We're Still Metamorphosing

As Solace Farms transforms from a for-profit retreat center into a nonprofit healing center, we’re finding ourselves in the same process of change, release, and renewal that so many of you are experiencing in your own lives. By Allison Brunner

We had hoped that by the time you received this newsletter, we would be able to make the big announcement.

Solace Farms has become the Mind-Body Healing Center at Solace Farms. We’re officially a nonprofit, the new website is live, our branding has been updated, and we were going to tell you all about everything we’re offering.

Ta-da! 🦋

Well, we’ve learned something about transformation along the way: You don’t go from caterpillar to butterfly overnight. There's a whole process in between.

The caterpillar doesn’t simply wake up one morning and decide it’s time to fly. It spends its time eating, growing, and preparing. Eventually, it enters the chrysalis, where an extraordinary transformation takes place. Much of that work happens out of sight. There is a period when the old form is dissolving and something entirely new is taking shape.

That process takes time. And that is exactly where we are.

We’ve been painting on our new wings. We’ve revamped the website, created new branding, chosen a new color palette, and spent countless hours dreaming, brainstorming, writing, questioning, rewriting, and imagining what this next iteration of Solace Farms can become.

At one point, I spent hours working on the new website, determined to make everything blossom in a week. By the end of the day, I realized I'd asked the butterfly to emerge before the chrysalis was ready.

Meanwhile, Andrea, the owner and founder of Solace Farms, kept asking deeper questions: Wait a minute. We’re a nonprofit now. So who, specifically, do we serve? What are people coming to us for? What are they experiencing? What do they need? How can we help? How can we serve them best?

Those questions have opened up an entirely new layer of the work.

For a long time, Solace Farms has been an open door, and it still is. We welcome everyone. As we step into this new chapter, however, we are discovering that there is a particular kind of person we feel especially called to support: people who are in the middle of a major life transition.

We are thinking about the people who are grieving a loss, whether that loss involves a loved one, a relationship, a job, a home, or a version of themselves that they have outgrown. We are thinking about people whose children have grown and left home and who are beginning to ask themselves, “Who am I now?” We are thinking about people who are preparing to begin a new chapter and people who have spent decades fulfilling roles and responsibilities and are finally asking, “What is mine? What do I want? Who am I beneath all the things I’ve been?”

We are also thinking about the people who have felt called toward something for much of their lives but needed decades of living, learning, failing, growing, grieving, loving, and gathering wisdom before they could step into it.

In other words, we are thinking about you! People who are transforming. And perhaps that is why this particular month has felt so significant.

The season of letting go

August and the eclipse season has been a month of endings and beginnings for so many people.

We’ve heard story after story of abrupt changes, losses, unexpected endings, things being removed from people’s lives, and identities being shaken loose. We have seen these experiences on the personal level, within businesses and communities, and on the larger collective level. For many people, something they thought was permanent has suddenly changed.

Even when we know intellectually that an ending may eventually make room for something better, loss still feels like loss. We grieve. We feel sorrow. We remember what mattered.

We clean out our closets and discover that the sweater we haven’t worn in five years holds the story of an entire chapter of our lives. We pack up a home and realize how many memories are attached to ordinary objects. We watch our children leave. We leave jobs. We say goodbye to relationships, identities, dreams, and versions of ourselves.

Recently, when I moved into a smaller apartment that brings me much closer to Solace Farms, I had to downsize significantly. I donated many of my belongings, and almost every object seemed to have a story attached to it.

I couldn’t simply throw things away. I had to honor them. I had to remember where they came from, what they meant, and who I was when they entered my life. I had to acknowledge the memories attached to them, and I had to grieve.

Some of those things simply couldn’t come with me. They were part of another chapter, and they didn’t fit the life I'm living now—a life that, in many ways, my entire life has been preparing me for.

In some ways, the move felt like its own chrysalis.

I was leaving behind a familiar physical environment and many of the things that had surrounded me for years, while simultaneously trying to make room for a life that felt more aligned with where I am now. There was a lot of practical work involved, but there was also an emotional process happening underneath it all.

And the move itself came during a much deeper period of loss. Just before I moved, I went through a terrifying experience of nearly losing someone I love very much: my cat.

I was already carrying so much, and there was a moment when I simply broke down. I reached out to another member of our Circle of Support community, Amanda Shannon, and cried my eyes out on the phone.

Amanda didn’t try to fix anything for me. She didn’t give me answers or tell me what I should do. She offered to sit with me, listen to me, and be there with me in the middle of what I was experiencing. She gave me the simple gift of being witnessed by another human being who could say, in her own way, “I see you. I understand. You don’t have to go through this alone.”

That made such a profound difference.

I was exhausted. The move took everything I had, and there were moments when I wasn’t sure where I was going to find the energy to keep going. But knowing that love was there for me gave me something I needed. It gave me support. It gave me a little more resilience. It helped me feel that I could make it through the next thing, and then the next.

Amanda wasn’t the only one. Andrea and Paige McHugh offered to help me pack, too. Those offers of practical help and emotional support meant more than I can really express.

When I think about the chrysalis, I think about how vulnerable that stage of transformation must be. Everything is changing, and the finished form cannot yet be perceived.

That is where support matters. Sometimes we need someone to sit beside us while we are still inside the chrysalis. We need someone who can witness what we're moving through, offer a hand when the practical things become overwhelming, listen when we need to talk, and remind us that there is still love surrounding us even when our lives feel uncertain.

I keep recalling that experience as we’ve been talking about what we want the Mind-Body Healing Center at Solace Farms to be. Because this is who we want to be for the people in our community.

We want to be there for you when life is asking more of you than you expected. We want to offer the kind of support that allows you to be exactly where you are, while also giving you opportunities to explore what comes next. Sometimes what makes the greatest difference is having someone sit beside you, listen to your story, and remind you that you are seen and that you do not have to carry everything by yourself.

We want to hold the light with you during the times that feel dark.

And sometimes that light looks like a healing experience or a meaningful conversation. Sometimes it looks like someone helping you pack a box, sitting on the phone while you cry, sharing a meal, or inviting you to get ice cream when you desperately need to laugh.

Love doesn’t leave. It changes shape.

I was reminded of this recently during a session with a client who was moving through a profound transition of her own. Something came through me during the session that I wrote down afterward because it struck me so deeply: Love never leaves us. Love never dies. Love changes shape.

We often hear that grief is “love with nowhere to go.” But I’m not sure that’s quite right.

Because what if love always has somewhere to go?

What if love is eternal, while our experience of it continues to change?

The love we once experienced through a grandmother holding a small child might later be experienced through a friendship. We might experience it while gardening or caring for flowers and vegetables. We might find it in the presence of a little animal who appears in the backyard at the exact right moment.

Love can show up through a ridiculous joke that makes us laugh until our stomach hurts. It can find us while we are watching the sunset or eating a meal so delicious that we stop for a moment just to savor it. It can come through a stranger who offers to help us carry our groceries or a friend who somehow knows we need support before we have even asked.

It can come in through a gift, a song, a moment of unexpected grace, or something so ordinary that we might have missed it if we weren’t paying attention.

The form changes, but the love remains. Perhaps part of transformation is learning to recognize the new languages through which love speaks to us.

Drink the nectar

As I write this, I’m looking out at the land where I live, and butterflies are everywhere. They are moving from flower to flower, drinking nectar.

The butterfly doesn’t spend its entire existence inside the chrysalis. At some point, it emerges into an entirely different experience of life. But even then, its work continues. It needs to fly, find flowers, drink nectar, and participate in the living world around it.

Perhaps we need to remember this when we are moving through our own transformations. Whether you’re rebuilding your life, grieving a loss, starting a business, changing careers, becoming an empty nester, discovering a new calling, or realizing that the person you used to be no longer fits the life you’re living, there is work involved.

There are things to release, things to learn, decisions to make, and roots to deepen. There are new wings to grow.

But there is also nectar. We have to stop along the way and drink it.

We need to meet a friend, cook something nourishing, read a good book, sit in the sun, put our feet in the water, dance, laugh, and give ourselves permission to enjoy our lives while they're unfolding. Sometimes we need to take the afternoon off and eat ice cream.

Andrea and I became particularly devoted to that last one. We've found ourselves more than once at the Chester Springs Creamery, savoring sweetness and telling ridiculous stories  as we prepare to join the gym and undergo another kind of transformation.

Those moments matter (and we call them therapy. Ha).

Transformation also means being present for your own life while it's happening. It means allowing yourself to experience pleasure, connection, humor, beauty, and ordinary moments of goodness while you're navigating everything else.

Taking shape, together

That is what we want to steward as Solace Farms becomes the MindBody Healing Center at Solace Farms.

We want to be a bridge for people moving through significant life transitions. We want to offer experiences and gatherings that give people room to reflect, connect, learn, create, heal, rest, and explore what might be possible in the next chapter of their lives.

We want this to be a place where people can show up exactly where they are and find meaningful ways to move forward.

We’re telling you this now because we want to be honest about where we are, too.

We are still metamorphosing.

Our story isn’t completely finished. Our mission is still taking shape, and our offerings will continue to evolve as we learn more about what this new organization is meant to be.

In a few weeks or a month, we may have more clarity. We may change our minds about something. We may discover something we couldn’t see yet.

That is part of the process.

The butterfly on the other side of the chrysalis is already there in some sense, but there is still a process required before it can spread its wings.

We're in that process. And perhaps one of the most meaningful things we can offer you right now is companionship in the middle of transformation.

Most of life happens in the middle, while we are moving from one thing to another and figuring out what comes next. Sometimes we have one foot in what was and another reaching toward what might be. Sometimes we are still inside the chrysalis, doing the work that no one else can see.

If you’re there right now, too, you’re welcome here.

Come join us for a workshop, a healing experience, a conversation, or simply an afternoon on the land. Come make something, learn something, rest, tell a story, laugh, or give yourself some space to grieve. Come drink some nectar.

And let’s see what takes shape.