My speech
Title: “Metamorphosis”
Fellow Toastmasters, guests,
There was a season of my life when “home” was whatever doorway wasn’t locked yet.
I’m not speaking in metaphors. I was unhoused. And if you’ve never been there, it’s hard to explain how heavy a backpack gets when it holds everything you own. How quiet the world gets when people stop making eye contact. That was my ashes. Everything familiar had burned down — routine, dignity, the small belief that tomorrow would look like today.
But fire doesn’t just destroy. It clears ground.
My cocoon didn’t look like much from the outside. It was a shelter bed with a thin blanket. Paperwork. Case workers. Rules about curfew. Lots of nights staring at the ceiling asking, “How did I get here?” and scarier ones asking, “Do I get out?”
Cocoons are not comfortable. You don’t stretch and grow in there. You dissolve. Old habits, old shame, old stories about who you’re allowed to be. All of it had to break down before anything new could form.
The first wing was a key. Not a metaphorical one — an actual key to a place that would help me become stable again. The room allowed me to be comfortable and safe. I cried when I locked that door behind me the first time, because it was a place for me to rise again.
The second wing was harder: finding myself again. When you’ve been in survival mode, “yourself” feels like a rumor. So I started small. I poured juice in my own pot. I put a plant on the windowsill and dared it to stay alive. I said “good morning” to neighbors instead of looking at my shoes. I came to meetings like this one, because speaking up is how you remind yourself you exist.
Here’s what I learned in the cocoon: metamorphosis isn’t pretty, and it isn’t instant. Some days you’re still goo. Some days you’re wings and doubt at the same time. But you don’t go back to being a caterpillar. You can’t. You’ve seen too much.
I’m still learning to fly. I still have days when the ashes feel close. But now I know the cycle. I know that breakdown can be the beginning of rebuild. I know that a key can be a miracle, and so can a sentence spoken out loud in a room like this.
My name is Cathryn. I rose from the ashes, sat in the cocoon, and I’m figuring out these new wings. This is my icebreaker. Thank you for being the sky I get to practice in.
