The Goo Season

Nobody tells you that transformation involves a season of being completely unrecognizable, even to yourself.

I think about this a lot during the season of Lent: we talk about the butterfly. We skip over the goo.

Inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar doesn't gradually rearrange itself into something winged and beautiful. It dissolves. Literally. The cellular structure breaks down into what biologists call imaginal cells: undifferentiated, formless, apparently purposeless. For a season, there is nothing recognizable left.

And then something reorganizes.

Goo season is not just a metaphor to deploy from a safe distance, but it's a lived reality; lucky butterflies! They only live it once! There are seasons when the old structure no longer holds and the new one hasn't formed yet. When you're doing the right things, moving in the right direction, and it still feels like you are coming apart at the seams.

This is not failure. This is formation.

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Here's what I've learned about goo season — from my own and from walking alongside others in theirs:

It often follows a season of answered prayer.

You asked for the thing. You got the thing. And then somehow the thing became the problem. This is disorienting in a particular way — because it feels ungrateful, even faithless. You got what you asked for. Why is it still hard? But the threshold you crossed to get here required a version of you that the new season can no longer sustain. The dissolution isn't betrayal, but the very cost of becoming.

The goo is not the destination.

Goo season is not a place to set up camp. It is not the truth about who you are, but it tells the truth about what's being shed. The formlessness is purposeful. The imaginal cells are already present, already carrying the blueprint of what comes next. They just can't be seen yet from inside the dissolution.

You need people who can hold the chrysalis.

Not to rush you out of it. Not to explain it away. Not to remind you of all the reasons you should be further along by now. You need people who can sit with you in the goo and say: I know. I see you. This is not the end of the story.

You've survived your goo season before. You know this, somewhere underneath the exhaustion. But knowing it and feeling it are different things — and it is okay to need someone to remind you until the feeling catches up.

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If you're in goo season right now — stretched thin, disoriented, doing the right things but not yet seeing the results, watching other people's lives look more solid while yours feels formless — I want you to hear this:

You are not behind. You are not broken. You are not a cautionary tale.

You are in the chrysalis. The imaginal cells are present. Something is reorganizing.

Wrap yourself in something soft. Let someone who loves you hold the container. Do the next right thing, which today might just be rest.

The goo is not the end of your story. It never was.

With you in the threshold,

Elaine

This reflection is part of Wayfinder's Weekly, my free Monday newsletter for people navigating threshold seasons. Subscribe here

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