Lessons from a Hermit Crab

Recently I’ve been experiencing sweeping energetic shifts.  In my last article, I talked about the power of saying my name out loud and the feeling I experienced when I claimed my name and stepped into my sovereignty.  But I’m experiencing other emotions as well, the less glamorous side of growth, if you will, yet still perfect.  When we choose to step out of the haven we’ve known—even if it was once perfectly aligned-and start to up-level, I can be scary.  It feels vulnerable. It feels like a grieving process, releasing the old version of ourselves.  My egoic mind tells me to run back to the safety of what I know. “You’re doing fine,” she says. “Why rock the boat?”  But it’s unavoidable. Something has to give.  My Soul is longing to expand.

I used to spend my summers on the beaches of Long Island. The hermit crabs fascinated me.  They were relatively small, the larger ones no bigger than my thumb.  Every now and then I would have the good fortune of watching a hermit crab look for a new home. In case you didn’t know, hermit crabs don’t have their own shells. They make their homes in the empty shells of mollusks who have died or were eaten.

Sometimes the hermit crab finds a shell she loves, but it’s already occupied. At this point she has 2 choices: pass it over, or fight for it.  I’ve seen both scenarios play out.  Either way, she has to leave the safety of her current home in order to claim the new one.  This is a dangerous time for our hermit crab friend because there are predators everywhere just waiting to pounce on an easy meal.  She risks it anyway. Why? Because she knows she’s outgrown her former home. It’s uncomfortable and there’s no more room to grow. She is propelled to find something better, something that fits.

The plight of the hermit crab helped me to better identify my own feelings of confusion and sadness.  Hadn’t I worked hard on my business?  Didn’t it feel perfectly aligned at one time?  It did.  But now, it doesn’t.  It doesn’t because I have evolved and changed.  Just because I’m evolving doesn’t mean that what I did in the past wasn’t authentic and true. It was at the time.  But it no longer fits.  It’s time to find a new place in this world.

So here I am, once again feeling vulnerable as I move from point A to point B, unsure of what the future holds, yet knowing there is no choice but to move.  Something else is calling.

As I take the first steps out of my old, restrictive shell, I exhale deeply because, now, there is room to breathe.  I’m shedding the old to make room for the new.  In this unknown newness, I begin to feel the expansion and the infinite possibilities, all the while being propelled towards a shiny new version of myself.