I had been doing things in the garage last Thursday when I heard the unmistakable sound of wings against glass.

At the window was a tortoiseshell butterfly, fluttering again and again, trying desperately to find her way outside. The weather had suddenly turned cold and autumn-like, and she seemed exhausted by the effort.

Then I noticed another butterfly nearby.

She was lying completely motionless on her side.

Her wings were folded flat against one another. There was no movement that I could see.

I thought she was dead.

Something in me wasn’t quite ready to leave either of them there, so I carried them both into the warmth of the house.

I began giving Reiki to the butterfly who was still visibly struggling. I placed the other gently on the counter beside me, close enough that I could tend to them both.

For several minutes, nothing suggested that I had been wrong about her.

And then she moved.

Within moments, the butterfly I had believed was dead was not merely alive.

She was flying.

There was an exuberance to her that astonished me, especially because only moments before there had been no visible indication of life at all.

Soon both butterflies were flying toward the window.

I held out my hand and they climbed onto me. The butterfly I had thought was gone was now so full of life that I gently cupped my other hand around her to keep her safe, while the second remained freely on my hand.

I carried them both outside.

The moment I opened my hand, the butterfly I had thought was gone launched herself into the sky with extraordinary gusto.

And then came the second surprise.

The butterfly who had been fighting so hard to escape the garage didn’t leave.

She remained with me.

Eventually I placed her gently on a flower. She stayed there for a long while before moving deeper into the plant, nestling herself into its protection.

When I finally walked away and left her to whatever she needed, I noticed the time.

1:11.

I returned later.

She had flown, too.

What We Cannot See

The reversal of those two butterflies remained with me all day.

The one who appeared finished contained an exuberance I couldn’t see.

The one who had been fighting so hard to move forward needed stillness.

Neither one’s outward appearance revealed what was actually happening within.

And something about witnessing them together felt profoundly connected to what has been moving through my own life.

I’ve been walking myself through possibilities lately that feel both immense and not yet fully visible. I’ve been praying for guidance. Asking for signs. Listening closely while allowing questions to remain questions longer than my mind sometimes prefers.

And the responses have been coming.

Not as one enormous answer.

Piece by piece.

A convergence of six bears surrounding the recent eclipse.

Dreams.

Synchronicities.

Unexpected encounters.

A piece of obsidian that unmistakably mirrored an ancient arrowhead.

Moments of knowing that arrive before I can explain what I know.

And now, two butterflies.

The very next day, another unexpected presence joined this unfolding tapestry. For the first time, I encountered a Western toad—a magnificent little being, large enough to fill the palm of my hand, who I discovered had quietly made his home beneath our deck.

There was something beautifully fitting about finding yet another life that had been there beyond my awareness.

After everything that has been moving alongside me, I began to recognize a deeper thread running through it all.

Transformation. Resilience. Grounding. Renewal.

But beneath even these was something more profound:

The unseen is not the same as the absent.

Life can be gathering, forming, healing, and becoming in places beyond our perception. Something can be profoundly alive before we have any evidence of its existence.

And sometimes what appears suddenly before us has not suddenly begun at all.

We have simply arrived at the moment when we are finally able to see it.

And then, on the third day, came another bear.

The seventh I had encountered in only ten days—something unprecedented in my experience.

He appeared unexpectedly as we were finishing a hike, only to become frightened by passing cars and run desperately across the road. For a moment he took refuge on the lawn of a nearby home before becoming frightened again and running back toward the forest.

Even when his path brought him remarkably close to people, he seemed hardly aware of them. His attention was entirely on finding safety.

The animal we so often imagine ourselves fearing was himself afraid, interested only in finding his way back to peace.

Once again, what appeared on the surface told only a fraction of the story.

Three days.

Three encounters.

Each quietly overturning what the surface seemed to say.

The butterfly who appeared dead contained extraordinary aliveness.

The toad who appeared suddenly had been quietly living beneath my everyday world all along.

The bear we might instinctively fear was himself moving through fear.

I don’t experience these things as instructions telling me exactly what to do. They feel more like an ongoing conversation teaching me something about trust itself.

Not necessarily telling me what will happen, but repeatedly reminding me not to mistake what I can presently see for the entirety of what is happening.

The guidance isn’t giving me a map.

It is changing the way I walk without one.

The Present Appearance Is Not the Whole Story

These encounters have been changing the way I think about what is visible.

We are so accustomed to reading what we can see.

Moving means progress.

Stillness means nothing is happening.

An open door means possibility.

A closed one means no.

Evidence means something is real.

Its absence means it isn’t.

Yet life continually reveals how incomplete these conclusions can be.

A seed beneath the Earth does not look like a flower.

A butterfly lying motionless on her side did not look like something that would soon burst into flight.

And something within our own lives can be moving toward expression long before we have anything visible to prove that movement exists.

Trust, then, becomes something very different.

It isn’t convincing ourselves that a particular outcome will happen.

It isn’t pretending to know what we cannot know.

It is recognizing how little the present appearance can tell us about what is still possible.

That distinction feels important to me.

Because there are places in my own life where I can feel something moving before I can see its form.

Possibilities that feel alive without yet being tangible.

Potentials I am learning not to dismiss simply because I cannot point to evidence of what they will become.

And increasingly, the signs arriving around me don’t seem interested in telling me the ending.

They keep returning me to the relationship I am building with the unknown.

Life Knew What to Do

There is another part of Thursday’s encounter I keep returning to.

I didn’t know how to make either butterfly fly.

I couldn’t know whether the one I thought was dead would live or whether the struggling one would recover.

All I could do was offer what was mine to offer.

Warmth.

Reiki.

My hand.

A flower.

Time.

And then allow life to do what I could not do for it.

There is something here I want to remember.

We can care deeply without controlling what happens next.

We can create loving conditions without demanding an outcome.

We can participate wholeheartedly while leaving room for mysteries that don’t belong to us to manage.

One butterfly needed warmth and then immediately took to the sky.

The other needed warmth, a hand, a flower, and more time.

Neither was behind.

Neither needed to follow the other’s timing.

Each contained an intelligence I couldn’t see from the outside.

And when each was ready, she flew.

This feels like one of the miracles I am being asked to recognize right now.

Not simply that something I believed was dead came alive before my eyes.

But that life can be moving most powerfully in the very places where I cannot yet see its next movement.

I don’t need every answer in order to meet that mystery.

I can offer what is mine.

Listen.

Love.

Participate.

Trust.

And leave enough room for life to astonish me.

May this Virgo New Moon nurture the quiet seeds within you, creating fertile ground for what is ready to take root, grow, and reveal itself in its own perfect timing.