The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
Before this great change comes about,the fuzzy little worm withdraws from it's caterpillar world,and finds itself a place alone,and there painfully,and with struggling,it wraps itself tightly into a cocoon of its own making;it leterally seals itself off from the world.Days pass and then,very gradually,a crevice appears in the hard outer layer of its private little creature,too! It sits for awhile,clinging to its familiar surroundings,waiting for the warmth of the sunshine to dry its wings-and after awhile,it begins to flutter from flower to flower;and each time it lights on one it stregthens itself with what each one has to offer,and at the same time it leaves the pollen that it has gathered up from every flower it has visited-thus enabling the flowers to make seeds and be born again.
The butterfly is a spritual symbol-transformation,beauty,fragility.It has been described as the "Kiss of God" Look at the butterfly and see God.
Some of us if not all are like the butterfly coming into alanon,we grow and are free from manythings.
Another take on the butterfly was told to me at an Alanon meeting a long time ago pertaining to enabling.
A little catterpillar made a cocoon and a little girl was growing impatient waiting for it to emerge. As time went on she began to help the process along by cracking the cocoon. When she saw the cocoon moving she helped the new butterfly break out by opening it up for him. When he emerged instead of being wide and beutiful teh wings where crumpled and weak. She showed her daddy and told him what she had done. he told ehr that the struggle to break free of the cocoon so what makes the butterflies wings strong. That by helping it do what it needed to do for itslef, she had unknowingly crippled it.
The little girl did it to help, without malice, as we have often done, and we end up crippling our A's.
