Tonight, a Puriri moth flew into my house.
It’s still inside, instinctively moving toward the light.
And I can’t help but see the symbolism.
It spends most of its life hidden, growing in darkness, transformed quietly inside the body of a tree. Years of becoming, unseen. Then one day, it emerges. Briefly. Delicately. Drawn toward illumination.
Isn’t grief like that?
There are seasons where we feel buried in it. Not because we are broken, but because something within us is still forming. Healing happens in the quiet. Strength develops in the shadow. We don’t always realise we’re changing while we’re in it.
The moth isn’t confused.
It’s responding to its nature.
It moves toward light because that’s what it is meant to do.
And maybe that’s what grief teaches us too, that even in loss, something in us still knows how to orient toward hope. Toward love. Toward meaning. Toward light.
Loss doesn’t erase our ability to move forward. It just reshapes how we do it.
So I opened the back door and turned off the lights.
Sometimes the most compassionate thing we can do, for a creature, or for ourselves, is simply create a clear path back to the light.
