The caterpillar never says, "I don't have time for this transformation."

A few nights before the Aquarius Full Moon, I had a dream.

It was only a snippet, but one of those dreams that lingers long after you wake.

In the dream I suddenly remembered that I had been looking after my neighbour's dog. I realised I had put it in a room a few days earlier, fully intending to come back, but each time I remembered, I would get distracted by something else. This had happened over and over until, in the dream, I knew it had been days.

Barefoot, I began running across the road, convinced I was too late.

The dog was a Golden Labrador.

When I woke, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

The Labrador didn't feel like my neighbour's dog.

It felt like something instinctive within me.

The faithful, dependable, uncomplicated part that quietly trusts I'll remember to come back.

Only... I hadn't.

Not because I didn't care.

Because life had kept asking for me somewhere else.

As I sat with the dream, I realised how familiar that pattern felt. I don't ignore my body. In fact, I respond quickly when it complains. I take the supplements, stretch the tight muscles, do the exercises, keep moving. But if I'm honest, much of that care is quietly driven by another thought:

"I don't really have time to get sick."

Perhaps you've said something similar.

When builders are halfway through the house, clients need you, children need lifting somewhere, work needs finishing, and the washing basket seems to refill itself by magic, who really feels they have time to stop?

And yet the body has never once consulted a diary before asking for rest.

This week, in a yoga practice, I explored the life of a caterpillar.

First came the hunger. The instinct to consume everything needed for what lay ahead. Then exhaustion. Rest. Then another surge of energy. More gathering. More growing. Finally, the deep instinct to spin a chrysalis.

As I moved through the practice, something unexpected happened.

While stretching deeply into my hips and thighs, grief surfaced—not as a thought, but as waves of sobbing that seemed to rise straight out of my body.

There was nothing to analyse. Nothing to fix. Just tears that had clearly been waiting far longer than my mind had realised.

Perhaps my body had been carrying a grief that my mind had already understood, but hadn't yet allowed itself to feel. It reminded me that insight and integration are not the same thing. We can understand something with remarkable clarity, while our body patiently waits for the moment it feels safe enough to soften, release, and let the experience move all the way through us.

It struck me afterwards that the caterpillar never apologises for needing the chrysalis.

It never says, "I don't have time for this transformation."

Nature doesn't rush what is becoming.

Somehow, we humans seem to believe we should.

Perhaps that is what my Labrador came to remind me.

Not that I've failed.

Nor that I've neglected myself beyond repair.

Simply that the faithful, living, instinctive part of me cannot survive forever on good intentions and stolen moments between everyone else's needs.

It needs companionship.

It needs sunshine.

It needs nourishing food, deep sleep, laughter, stillness, tears when they come, and the quiet permission to simply be.

The irony is that we often extend this kindness so freely to everyone else.

We notice when those we love are tired.

We encourage them to rest.

We reassure them that they don't have to keep proving themselves.

And then we quietly ask ourselves to keep going.

Perhaps this Full Moon isn't asking us to become someone different.

Perhaps it's simply inviting us to remember the Golden Labrador within—the loyal, warm-hearted, life-loving part that has patiently waited while we finished one more job, carried one more responsibility, solved one more problem.

Transformation, after all, isn't only about finding our wings.

Sometimes it's about remembering to feed the creature that is growing them