Rise 🦋

Rise is my uniquely hand-crafted butterfly by Callen Schaub, who started the Butterfly Project after a 7-year-old girl reached out to ask if he’d create a butterfly for her father’s grave. Her dad, a collector in Germany, had previously discovered one of Callen’s roadside-created paintings – a piece that found its way to him before he passed.

The Butterfly Project is Callen’s gift to the world: anyone can claim a butterfly – no cost, even free shipping – under one condition: you have to give your butterfly a name and share a little backstory. Feel free to check it out, and find one of your own too:

https://butterflyprojectphasethree.com/

When my brother told me about the Butterfly Project, I immediately claimed one of the available butterflies and named it Rise (naturally while I was in the crux of my obsession with the Artemis II moon mission, so partially inspired by the astronauts’ space plushie).

When the butterfly made it into my mailbox, I was immediately met with a smile. Something about it also indirectly makes me feel closer to my brother, who’s 4,000 miles away most days.

While I’m still figuring out the perfect placement for Rise around my apartment, getting Rise mirrored and permanently stamped on me felt right. It took nearly two hours to find the perfect placement on my arm, but we got there (my go-to tattoo artist Clover is the best).

So everyone, meet Rise, and read about what Rise means to me:

The butterfly makes me think about rising, but not in a big, dramatic way. More in the quiet, ongoing way we keep coming back to ourselves.

I’ve been stuck on this idea of “moon joy” from the Artemis II, how something so complex and historic was carried with so much lightness and curiosity. It reminded me that even when things are hard, they don’t always have to feel heavy all the time.

I think about that in my own life: navigating a bipolar diagnosis, figuring out how to exist more fully in my queerness, moving through heartbreak. None of that is unique, and I actually find comfort in that. We’re all kind of in it, in different ways.

So this butterfly isn’t just about transformation to me; it’s about staying in motion. Even when things feel small or messy or not that serious, you’re still becoming something.

And maybe the point isn’t to force meaning onto it all, but to meet it with a little more curiosity… and a little more lightness when we can.