The Cocoon Effect: Transforming Through Hardship
By: Kala Farnham
Tags: Divorce, This Happened To Me, Life Lessons, Trauma, Transformation

“You can be shattered and you can put yourself back together piece by piece until one day you wake up… And no matter how hard you try, you simply cannot fit into your old life anymore. You are like a snake trying to fit into old, dead skin, or a butterfly trying to crawl back into the cocoon.” ~ Glennon Doyle, Love Warrior

Glennon Doyle’s words hit me with a wave of recognition. In “Love Warrior”, Doyle recounts her transformational journey of healing the mind, body, and spirit, as she reflects back on her history of bulimia, addiction, and familial strife. Though the final chapter ends on a hopeful note of healing, Doyle ultimately comes to this conclusion: Sometimes in the process of healing, the transformation is so monumental that you can no longer fit into your old life anymore. Sometimes the final step of growth is kicking off your old shoes, and finding the courage to start anew. While the specifics of Doyle’s journey were different than mine — Trade childhood body dysmorphia for childhood abuse, the bulimia for self-harm, the hard drugs for alcohol— The overarching themes in our lives were remarkably similar.

Two and half years ago, after the demise of my last semi-long term romantic partnership — a rushed marriage that ended as quickly as it had begun — I found myself at the doorway of my own cocoon. The day my marriage ended, I had found myself at a crossroads I never expected. I knew I couldn’t go back to the way things used to be — I couldn’t go back to the comforting illusions of childhood hopes and Disney fairytales, that mythical dreamland where promises are never broken and lies, never spoken. In “Love Warrior”, Doyle refers to the life-changing event that lead to her transformation as “The News.” I had begun to think of my life-changing event as The Night. I couldn’t go back to the feeling of safety I had in my partner’s embrace before The Night: the night when it all fell apart.

If shedding one’s fairytale illusions about the world is the cornerstone to building strength and resiliency, being stripped of their protective powers is the slap in the face that wakes you up to the depth your own vulnerability and weakness. The Night my body was assaulted, and the ensuing months, is the singularly most painful moment in my marriage that I can recount. It wasn’t my partner who assaulted me. The man who assaulted me is someone I’ll never have to see again, if I take care to avoid all the public places he might show up. The assault was a moment of terror I hope never to relive again; what I didn’t know at the time was that it was just the beginning of a long journey of healing.

The assault was the first trauma; the secondary wound, the invalidation and rejection that is so often received by trauma survivors, was the thing that disintegrated what was left of my sense of safety. I had already known there was cruelty in the world. I knew it from The Dark Ages: the years of childhood trauma I had experienced at the hands of someone whose own darkness slipped into a depth so low that it led them to hurt me in a way that no child should ever experience. What I didn’t know is that the people I had entrusted myself to, who had promised to stand by me for life, could disappear when I most desperately needed support. Maybe my partner was too caught up in his own battles to be there for someone else. Maybe The Night and its post-traumatic after effects on me were a little too much for him to bear. Whatever the reason, eventually, we realized no matter how hard we tried we were no longer fitting in one another’s lives, no longer able to bridge the growing distance between us. So we did the most loving thing we could think of to do: we let go.