Stories of Transformation: How Butterflies Took Over My Office

When I went into my office and saw a butterfly, I was surprised and delighted. The weather was cold, so the butterfly was easy to catch, and I warmed her with my breath before she was ready to fly. When I came back from releasing it in the garden, I found 6 more! Surprise wasn’t the word anymore.

There were empty chrysalises on the walls and ceiling.

I had brought a potted frangipani into my office for the winter, in the hope that it will flower in summer (I’m in Australia, so it’s winter here now). Caterpillars had hitched a ride in and fed on the accompanying mignonette plants in the pot.

Mesmerised, I spent a pleasant hour admiring the butterflies and taking photos, before catching the six butterflies and releasing them in the garden.

My office is a bit of a shrine, to my favourite saint-in-waiting, Eileen O’Connor, the inspirational star of my novel, Every Inch a Saint. Despite being desperately ill herself, and only three foot ten tall, this partially paralysed dynamo transformed nursing care in the slums of Sydney in 1913. Eileen didn’t just transform nursing care in the past - she transforms lives, too. Including mine, not just because of the effect learning about her courage and resilience in the face of overwhelming odds, but because when I had cancer, she transformed herself - from being an inspirational role model from history, to being a daily companion and source of strength through chemotherapy, surgery and beyond.

And now, I had caterpillars transforming in my office… turning to caterpillar soup in their cocoons and resurrecting as butterflies. Right in the room I’ve been writing about her in.

Butterflies appeared sporadically in smaller numbers over the next two or three weeks. And, as if to affirm the symbolic link between Eileen’s transformative work, and the fact that she has transformed me, there was an empty cocoon right on the frame of the portrait I painted of her, which graces the cover of my book.

Butterflies are symbols of transformation and rebirth, of the soul… and of resurrection.

Now that all the caterpillars have metamorphised, the mignonette plants – which I thought had died for the winter, as its seed pods had burst spilling seeds all over the floor – suddenly sent out new shoots. No caterpillars to eat them, the mignonette has had a resurrection of its own.

If you love stories of courage and transformation, pick up a copy of Every Inch a Saint, available in online and bricks-and-mortar bookstores now.