The Butterfly has unknown origins but has strong learning for each of us to consider about what we need to fly—sometimes things are not as they seem.

A man finds a butterfly cocoon, which develops a small hole. Over several hours, he notices the butterfly struggling to force its body through the small hole.

After a period, the man noticed that the butterfly appeared stop progressing. In an attempt to be helpful, the man decides to cut the cocoon open.  The butterfly emerged easily however its body was swollen and it had small-shrivelled wings.

The man continued to watch the butterfly expecting at any moment the wings to enlarge and expand enough to support the body.

Neither happened!

In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around the ground. It was never able to fly.

What the man in his kindness and haste did not realise was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle by the butterfly to break free was nature’s way of forcing the fluid out of the butterfly’s body and into its wings so that it is ready for flight when the butterfly emerged.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. They allow us to overcome obstacles that would otherwise cripple us. Without them, we are unable to fly.  We can get impatient when we think nothing is changing and begin to lose hope.  This is the time to look back at how far we have come and remember a firm foundation takes time to build. Everyone’s journeys is a unique experience, and there are no maps.

Like the butterfly’s journey out of the cocoon, the struggles, we overcome in life, develop the strengths we need. Life has an odd way of putting the challenges we require in our path.  It is important to notice what we learn from each experience—the good, the bad and the ugly. This is true for all areas of everyone’s life.

This butterfly effect has come into play since I began my blogging journey. I started my blog back in May and followed the advice of a blog builder to set it up. This worked really well except—I didn’t understand what I was doing. I actually didn’t even understand that I had set up a self-hosted blog or the struggles it would create for me.  In the long term, a self-hosted blog was my goal, but not necessarily in the beginning, before I had an audience.

Now is the time my blog is squeezed through the hole and I figure out what I need to do to get it working. Originally, I couldn’t get any stats as my Jetpack wasn’t working, which was frustrating. I was definitely growing as a writer but had no audience, so life got busy and I stopped blogging for six weeks.

In August, I returned to my blog and was able to restart my Jetpack account only to realise—surprise, surprise—I had followers from Writing 101. Inspiring Max was developing its own online voice and I was beginning to fly. I have learnt a lot through my struggles to develop my blog and they have made me a stronger, more confident beginner blogger.

Welcome to my world.

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