“Trust The Changes… Freedom Is Around The Corner”

The polyphemus moth that Kelly found on our walk

We were taking a walk through the cemetery talking about how I felt like I was in transition.  After my experience last week of accepting the truth about my relationship with my birth family, I’ve been feeling things so unfamiliar to me, I’m having a hard time understanding and articulating them.

That’s when my friend Kelly stopped walking.

“Look,” she said and pointed to a big beautiful brown moth lying on the grass.  I bent down to see if he was still alive. He was on his back so I slid a few fingers under his body and turned him over.

When he didn’t move I knew he was dead.

Close up of one of the spots on the moth’s wing

Ever since I made my Shield Of Words fabric painting I’ve thought of moth as a symbol to encourage me on my path to the truth about my birth family and my place in it.

Now here he was again at this important transition in my life, to reinforce my journey.

The moth we found is a polyphemus moth. A silk moth.  I know he’s a male because of his long antennas.  they only live about a week, and don’t eat. Males spend their adult lives mating.

close up another of the marking on the wing.

When I got home, I went back to my post on my Shield of Words fabric painting to remind me of the meaning of moth. Somehow I have a hard time holding onto it, as if my brain doesn’t want to accept it.  Maybe that will change now.

When I finished the fabric painting my cousin and another reader sent me this interpretation of moth:

“Moth medicine’s meaning is resurrection and transformation. A moth represents tremendous change, but it also seeks the light. Thus, moth spiritual meaning is to trust the changes that are happening and that freedom and liberation are around the corner.”

On the website, World Birds I found this...”The cocoon of a moth represents bindings and trap, but once it emerges, the adult moth seeks light and liberation. This is very much symbolic of a soul of man that is drawn to Knowledge and Ultimate Truth.”

I think what I may be feeling, that  I haven’t completely embodied, is that freedom from the bindings and trap.  For me, trusting my truth has been the hard part, the part that kept me from full understanding.

It was only as I began writing this that I remembered that a  brown moth showed up in a dream I had a few months before making Shield of Words.

In that dream I was in a room with an owl and a big brown moth.  I wrote on my blog... “I dreamed this room last night, it was such a peaceful place I tried to hold onto the feeling of it for as long as I could after waking up.”

The dream had such an impact on me, that I included a drawing of that moth on my Corona Kimono. 

The furry wing of the moth

I don’t need moth to tell me how I’m feeling.  But finding him is affirming as if I’m in sync with the natural world.

As we left the cemetery I thanked Kelly for finding the moth.  When I got home I rearranged the altar in my studio and put the polyphemus moth in the center of it.

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