Your body, which is bonding millions of molecules every second, depends on transformation. Breathing and digestion harness transformation. Food and air aren't just shuffled about but, rather, undergo the exact chemical bonding needed to keep you alive. The sugar extracted from an orange travels to the brain and fuels a thought. The emergent property in this case is the newness of the thought; no molecules in the history of the universe ever combined to produce that exact thought. It is in that humbling realization that I can sum up my entire life in one word, Transformation.

My entire life has been a series of good days punctuated by disaster, each disaster just as devastating as the last. So much so that I have either lost count or have repressed it so far that I have fooled myself into thinking that it no longer exists. When asked to do a life review for a class project my initial reaction was dread. I cannot deny that I put it off as long as humanly possible. I had no desire to have to relive my life for a project and I did not want to rip open those wounds that I had stitched so tightly closed. Even though I could have taken the easy way out and just skimmed over my life just enough to get a passing grade I knew that wasn't who I was. I'm an all or nothing kind of person and I knew if I was going to do this right I might as well get as much out of this process as possible.

So I sat down and started to look at my life according to Erikson's eight stages of psychosocial development. I analyzed whether I had successfully completed stage and what the evidence of that was. The hard part here is that I knew I had not, and I knew why. I have spent the last two years of my life working on healing from wounds that I didn't even realize that I had. I knew exactly why I had failed to establish trust and an identity. I spent my childhood and adolescent years living in a constantly changing world. Coming from adoption, kidnapping, adoptive parental separation, sexual assault, being told that I couldn't be who I was, the loss of the only stable relationships I had, and so much more – it should come as no surprise that I struggled with identity and confidence. I knew that these were bigger issues than this class had ever intended to deal with but I couldn't deny them just for the sake of a grade. Reluctantly, I wrote the paper and answered the questions prepared to deal with the emotions that came with them.

Here's what I started to notice as I went through this process, I wasn't hurting. I wasn't crying, I wasn't numb, I wasn't really even sad. For the first time that I can remember I was able to look at things objectively and honestly. This is the moment that I realized just how far I have come. I learned that my goals have changed over time and that they always will. I will always be striving and working toward something new. It's who I am - I will always be reaching for more because I remember what it's like to have nothing. Wait, did you catch that? I said "it's who I am." While that may seem like a simple phrase to some, to me it is monumental. I can finally say I know who I am.

While taking inventory of my life I realize just how important it is for me to understand where I am at, where I have been, and where I am going. Though I am not a fan of dwelling on the past I cannot deny the benefit of knowing where you have been and appreciating how far you have come. The key, I have learned, is to not stay there too long. Take time to evaluate how you got where you are, what worked, what did not, and then establish where you are going. I spent so much time running from my past that I never took time to appreciate everything that it taught me; the person that it has shaped and turned me into.

When I started the visual portion of the assignment, I had no idea how I was going to represent my life without having to use actual photographs of myself and family. I am a relatively private person and the idea of putting such personal ideals and thoughts out publicly created more anxiety than I would like to admit. I started looking around and the things I found to most valuable to me in my home. The amount of emotion that came with this process was unbelievable. Bookcases from my late grandfather's bookstore, photographs of lives I've lived, keepsakes from moments in time that I can never get back - that's when it clicked. My life is a story, my story, and while this bunch of images may seem like a jumbled mess to some, it sums up the beautiful parts of my past with my present and future. These images illustrate my transformation, my metamorphosis.

My life is defined by the constant need to be learning, reading, and growing. I believe that the single most important thing in life is knowledge, it is the one thing in this life that cannot be taken away from you. Next to knowledge is curiosity - I hope to live every day of my life with a childlike curiosity. I cannot deny that without faith I would not be her today. By the grace of God, I am alive today and I know that I have something big to offer the world because of it. God has taught me how to see the good in even the darkest days. I have been broken and rebuilt so many times in my short time on this earth and I can't help but think that there is a reason for that.

We can learn a lot of lessons about our own growth process from the butterfly life cycle. The process of metamorphosis relates in many ways with our own moments of transformation. For a caterpillar to become a butterfly it must change. It must melt down to a pile of black sludge to emerge new again. Likewise, nothing in our human world is permanent. Some things go and are replaced by new ones. So with the death of one chapter rises another enchanting one. Death consists, indeed, in a repeated process of undoing. Our lives change and seemingly turn to black sludge, one event after the other, and – much like the butterfly– emerges from a new beautiful chapter of life. This process is exactly why I am not afraid of my future, yet I am enthusiastically optimistic. I know that this path that I'm on is my metamorphosis. I am here to help those that are having the worst day of their life see the beauty in tomorrow.