Hello my friend,
Here we are poised on the threshold of one year ending and the next beginning.
In a few days, a dark new moon will accompany the darkest longest night of the year.
Collectively, we’re in a long dark exhale, leaving What Was.
But before we inhale, before we step into What’s Next, often we go through a journey of radical transformation.
When you’re on such a journey, in the midst of some Big Change — especially one that involves a breakup, divorce, or relationship rupture — you might feel utterly lost, and that everything familiar is falling apart:
Your footing.
Your future.
Your sense of who you are.
You may wonder: What is wrong with me? Why is this taking so long? Why does it feel like I’m moving backward instead of forward?
I want to offer you a reframe that has helped thousands of people make sense of this Terrain of Big Change:
What if you’re not doing anything wrong, but you’re being reshaped?
What if you are in a Metamorphosis?
Metamorphosis means “transformation beyond shape.”
Used originally to describe the Greek gods’ shape-shifting, it was borrowed by scientists to describe reconfigurations like snakes shedding skin, tadpoles growing legs and lungs, and caterpillars entering the cocoon and emerging a butterfly.
We humans transform, too.
We too are wrecked and reassembled.
Not just in the flesh — through puberty, pregnancy, menopause, or ‘manopause’— but emotionally, spiritually, archetypally — through massive threshold-crossings such as divorce, heartbreak, breakup, and Big Changes.
And if we let it, Metamorphosis will do what it’s always done: pull us beyond Who We Were into Who We Are Becoming.
The Five Phases of Metamorphosis
As Something Big ends and a Self is being remade, there are five phases to move through.
You might cycle through these phases more than once. You might recognize yourself in more than one at the same time.
But knowing these phases can bring relief.
They can orient you when you feel lost. Knowing there is medicine in each phase can be a comfort. Knowing there are phases can remind you you’re in a process—an intelligent, universal, sacred arc.
Our Metamorphoses match that of the badass butterfly.
Eventually, we too will emerge from the Cosmic Cocoon.
Phase One: Entering the Unknown
This phase marks the beginning of the end — of What Was as well as Who You Have Been.
In this phase, time warps. You may feel numb, disoriented, panicky, or strangely calm. Your mind spins and loops, wishing for answers for questions, certainty for confusion, and reassurance for doubts.
Nothing has gone wrong here.
This is exactly what it feels like to step over the threshold from all you have known, and into The Unknown, where the old rules no longer apply.
The caterpillar also leaves the life it has known and Enters The Unknown: it creates and then enters its cocoon, inside of which it dies, totally transforms, and then will be reborn.
If caterpillars can do it, so can we.
This initial phase of transformation invites you to simply not know for a while.
Because what you knew then is not what you need to know now.
Phase Two: Dissolution
This is where things really fall apart: your outworn illusions, old identity, outdated strategies:
Who you thought you were in the relationship, in the world.
The future you were counting on, committed to.
Dissolution is not gentle; it is acute.
It can feel shocking, agonizing, unbearable. You don’t recognize yourself. You feel like you’re coming undone. With nowhere to hide or run, you feel drenched by the loss of what you gave your whole heart to.
But this phase is doing essential work.
Before anything new can form, what no longer fits has to loosen its grip.
It’s not a personal failure, but a necessary unmaking.
So too for our friend the caterpillar: inside its cocoon-tomb-womb, some shit is going down. Trusting its instincts without question, it completely dissolves itself. Into goo.
Its perfectly wonderful caterpillar body melts and morphs until it is unrecognizable.
Give it some time and a few more phases, and all that goo will remodel itself into a lovely thing with wings. But first it must dissolve, sloughing off its former identity.
No goo; no butterfly.
No Dissolution; no newer, truer you.
This phase invites you to quit avoiding what hurts and instead stay put.
Because what worked then won’t work now.
Phase Three: Excavation
After some of the initial shock wears off, something else begins.
You start to look Underneath.
In this phase, you mine your muck and retrieve your disowned parts.
You dig into patterns, history, and long-standing dynamics — not because you want to, but because you can no longer avoid it:
Why you left too soon, stayed too long.
Why you erased yourself.
Why certain fears feel so big.
Excavation is not a time for self-blame, but for truth-telling.
How, we might ask, does our dismembered caterpillar not stay a heap of goo? How does it know to leave behind and what to bring forward?
This is sacred sorting — of What Was from What Will Be.
In Excavation, you choose what to keep. And what to let go.
You see your painful reactions not as character flaws, but strategies you learned long ago to stay safe, loved, or chosen.
What once looked like the problem often turns out to be a messenger.
From the muck, you extract gems: clarity, self-compassion, self-trust. The voice of your soul.
You stop fighting your inner demons and instead learn new ways to love.
Because what got you here won’t get you there.
Phase Four: Reimagining
At some point, you come up for air.
This is the phase where the sediment begins to settle. You have some space to ask different questions:
What actually works for me?
What do I no longer want to live with?
What feels true now — even if it’s a little scary?
How, out of utter dissolution, do we butterflies reimagine ourselves into being? How, out of caterpillar soup, is a butterfly formed?
Inside the chrysalis are wise things called imaginal cells. They contain the blueprint of the butterfly to be. They hold the memory of what new shape it will take. Imaginal cells imagine the caterpillar goo into the eventual yet inevitable butterfly.
This is not a phase of fantasy or forced positivity, but a deep reimagining of a life that fits better than the one you left.
You follow your inner compass instead of the preordained path.
You wake up what’s been dormant too long. You toss the compromises that cost you too much. You reclaim your joy.
You to listen to yourself and dream into what’s next.
Because who you were then is not who you are becoming now.
Phase Five: Emerging
Emerging is not a finish line. It’s a re-entry.
We’re half in the cocoon, half unfurling into new life.
Our imaginal cells have done their reimagining. And when the once-caterpillar-now-butterfly is ready to emerge, it chews its way out.
Which is hard. Inglorious. You try gnawing your way out of your own womb with tiny butterfly teeth and toenails.
Yet if you or I helped it out to cut short its struggle, something awful would happen.
That butterfly would never be able to fly.
But if the butterfly gets to bite and gnash and stretch and stumble on its way out, the cocoon goo will get all over, especially on its wings. Goo is what makes its wings work.
The struggle strengthens them, so our butterfly becomes sturdy enough to fly.
The gnashing, the erroring, the trying again are vital for butterflies and humans alike.
In your Emerging, you trial-and-error, you struggle and stumble, you get ready to fly free.
You are still tender.
You still grieve.
But you are becoming solid in yourself.
Pleasure returns, along with color, texture, and flavor. You hold your boundaries, even if they shake now and again.
There is a spring in your step, your spine is strong, your heart is soft.
You are not who you were.
You are more you.
Even so, the process isn’t over.
We don’t complete a Metamorphosis once and graduate. We move through it again and again, each time with more honesty and self-trust.
Emerging invites you to see The Big Change not as a failure, but a rite of passage.
It’s who you become in your Metamorphosis that helps you emerge brilliantly.
If you’re in the middle of this Terrain of Transformation and it feels unbearable, I want you to know:
You are not lost.
You are not behind.
You are not failing.
You are in a personal yet universal, ancient and archetypal process of Becoming.
You are made for this.
Practice: Finding Yourself in Metamorphosis
Nothing to fix. Just locate yourself.
- Take one slow breath.
- Then, gently ask yourself: Which phase am I mostly in right now?
Don’t overthink it. Let the answer come.
- Remind yourself (out loud or inside): Of course this feels hard/scary/disorienting. This is the phase I’m in.
That’s it.
No action steps. No self-improvement. Just orientation and kindness.
Knowing Where You Are changes how you treat yourself — and that changes everything.
With love from the radiant dark,
PS: Keep your ear to the ground for Three Ways to Metamorphosis With Me:
#1. The Cauldron
A monthly live meeting with me + a small group of depth-oriented kindreds. Share what’s up and get coaching/reflection/insight/holding/witnessing/inspiration.
We’ll loosely follow the phases of Metamorphosis and you’ll get tools and practices bespoke to what phase you’re in — so you can live your complex, beautiful life with grace and meaning.
Gotta keep this group small (11 total) so only four spots available.
#2. Metamorphosis Breakthrough Session
Bring me your toughest, most intractable issue and we’ll create an incredible breakthrough in record time — so you can step into the next chapter of your life awake, unfettered, and lit-up.
Package includes: Pre-session clarity form + 2-hour deep dive Breakthrough session + 45-minute Integration session
Three spots available.
#3. Metamorphosis Mentorship: Wake up from the dark night into your unbound, audacious life
Mentorship + Miracles with LiYana Silver
Move through the skin-shedding phases of Metamorphosis. Get grounded in your power, free from light-dimming patterns, guided by intrinsic self-worth. Dream into and actualize What’s Next. Held by me + a small group of sisters, deeply committed to your unfurling.
Six-day in-person retreat. Six deep-dive 1:1 sessions. Nine small group masterclasses. April-July 2026.
Get on the waiting list for when applications open.
Limited to 11 spots.