This podcast episode was one of our most listened to episodes thus far!

Seasonally, I will release our most listened to episode transcribed for you to read, listen or listen while you read!

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“What’s up. Y’all I’m Jess giving my personal blog Hello GorJess A voice….LITERALLY on this podcast, we will chat about all that. This will be a space where we talk about everything. From how we, as women step out of our comfort zones and do things that make us uncomfortable, all the way to debating. If peanut butter and jelly sandwiches should be cut in halves are triangles.

I’m serious! We’re talking about all that. I’m here to share my personal life experiences with you all and be the girl that I wish I had when I was younger. Join me as we build a safe space for you to be ALL THAT! This…is the Hello GorJess podcast.”

Welcome to episode 30! That’s unreal! When I think of 30, I think of turning 30 because I am 28 and 30 is knocking on the door.

And I just personally feel like this ties in so well to what I was planning on talking to you about. And when I got on here to record, I always forget, and I look at my settings and see what the previous episode number was, and I’m always like.. “My goodness!” Like, I feel like I just started yet. I feel like I still have so much. I want to talk to you all about, and I just cannot believe we’re already on episode 30.

Like, this is unbelievable, but I’m so happy to be here with you guys today on this beautiful, beautiful Monday. It was such a beautiful day today getting a little bit warmer here, but I think we’re going to be having a little cool front coming and I want to share something really exciting because it’s going to tie into our topic today.

This past weekend- this past Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I have a previous episode that I’ll link in the show notes, where I talked all about The Rebirth Project, this passion project that I’ve been working on form the extra proceeds from my book.

It’ll give you all the details, all the insight as to what it is, what I’m doing. In summary, I grew 13 butterflies! I will continue to grow butterflies, but this was my first round of growing caterpillars all the way from, well, it’s a story. It’s a story. I’m actually going to be posting a blog post about it tomorrow linked HERE!

When I came back home from hurricane Ida, I had tons of caterpillars on my milkweed and unfortunately, a few of them didn’t make it. This past Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we made it through the entire stage of metamorphosis with the remaining and I released them on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

When they emerged y’all…it was just the most….

There’s just a feeling about watching something grow that is so mesmerizing to me. It just really humbles me to a level of being able to appreciate something on such a small scale, like watching these caterpillars grow from eggs to butterflies.

I know I sound so nerdy. I’m listening to myself knowing my nerd is coming out, but just watching them, taking care of them and seeing them evolve and just comparing it to my life and how much I have grown…. just WOW! Honestly, this past weekend inspired this podcast episode because as I was releasing them, I was thinking, the goal of this project was to give something beautiful back to the Earth in a way that wasn’t, you know, let’s grow a tree,

Although this is wonderful and needed desperately, I wanted to bring beauty to YOU who may see a butterfly on a walk or on your flowers.

There’s something about butterflies that I feel very, very connected to. I’ll touch on that just a little bit, but probably for the last year, I’ve been walking three miles nearly every day in the afternoon. Which is my stress relief and therapy.

I get inspired a lot of times when I walk out in nature. I love to be outdoors and I’m not super outdoorsy, but I like to be outside. On a walk last winter. I was listening to heartbreaker by Mariah Carey (don’t laugh it’s a GREAT song)!

I was walking up and down my street because that’s typically what I do and I remember her cover photo for this album was Mariah holding a butterfly and I was like…butterflies. I feel extremely connected to this.

Then I started brainstorming. That song had nothing to do with butterflies at all. Mariah Carey had nothing to do with butterflies. It was simply seeing her cover photo for that song that was so inspiring and I just started thinking about metamorphosis, which I’ll talk about my life coaching program that I just recently started.

It was on that walk that I felt super inspired and I started to compare myself to the metamorphosis process.

I was going through so much in my personal life, which I really haven’t dived much into on here. Some days I just would like to give the job up. I would like to quit. And I would like to give up this job and give it to somebody else who I feel would handle it a whole lot better, but that is a walk I will never forget.

I think it was God trying to show me that I am evolving just like a butterfly and it might be hard right now and I may not see the growth in myself, but something is happening in me. Something is changing, which leads me to today’s topic.

Many times, I know in myself, I don’t always see the growth.

I don’t, I really don’t see the growth, but it’s because I’m going through it on a day-to-day basis. It’s hard to see the very small steps that we have to put in every single day in order to reach some type of end goal and grow. You know, I’m talking to you right now- you who is being so hard on yourself.

You may be thinking…I’m not changing. I’m not growing. I’m not evolving. You are, but on the flip side, you have to put in the work. So I’m going to compare it to my caterpillars because I just watched them through this process and it really made me see life from a different perspective.

When you really sit back and think about it, there’s not many things we can see in life (other than children) that we can see and actually watch grow stage by stage. A caterpillar is literally probably one of the best analogies for growth, because it starts off so small and they grow SO quickly, but they have no idea what is happening to them.

I wonder, do they have any idea what they’re going to become? I compare that to me and YOU.

I had to have this realization and watch this caterpillar physically grow to understand my growth and for you to understand your growth as well, literally every morning when I would go and check on them, I was thinking to myself, “Do you know, what’s about to happen to you?”

It was the craziest process! They’re encaged in this net cage that I have for them to keep them safe from predators kind of like us. We can be caged in different aspects of our life, right? These caterpillars feed themselves with all this goodness in order to get to the next stage and I think that’s what we have to do too! We have to feed ourselves what we need in order to grow and make it to that next stage.

Ironically, don’t think I’m crazy, I’m a visual learner and I learned SO MUCH from this process. So think of it like this…

These insects fed themselves exactly what they needed. They didn’t need anything else other than that milkweed, because they know that is what they need in order to grow.

We know what we need in order to grow. Whether if that’s distancing ourselves from things that don’t make us happy, feeding ourselves with positive things, bringing goodness in our lives and only feeding ourselves things that we know are going to get us to exactly where we need to go.

I could’ve put strawberries in that cage, tangerines, etc. and these butterfly, these caterpillars were not going to eat anything other than that milkweed because their instinct tells them that’s what makes them grow.

So these caterpillars eat and eat and eat and get super fluffy, then, all of a sudden, they just like scatter. They move on to their next stage. They distanced themselves from the milkweed. They’ve had enough of it. They distance themselves and they find their niche. They find an area in the cage, right? Kind of like we do? When we’ve had enough, when we fed ourselves with everything that we need that’s a sign that it’s time for a change, right?

That happens to us in real life, every single day. They find their spot and then they hang upside down and they start to go into the actual metamorphosis. I just kept thinking to myself, I want to see this process. Although I didn’t see them go into full metamorphosis state, that’s when their bodies shake and twitch and form the chrysalis around their bodies. It’s a beautiful process.

I just sat there and wondered what was happening inside. I wish I could have seen the process and that thought inspired this episode because we don’t often see what’s happening inside ourselves.

These caterpillars have no idea what they are about to become and that is so relatable to us. We do the exact same thing, except we’re not a fat little caterpillar, and we don’t have wings in real life, but we are capable of flying and we are capable of moving on to a different destination. This concept is exactly what inspired this episode.

No, you may not be able to physically measure your growth and see it, but you have to know what’s happening when you’re feeding yourself with goodness and the things that you know are going to get you to that next level for you to level up. We often measure growth by big milestones. No, we have to look at those tiny little steps, every single solitary day!

I know for myself personally, I wouldn’t be where I was right now If I didn’t have a recipe for getting to this point, which includes things like listening to things that motivate me, surrounding myself with people who motivate me and inspire me and distancing myself from things that just don’t make me happy.

Then it also comes with things that I know I need, like going to therapy and practicing self-care and things like going to the chiropractor and getting readjusted, because I believe so heavily that is a practice for us to get back in alignment.

It’s honestly doing things like that and having somebody to talk to and, give me tips, resources, advice to literally make it through my days… I had to do all of these things and put in the work in order to move forward.

I’m just here to tell you, if you are feeling a shift something’s happening. If you are putting in the work, something is happening to you. You have to keep going! You need the stamina! You need the grit. I’m here to tell you it’s NOT going to happen overnight. The change will not happen overnight. I think about these butterflies and they went from a little tiny eggs to a butterfly in just a few short weeks and I know that their life cycle and the metamorphosis process is so much quicker, but it’s on this same scale.

They had to feed themselves with goodness and what they knew they needed in order to continue to grow and ultimately be released into the world just like US!

We’re all very capable of flying. Not physically. I mean, we can in an airplane, of course we can do that, but we are so capable of exploring and moving on to bigger and better things when we’re feeling that shift. I’m telling you, like I tell my class all the time, you have to give yourself some grace. You have to be patient with yourself. The patience is what’s going to get you to the next level. The patience is what’s going to make you appreciate the next stage. The patience is going to propel you forward because it all comes back to this appreciation of just being able to know that you are putting in the work to grow and move forward.

I’m going to reiterate, you have to put in the work in order for change to happen.

I hope this message stuck with you. I hope it sits on your heart and I hope that one of you that listen to this feels prepared to continue to move forward. Keep feeding yourself with goodness in order to fly.

“Hey, y’all! Thank you so much for listening! Did you enjoy all that you’ve heard on this episode? I would be SO excited if you shared it with your bestie and on Instagram! Be sure to tag me so I can send you a great big thank you! Until next time sis! Check ya later!”