Purpose in Struggle: The story of the helpful man and a butterfly (An educational story to help people thrive with bipolar disorder)

A man was walking through a forest when he came upon a butterfly freeing itself from it’s cocoon.

The man watched the butterfly struggle and fight to get it’s entire body through a small hole in the cocoon.


The butterfly struggled and struggled, the man watched in fascination.

Then the butterfly stopped struggling.

The man grew concerned. After waiting awhile with no movement from the butterfly, the man got out his pocket knife and cut the hole in the cocoon making it bigger.

The butterfly slid out of the cocoon onto the ground.

What the man didn’t know is….

In order for a butterfly to have strong wings and a solid body it needs to struggle and fight it’s way out of the cocoon.

It needs to slowly and gradually squeeze through the small hole in the cocoon because that process TRANSFORMS it’s body.

Squeezing through the hole in the cocoon squeezes all the fluids from the body into the wings making them solid and strong and creates a strong body.

But something wasn’t right with the butterfly. It’s wings were limp and it’s body was mushy and weak.

The butterfly spent the rest of it’s life crawling. It never was able to fly.

When I or anyone fights someone’s struggle for them, thinking we are helping them…we may actually cripple them.

Out of concern, we may keep people from flying.

My goal and hope is to not do this to anyone.

My goal is to help people develop their own tools so that they can use them to struggle and fight their way out of the cocoon.

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