A.S. Thorne

I wandered through a community garden today – the kind that hums softly with life, where color spills over every edge, and time seems to slow just enough for breath to return. The air was full of quiet miracles: bees heavy with pollen, the scent of marigolds, and fluttering monarchs – dozens of them, rising and falling like small pieces of sunlight.

I couldn’t help but think about how fragile and fierce they are all at once. Monarchs travel thousands of miles; their wings are paper-thin, but they are determined. They are the living proof that endurance doesn’t always roar – sometimes, it flutters. Sometimes, it simply keeps going.

There’s a saying I love:

_{Photo by: A.S. Thorne}

It’s a truth I keep going back to – especially in the seasons where everything feels uncertain, when the world feels too heavy or the darkness too familiar. Change rarely feels like a transformation when you’re in it. It feels like a loss. It feels like endings.

But maybe that’s what healing really is – not sudden, not graceful, but a quiet breaking down before the becoming. Maybe the hardest part isn’t the transformation itself, but trusting that you will emerge from it.

Watching the monarchs today, I remembered that hope doesn’t always have to bloom from joy.
Sometimes, it’s born from stillness. From surrender. From trusting the unseen.

We don’t get to choose when our wings unfold, only that we’ll keep breathing through the cocoon until they do.

So if you’re in that space – that in-between – the breaking, the waiting, the aching – hold on. You are not done.

Somewhere inside you, the wings are forming. 🦋

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I think sometimes we forget that transformation doesn’t feel beautiful while it’s happening. It feels like being lost, like starting over, like everything you once knew no longer fits. But the monarchs reminded me that even in the quiet undoing, something sacred is taking shape.

If this resonated with you, share it with someone who’s still finding their wings. We never know who needs the reminder that change isn’t the end – it’s the beginning.

🖤 A.S. Thorne 🖤