Shedding My Skin

You must learn one thing.

The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds

Except the one in which you belong.

David Whyte

Today I share an excerpt from a series of reflections I plan to publish in the coming year. In this piece I ponder on my need to allow the old to slip away, in order to move into a more expansive experience of life.

I find the exoskeleton of a rain spider tucked under one of the stairs up to the kitchen. It’s light as breath and covered with a multitude of downy hairs. I run my thumb and forefinger along one jointed leg, feel its velvety softness. A few sharp, black spines protrude, pointing downwards. From above, the legs are a sandy colour. Underneath, the top segment of each leg also appears sandy, the second is striped with white and milk-chocolate brown. The last segments are black, with finely-tapered ends. The rain spider dances en pointe.

The pedipalps remind me of the blackened tip of a matchstick, either side of the shiny jaws with their piercing fangs. I can see several of the simple eyes – bright tiny black pearls – almost submerged in the fur. The back of the abdomen is broken, a hatch-like piece of it twisted open to one side where the spider emerged in a new, still-flexible exoskeleton, ready to enlarge and grow.

I cup the old, castaway exoskeleton in my palm. So lifelike, so perfect, as though at any moment it might uncurl and skitter up my arm. But it is empty, a shell. The spider has left it utterly, finally, behind. I wonder at this stepping out of one skin into another, one ready for a new, expanded existence. The new skin is not something to put on. It is there already, forming beneath the layers of what has served for a season. Like the leaves cut from a tree in autumn, by a process as inevitable as sunset and moonrise, what has been will always give way to what is to come. The only way to move with grace and joy is to leave the shell behind.

With wishes for a week of shedding old skins and embracing new horizons,

Carri.

P.S. I invite you to read my latest Substack posts, Writing Something New, and Wholeness and Imperfection.