The Butterfly Room

One morning I was gazing out the window of my office at home after completing my journal pages. I noticed a Monarch butterfly floating on the soft wind outside. I marveled at how something that seemed so fragile could survive the cooler temperatures and occasional frost of the coming winter. It struck me that while they were fragile and easily damaged, they also had a strength and resilience that got them through hard days. I could identify with that. I was fragile and got hurt easily. Yet I needed to find the strength to survive.

I found a simple template of a butterfly shape on the Internet and printed it out. I traced the shape onto different coloured paper. I decided that each week I would choose a colour, find a word to describe how I was feeling and write that on the wing of the butterfly. I then used my colouring pencils to shade the butterfly as I wanted. After I was finished I wrote on the back a short sentence about how I was feeling.

I decided to post a picture of each butterfly with the words onto my Facebook page. I wondered about the merits of doing this, because social media can be a dangerous place to share personal information. I decided that it could be a useful way of telling my friends how I was feeling. They could see from my status each week how I was doing. I think it saved them from some awkward moments at times because the butterflies could tell them how I was feeling and they could choose to respond how ever they felt led.

And so a few months after Shane’s death the Butterfly Room was born. I now had a different first - the first of something transformational and completely new.

Each week I watched my collection of butterflies grow. Some friends used the butterflies as a cue to take action in a way that they felt was the most helpful to me. I was showered in generosity. People would send me cards or pictures of butterflies. One friend sent me a beautiful scarf with butterflies on it, while another gave me a picture to hang on the wall of my office, and my birthday cake had butterflies decorated on it.

My room is now a haven for creativity, reflection and safety. It is here that I write and let myself just be still for a moment. The other rooms of the house have tasks, memories and jobs that need doing. Some of them get left because I just can’t be bothered doing them. But here in my room, I feel I can just let each moment come and go. I can sit and watch it pass, I can choose to recognize it if I want to, and I see how I can deal with the coming moments. It’s nothing fancy or special. It’s just a room, but it means so much more. This is my room of recovery. This is my room where I find the new me, rediscover the old me and put life together again.

So, welcome to my Butterfly Room.

Butterfly #1: Happy

I can find my way back to happiness again.

I know it is very early days after losing Shane, and I can see that life is going to take a dramatic change of direction for me. While his death is an utter tragedy to me, and I would give anything to have him back right now if I could, I am resolute in one thing. It will not be for nothing. Shane has given me a gift that he could not have done in life. He has given me the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and rewrite my life from this time forward. It can be anything that I want it to be.

I feel a pang of guilt about this because this is only possible because my dearest is no longer here. It’s not that the life we enjoyed together was unfulfilling, but he is giving me the chance to live my dream. Just as he lived his dream in what he did, and perhaps I can find out how I can do that now as well.

While it feels like a very distant goal that at the moment seems completely unachievable, I hope I can have a life that at some point will be fulfilling and joyous. I know that with the resources I have, and how I have been equipped, I will find ways to be happy again. I don’t expect this to be an epiphany and that I will suddenly begin dancing over the meadows like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. I think it will just creep up on me and become part of the new me.

I know that I am the one who can make the decisions about how to find happiness. Right now my decisions are a long way from that. My decisions are much more simple. What I am going to have for dinner tonight, what bills am I going to pay, or am I going to go for a walk today? At the moment it is about basic living. I need to get used to that first. These are the little steps towards this new life that I am trying to wrap my brains around.

So, my current thoughts that I will trust in and not do too much about right now are these:

• I can make my own happiness where I find it.

• I can continue to share these moments with Shane, it’s just different now.

• His life counted for something, as did our marriage and our love.

• I want to make my life, this new life count.

• I will make it count.

• I will be happy again.