silence and breath in my chaotic world. One brief moment a week to allow myself to feel.

About a week later, while driving down the road, a commercial for the Long Island Medium came on the radio. I hadn’t put any thought into visiting a medium before that. I, after all, wasn’t entirely crazy. I was a middle-aged woman who came from a catholic, conservative background. Mediums were the stuff of fantasy stories and daydreams.

One of my guilty pleasures was a slight fascination with the paranormal, but that translated to reading Stephen King and binging on paranormal investigation shows.

The internal chatter began,

“You are a widow, it makes sense to think about this.”

“Sure, but what are the chances that, of all the people in the audience, she will pick me to give a message to?”

“You have a point there. What about Lily Dale”

“Lily Dale?”

“Yes, Lily Dale”.

Several years before I had read a series of books about a Spiritualist community on the other side of Buffalo, NY called Lily Dale. Supposedly everyone who lived in this little town were mediums. The series had fascinated me and I had told Ken that we needed to visit someday.

Apparently, someday had arrived.

That was a Wednesday, and that Saturday, I was off on what would end up being the most important journey of my life.

I kept talking to Ken in my head.

“You better make sure that you show up mister. If I get myself all excited and end up only talking to my grandmother, you are in trouble!”.

From the minute I got into my car to head to Lily Dale there were signs being dropped on my path. The first turn I took, there was a cardinal on the side of the road. That might not seem like a strange thing, but he wasn’t flying, he wasn’t in a tree. He was sitting on the shoulder of the road scratching in the dirt. Middle aged woman from a catholic conservative background or not, I immediately knew that cardinal was telling me that this trip was going to be special.

A couple of hours later I spotted a hawk with a tiny bird in its talons. Okay, maybe that wasn’t quite as cheerful of a sign as my pretty little cardinal! Translating now, I would say that it meant that something bigger had me in its grasp.

I had not been able to book an appointment with a medium on line, neither had I been able to find a place to stay in Lily Dale. I booked a motel room that was about 15 minutes away, figuring that I would just head to the town early the next day and walk around looking for a medium with an open appointment. If I found one I would get a reading; and if not I would just look around and go back another time.

The next day came and I was relaxing and enjoying the short ride from my motel to Lily Dale. A couple of miles before town I heard a siren and saw flashing lights in my rear-view mirror. This certainly couldn’t be for me. I pulled into a gas station that was just ahead.

“License and registration please”.

“What did I do? Why are you pulling me over?”.

“Ma’am you were going 60 in a 45”.

“No sir, I was going 60 in a 55.”

“No, it is 45 through here”.

I argued a little bit. I had never gotten a speeding ticket as I was always very conscientious about my speed. How could I have possibly missed the change in the speed limit? Little did I know that the question “how could I have missed the change?” was more meaningful than I realized. I had recognized the cardinal and the hawk as signs; but not this message from the universe about the speed that things were going to start moving for me.

At the time, though, I just wondered how, after all these years of driving, I had ended up with my very first speeding ticket.

Slight delay aside, I got to Lily Dale at about 8 am.

A tiny little hamlet, the place felt quiet and peaceful. I parked my car, got out and walked around, ready to start my hunt for a medium. I saw one or two people walking their dogs, but it felt like they basically ran in the other direction.

I turned down one small road and saw a woman watering flowers in front of a pretty little cottage. I stopped and asked her if she was a medium and if she had any appointments open. She told me that she was indeed a medium. And then she said that when she had gone to bed the night before, her schedule had been full. But when she woke up that morning, she was guided to open up a couple of more appointments on her schedule. Later she also told me that she didn’t normally water her own flowers. She had someone that she hired to care for the lawn who usually did that for her. Somehow, on this day, the universe had nudged her to open more appointments and head outside to water the flowers......just in time for my stroll by her house. I signed up for an appointment with her at noon.

A few hours later, I entered a small, dimly lit office with the woman.

“You have many people in spirit with you. But, you know that right?”

I looked around a little confused “um, not really”. Oh boy, that meant for sure that I was going to get Grandma. Not that I wouldn’t have loved to hear from her, but she wasn’t who I was here for.

The medium explained that she would start with her eyes closed and asked that I stay quiet until she opened them again. As she was explaining this to me, her voice started getting scratchy and she cleared her throat several times.

When she had closed her eyes to begin the reading, she told me that she was getting someone who had a tracheotomy or something wrong with his throat. I almost fell off my chair. I hadn’t thought about the tracheotomy in quite a while, and it surely wouldn’t have been the first thing that I used to identify my husband. But, it was definitely evidence that he was there and explained the reason that her throat had gotten scratchy.

I don’t know what I expected, but the experience surpassed anything that I could have imagined. By the time it was over, I was numb. She handed me a tissue and a recording of the reading; and I drove home playing it over and over. And crying. A lot.

I stayed in shock for two days.

Had that experience really happened?

Had I made most of it up in my head?

Was there a logical explanation for someone being able to communicate with my late husband?

After the initial shock wore off, I made a decision.

I didn’t really know if any of this was real or not. But, if someone else could communicate with Ken then I was going to figure out how it worked and I was going to do it myself. After all, he was MY husband!

So I set off on a journey.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I expected to find.

I was looking for answers.

For understanding.

What had happened to my husband?

Where was he and was he okay?

Could I actually communicate with him?

Soon after that first eventful visit to Lily Dale, I left on another trip and headed in the other direction. Lily Dale was West of me, I headed East to a little crystal shop in Saratoga Springs where I met with a tarot reader. She didn’t contact Ken, but she recommended a few books, and gave me the name of a lady that she thought could help me discover what I was looking for. I picked up a bunch of crystals, a pendulum, a book on how to use the pendulum, and a handful of other books about psychic phenomena.

A few days later, I sat in my living room tuned in to an on-line event with the woman the tarot reader had pointed me towards. I listened, fascinated, as she talked about contacting your ancestors. When the event ended, I felt what seemed like a cold hand on my arm. Somehow, I instinctively knew that it was Ken and that he wanted me to use the pendulum.

“But, I haven’t read the book yet! Oh all right, let’s give this a shot”.

One of the books that I had purchased contained a letter chart for use with the pendulum, so I opened the book, took out the pendulum and before I knew it I was communicating with Ken. Tears flowed and awe ensued.

***

I had figured that there was only about a 10% chance that any of this was true.

It was.

I had figured that there was only a slight chance that I would be able to reach my husband.

I did.

***

And that is the story of how I began to find Renee. No longer the caterpillar, but now the emerging butterfly.

That long ago day when I thought, “I will try harder next time”, I didn’t realize that ‘next time’ was right around the corner.

I initially thought that this was all about finding my husband.

Then I thought that this was about being a psychic medium and being able to talk to ‘dead people’.

Soon, I began to realize that it was so much bigger than that.

At 50-years-old, I finally knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted…no I needed…to help other people find this for themselves.

The realization that their loved ones are not gone.

The realization that if they slowed down and stopped ‘swiping’ away their messages they would see that the signs have been around them all along.

The realization that change may not always be easy, but the most painful change might be the catalyst for the most beautiful transformation.

When the worst possible thing that I could imagine happened, suddenly all of my walls came crumbling down and I was able to see the reflection of who Renee was. Not who I had thought that I was supposed to be, but what and who I really was. What I discovered was that little girl inside of me had always known the truth. The world is so much brighter when you stop trying to always be the ‘logical’ adult and realize that your imagination is an intuitive tool.

And now I know that I actually did become all of those things that little girl dreamed of being.

I am a ballerina who dances between the physical and the spiritual worlds; choosing the most graceful words as choreography to thread both worlds together.

I am a teacher. Guiding others towards finding their own version of the truth that I discovered. That death is just another step on this journey of change. We are eternal beings whose love and light cannot be dimmed.

What about the actress?

Well, my journey has felt a little like the yellow brick road and along the way I have portrayed all of the characters from The Wizard of Oz.

I have played Dorothy, who originally thought that she had lost her home only to discover that she had never left it. The real Renee was always there, just waiting to be found.

I have been the Cowardly Lion. Thinking that she was afraid of her own shadow, only to discover a core of courage that she never knew that she had. And after all of that, her shadow wasn’t actually so scary after all.

I have stepped into the role of the Tin Woodsman, who thought that her heart was never going to work again. Only to find out that love transcends everything.

I have played the part of the Scarecrow who decided that her life was over and that she would never be smart enough to learn more this late in life. I found out that my puny brain could wrap around some of the greatest mysteries in the universe and still have so much further that it wants to stretch.

I have even played Toto, the tiny little companion who sometimes just wanted to be picked up and carried; but other times could snarl and growl and have the tenacity to pull aside the curtain of illusion.

It took losing my husband to find myself.

But now I know. I am a spiritual being on a human journey. I am a psychic medium, a metaphysical minister, a mystic, a channel, a teacher. I am a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend. I am pieces of all those who have come before me, all those who have walked beside me, and all those who have yet to come.

Everything Changes.