The Second Stage: The Larva (Caterpillar)

When the egg finally hatches, most of you would expect for a butterfly to emerge, right?  Well, not exactly.  In the butterfly’s life cycle, there are four stages and this is only the second stage.  Butterfly larvae are actually what we call caterpillars. Caterpillars do not stay in this stage for very long and mostly, in this stage all they do is eat.   

When the egg hatches, the caterpillar will start his work and eat the leaf they were born onto. This is really important because the mother butterfly needs to lay her eggs on the type of leaf the caterpillar will eat – each caterpillar type likes only certain types of leaves. Since they are tiny and can not travel to a new plant, the caterpillar needs to hatch on the kind of leaf it wants to eat.   

Caterpillars need to eat and eat so they can grow quickly. When a caterpillar is born, they are extremely small. When they start eating, they instantly start growing and expanding.  Their exoskeleton (skin) does not stretch or grow, so they grow by “molting” (shedding the outgrown skin) several times while it grows.
When I was little I talked to my mom about angels. I would ask her questions, like "What is an angel?" "What are they like?" "What do they look like?" "Are they here with us?". My mom found out that I would sit and talk to my guardian angel. I know this sounds strange to most people or that they think that I had an imaginary friend. Often times we explain things around us that seem strange or unbelievable by their non-existence. I believe that the human mind is capable of many great things and we disassociate with them because other parts of our mind can't process them, coming from that we don't use our whole brain simultaneously. That's why I find autism to be so interesting, but that is another story for another day.
I bring what I am calling "The Angel Encounter" up for one reason. How and why we raise our children to believe is the very being they will become regardless of how we might feel as adults about our past. When we are young (under 10) is our most impressionable time in our lives, so whatever happens in that time is our cause and effect for the rest of our lives. I became a deep thinker because my mom allowed me to think through every situation for my self, she answered questions but then asked me to interpret situations from my own perspective. My mother laid out an environment that I grew off of. That supported who I was to become as an adult and what built a foundation for the things that I would have to go through to pull me through for the future. It was my strength.