Turn Your Worry Into Wonder and Your Pain Into Flight

If I had to sum up my healing journey in two words, it would be this: let go.

In this episode, I share the story of an unexpected companion on my morning commute — a lone butterfly who clung to the hood of my car and taught me more about resilience, surrender, and balance than any motivational speech ever could. From Steve Harvey’s story about clearing out the junk to make room for something new, to a stranger at a rest stop who told me to release my worry, this butterfly leitmotif has been quietly guiding me toward freedom.

We’ll explore how:

• Trauma is like wind, sometimes a storm, and how to adjust your posture instead of fighting it.
• Letting go of worry, fear, and control creates space for beauty and blessing.
• Pausing long enough to turn toward light recharges us for the road ahead.

Constant Listener, the junk you’re carrying may be keeping you from soaring. This episode is your reminder that healing begins when we finally loosen our grip, fold our wings beneath the storm, and open ourselves to the light.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to One Degree to Victory
• 1:01 The Lesson of Letting Go
• 3:23 The Butterfly's Unexpected Journey
• 5:12 Adapting to Life's Storms
• 7:40 Turning Toward the Light
• 9:51 Making Room for What's Next

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You're listening to One Degree to Victory, the space where stories, strategies and soul connect Together. We take one small step each week toward the life you know you're called to live. I'm your hostess, nalita Hollis, and today's story and conversation just might change your life. If I were to sum it up, the running theme for my healing journey has been this let go. These two words keep finding their way back to me, surfacing in conversations, tucked into the mouths of motivational speakers and folded into the oddest corners of stories. Steve Harvey once told one of these stories. Corners of stories. Steve Harvey once told one of these stories. He wanted a new car, but the only plausible space for the new car was full of junk Old, rusted, sagging things with no more use. The way he put it, the new car couldn't come until he let go of the junk. Simple as that.

Speaker 1: 1:01

I first heard the phrase as it applied to my healing journey several years ago, not from a celebrity, not from the pulpit, but from a stranger y'all. We were still living in the extended stay and I had just started a new job with a new trucking company. I was on the road, I was weary and heavy with worry. What I remember most about this story were his eyes. He had the most luminous eyes that anchored my spirit to his words. It felt like one of those come see a man moments. You know the Samaritan woman at the well and she ran off in the city yelling come see a man who told me about myself. It was like that, except mine wasn't at the well, it was at a rest stop eastbound, i-20, texas, asphalt, hot and shimmery. He didn't ask any questions because he didn't need to. Because he didn't need to, he had told me what was already written on my heart. He said let go of the worry about your kids. He said when it's time to go, you'll know. And as he said go, he clapped his hands together and one hand lifted from the other and made an arc, kind of like a rocket lifting from a launch pad.

Speaker 1: 2:27

It's taken me years, constant listener, to learn how to let go of first worry and then control. And maybe that's why when the butterfly, my leitmotif, appeared a third time, I didn't shrug it off, I paid attention. I tell this story as a foundation to understand why this third appearance of my leitmotif was nothing short of miraculous. Now, constant listener, never in my wildest imagination would I think that a butterfly would be my morning commute companion as I drove my daughter to and from school, and never would I have ever thought in a million years it would teach lessons about adaptation and surrender and fulfill that prophetic message from years ago that I would indeed soar when the time was right. They had hatched in a tree nearby a whole kaleidoscope of butterflies that had taken to sunbathing on the hood of my car. Every single time and I mean every single time I ventured out to my car, there were always several butterflies gracing its surface. They would congregate on the hood, on the windows and on the roof in small clusters, but as soon as I approached and opened the door, they would inevitably scatter back to the safety of the nearby tree.

Speaker 1: 3:56

This particular morning, however, something happened A lone butterfly, instead of fluttering away as I started the car, made the decision to stay. It remained steadfastly attached to my hood, an unexpected companion for my morning journey. I watched it for a few stops and before long I told my daughter to film this because no one would ever believe it. Whenever we stopped at a stop sign, the butterfly turned toward the sun and opened her wings. When we got going again, as she was facing the wind shear, she would slowly fold her wings and lay flat against the hood of the car. It was an amazing thing to see. I was trying to see how she was holding on to the hood of that car, this fragile creature defying the strong winds. I watched her press her wings flat against the hood, and she wasn't fighting the wind, she wasn't thrashing against what she couldn't control. She lowered herself beneath the brunt of it and let the gusts pass over her instead of through her, because we were driving into it. We were creating that forward motion. It was tickling her wings, but it couldn't take her.

Speaker 1: 5:27

It'd be in a moment of reflection and research after the car ride that I realized the importance and the lesson in what she'd done. She did what every seasoned sailor knows to do when a storm rolls in. She adjusted her posture. I learned that sailors don't fight against storms at sea. They adapt to them. When strong winds threaten to flip the boat, experienced sailors use a technique called heave to. I've heard this command shouted on the big screen, and this butterfly had mastered its own version of heaving too. It wasn't resisting the rush of the wind, it was adapting to it, finding the precise position where force became manageable.

Speaker 1: 6:10

I don't know what the time equivalent of 20 minutes is in relation to the lifespan of a butterfly, but I likened it to my 28-month post-traumatic growth journey. There were times when grief and pain hit like gale force winds that threatened my God to tear me apart. I tried to muscle through it, control the circumstances and events, with my wings spread wide against howling winds of trauma, but I only exhausted myself. Healing began and I mean true healing began when I learned to heed to, to stop fighting what I couldn't control and instead find a posture that allowed me to survive the passage. For me, that meant allowing myself and my mind to be still. This butterfly illustrated the power of letting go. Was it fighting against the wind, but adapting to it, surrendering to its flow?

Speaker 1: 7:09

When we resist change or try to control outcomes, we exhaust ourselves, but when we learn to fold our wings and bend with life's current, we preserve our energy and make space within for what's to come. Constant listener, releasing our worries and need for control makes room for unexpected blessings. When we stop clutching tightly to our fears, we free our hands to receive gifts we couldn't have ever imagined. Hands to receive gifts we couldn't have ever imagined. And that's the second lesson. In those moments when we pause, like the butterfly at each stop, we can turn toward the light, spread our wings and absorb all the warmth, joy, love and peace that life has to offer. That butterfly, my leitmotif. My Lola turned her brilliantly bright and beautiful red-orange wings toward the sun whenever we stopped. And we can do the same In the still moments of our lives. We get to choose where we face. We can point ourselves toward worry and fear, or we can turn toward hope and light, toward worry and fear, or we can turn toward hope and light. When we pause long enough to let in the good, whether it's sunlight on our skin, the sound of a kind word or just a flicker of gratitude, we recharge, we gather what we need for the road ahead. Now, I hadn't expected my light motif to be there when I pulled back into the driveway of the home, but she was still there. She shifted again and as I got out I thought one last picture. But by the time I'd exited the car and turned to close the door, she was gone.

Speaker 1: 8:50

Constant listener, trauma is wind. Some days it's a storm, shrieking and unpredictable, and I know that storm, I've lived it. But the junk you're carrying the worry, the fear, the bitterness, the control. It's doing two things it's hiding your beauty and it's anchoring you right in the middle of the storm. Come on, you can't bend with the wind. That way, you can't open your wings toward the light and, most of all, sister girl, you can't soar.

Speaker 1: 9:22

So Steve Harvey had it right too you can't bring a new car into a space packed with junk and you can't step into a new chapter of your life still clutching the old one. Letting go isn't easy, it isn't clean and it isn't quick, but it is the only way to make room for what's waiting, the only way to stop bracing against the storm and finally lift your wings in the sun. One degree to victory is about progression, not perfection, and that involves choosing a life that works for you now, in this season, and building from there. And, sister girl, it's going to take more than loving yourself. It's going to take vision for where you're going, hope to believe it's possible, action to make it real and love for your family to fuel every step. Take one degree forward this week and I'll see you in the next episode.