The moment the storm hit, I couldn’t have climbed down if I had wanted to. To climb you have to be able to move, and my hands were frozen. Massive amounts of rain, sleet, and hail mixed together, and the winds blew so hard I might have been ripped off a branch.

The storm was every bit as strong as they said it would be. Actually, up here, it was even stronger. When a gust would come through, it would flip the platform up into the air, bucking me all over the place.

“Boy! Whoaaah! Ooh! Whoa!”

The gust rolled me all the way up to the hammock. Only the rope that cuts an angle underneath it prevented me from slipping through the gap in the platform.

“I’m really ready for this storm to chill out. I’m duly impressed,” I decided. ”I’ve bowed and cowered once again before the great almighty gods of wind and rain and storm. I’ve paid my respects — and my dues — and I’d appreciate it if they got the heck out of here.”

My thoughts seemed to anger the storm spirits.

“Whoa! Whoa!” I cried, as the raging wind flung my platform, straining the ropes that attached it.

“This is getting really intense! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Okay, never mind, I take it back. Whoaaah!”

The biggest gust threw me close to three feet. I grabbed onto the branch of Luna that comes through the middle of the platform, and I prayed.

“I want to be strong for you, Luna. I want to be strong for the forest. I don’t want to die, because I want to help make a difference. I want to be strong for the movement, but I can’t even be strong for myself.”

It seemed like it took all my will to stay alive. I was trying to hold onto life so hard that my teeth were clenched, my jaws were clenched, my muscles were clenched, my fists were clenched, everything in my body was clenched completely and totally tight.

I knew I was going to die.

The wind howled. It sounded like wild banshees, rrahhh, while the tarps added to the crazy cacophony of noise, flap, flap, flap, bap, bap, flap, bap! Had I remained tensed for the sixteen hours that the storm raged, I would have snapped. Instead, I grabbed on to Luna, hugging the branch that comes up through the platform, and prayed to her.

“I don’t know what’s happening here. I don’t want to go down, because I made a pact with you. But I can’t be strong now. I’m frightened out of my mind, Luna, I’m losing it. I’m going crazy!”

Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t, but in that moment I hear the voice of Luna speak to me.

“Julia, think of the trees in the storm.”

And as I started to picture the trees in the storm, the answer began to dawn on me.

“The trees in the storm don’t try to stand up straight and tall and erect. They allow themselves to bend and be blown with the wind. They understand the power of letting go,” continued the voice. “Those trees and those branches that try too hard to stand up strong and straight are the ones that break. Now is not the time for you to be strong, Julia, or you, too, will break. Learn the power of the trees. Let it flow. Let it go. That is the way you are going to make it through this storm. And that is the way to make it through the storms of life.”

I suddenly understood. So as I was getting chunked all over by the wind, tossed left and right, I just let it go. I let my muscles go. I let my jaw unlock. I let the wind blow and the craziness flow. I bent and flailed with it, just like the trees, which flail in the wind. I howled. I laughed. I whooped and cried and screamed and raged. I hollered and I jibbered and I jabbered. Whatever came through me, I just let it go.

“When my time comes, I’m going to die grinning,” I yelled.

Everything around me was being ripped apart. My sanity felt like it was slipping through my fingers like a runaway rope. And I gave in.

“Fine. Take it. Take my life. Take my sanity. Take it all.”

Once the storm ended, I realized that by letting go of all attachments, including my attachment to self, people no longer had any power over me. They could take my life if they felt the need, but I was no longer going to live my life out of fear, the way too many people do, jolted by our disconnected society. I was going to live my life guided from the higher source, the Creation source.

I couldn’t have realized any of this without having been broken emotionally and spiritually and mentally and physically. I had to be pummeled by humankind. I had to be pummeled by Mother Nature. I had to be broken until I saw no hope, until I went crazy, until I finally let go. Only then could I be rebuilt; only then could I be filled back up with who I am meant to be. Only then could I become my higher self.

That’s the message of the butterfly. I had come through darkness and storms and had been transformed. I was living proof of the power of metamorphosis.