I Was in a Deep Moult, and Then I Pressed Publish

Last week we had family visiting, so we spent a sunny afternoon at the beach. Instead of going to the main area, we found ourselves following a path to a secluded sand bar that was protected from the bigger waves and perfect for playing in the shallow waters.

Look, mama, a crab!

It wasn’t just one, there were tens, if not hundreds.

Hundreds of hermit crabs.

Hermit crabs hold the medicine of the vulnerability in expansion. As they grow, they must seek out new shells, but to do that they must first expose themselves; to make themselves vulnerable to predators.

The word must is important here, because it’s not a choice. They must be brave. For them, the only way to survive is to courageously embody new spaces, new ‘homes.’

Turns out, hermit crabs engage in two different types of growth.

The first is a shell swap - where they work as a community, lining up to exchange - or trade up - shells when a bigger shell becomes available.

The other is a deeper moulting. The crab goes deep into the sand, alone, to physically grow its skin and limbs. In this type of growth, the crab relies entirely on himself, to soften his defences and trust fully in the process.

It’s fascinating to acknowledge the different types of growth, the kind that is done in community, with the support of the other. And the kind that has to come from deep within, completely self-sufficient. Alice Walker says it well, “some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy or hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before.”

After we got home, I had time to reflect on what the hermit crab meant to me, specifically. Why did he visit my experience today? And so abundantly?

And I think the message is simply, the reality of how much I’ve changed. A smile from the universe to say, I see you. I see the way you’re taking up new and different space. I see how you’re showing up, no matter how vulnerable it feels. I see the way you’re embodying something new and different. And being proud of it.

Hermit crabs are transitional creatures, a totem for settling fully into a season, and then, when time, letting that season go - and there is medicine in that, too. As creatives, when something ‘works’ we can get stuck in it, creatively-stunted, especially when you become known for something specific on the Internet, but I’ve been thinking about musicians a lot lately, especially singer-songwriters, who write albums to process feelings and then move on to create something new. There’s a sense of safety in that, a belief that I can process and move on too.

It’s actually an exercise I did, thinking about my creative life in albums:

2016 - 2018 airy, glittery, walking an enchanted path
2019 - 2020 grounded, city grit, falling in love
2020 - 2022 dark, questioning, coming back to truth
2023 - 2025 still, with an ocean in my heart

I think back to how stuck I’ve felt over the past few years, creatively. I was in a deep moult. But even when I knew I had changed, and knew I wanted to show up differently, I still held myself back with my shoulds.

I should do this…
I should do that…

It wasn’t until I pulled myself from my old shell and let myself be vulnerable, to put a different version of myself into the world, and actually press publish on my new ideas, that I felt like I could breathe again. The shoulds kept me so small.

If I had to put a title to the new album - the one I’m living now - I think I’d call it Joy. Or at least it would have that aesthetic. Instead of wondering, should I be doing this? I’m asking myself, ‘does this feel good?’ and ‘is this an honest expression of who I am right now?’ While it might not make sense to those who knew my content before, and it might make the old me feel uncomfortable, because joy can feel chaotic and she liked what was predictable, my old shell doesn’t fit anymore.

And therefore I must be brave.

I must move onto something new.

And hey, if you’re reading this - you must too.