I’ve been getting ready to launch The Chrysalis this week, and something hit me the other day. I love — with a profound, deep, writerly-thematic L.O.V.E. — stories of transformation.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the theme of metamorphosis is at the heart of everything I write. In Jodie Foster’s amazing Masterclass** on filmmaking, she talks about the importance of finding your personal story–the thing that makes you passionate and obsessed, the question you keep coming back to. For me, it’s metamorphosis.

The roots of this fascination are deep in my own story. The power of transformation–to be better, to be different, to be made new–is just that. We have the choice every moment to transform ourselves into the best version of who we want to be…or to lose ourselves.

Living in Fear

I battled crippling anxiety as a child. If I watched a horror film, I would spend a week without sleeping. Don’t even get me started on the horrible movies we watched in health class, of people having heart attacks or choking in a restaurant or having a seizure..

If I’m being honest, life completely terrified me.

I remember lying in my bed one day, paralyzed by the fear of what might happen to me. And then I realized that something horrible could still happen, even if I stayed “safe” in bed. At that moment, I started to let go of safety as my strongest value and began to try to be brave with my life.

Embracing the Power to Change

It was the end of my 8th grade year. I grew up in the military, so we were getting ready to relocate (again). We were signing yearbooks on the last day of school and I got up the courage to ask the boy I’d crushed on in secret for months to sign mine.

What he wrote was short, and sweet…and it completely changed my life. Dave, wherever you are, thank you. A million times thank you.

He wrote, “Good luck at your new school. And remember, talk more.”

It hit me so hard. Could I just choose to do that? The answer hit me just as hard. Yes, I could. I could choose to be brave, to reach out, to make connections. To smile more. To start to let people see who I really was on the inside.

It was the perfect time to try it. No one knew me at my new school. I could be anybody I wanted to be. I could transform myself. So I took Dave’s advice…and those three years were some of the best years of my life.

Oh, sure. I still had panic attacks and sleepless nights. But I loved school. For the first time in my life, I loved being around people. And when I had to move again right before senior year (and say goodbye to another secret crush), I held tight to Dave’s advice and never looked back.

Becoming the Butterfly

Fast forward to adulthood. It’s been a long, hard road, but today, my dominant value is adventure. I dream big, huge dreams…and I chase them down. I’m still testing my wings, but instead of living in constant fear, I live in constant anticipation. The feeling that something wonderful is just about to happen lights me up every single day.

When you live in fear, you expect the worst. When you live in anticipation, you expect the amazing.

I believe in the power of transformation–in the power of choosing to be the person you most want to be. I believe it so hard, because it’s my own story. So, when I sat down to write The Chrysalis, I really wanted to dig into this process of transformation-as-growth and the discovery of the power that lies within. That’s the kind of transformation that forms the spine of the Silesia Trilogy, which traces Sahara’s later adventures.

Sahara Acwellan, the story’s heroine, is faced with a threat that could annihilate her homeworld. She looks in all the ordinary places for security and tries to accept a life in a state of constant fear. It can’t last, and she has to make a choice: let her world die, or go through the Shift and accept the person she was born to be. Like the butterfly or the phoenix, transformation always involves loss. But in my metamorphosis-as-growth stories, that loss is always worth it.

Don’t get me wrong…I also love digging into the darker side of transformation, when the loss of self is total and there is no promise of a resurrection. That kind of transformation is at the core of my new script, Blur. In the next part to this series, I’ll talk a bit about my inspiration and process for writing that kind of metamorphosis story.

Have you ever had a moment when someone said something that changed your life for the better? Leave me a comment below! I’d love to hear your transformation story!

Peace,

S.K.

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