Soft-Bodied and Surrendered
Your Exoskeleton is Showing... 🦀
If you’d like to listen to this essay
Crabs have been showing up everywhere lately.
Not literally—thankfully.
But in The Web: In passing comments, in sessions, in books I didn’t pick with any conscious intention. At some point I stopped brushing it off and started listening. Not because I’m particularly interested in marine life—but because the symbolism felt like it was trying to show me something.
A friend and I deeply discussing her Cancer moon. My therapist using an example of how certain species of crabs bury themselves when they molt. The image landed before I fully understood it: this instinct to hide when you’re in the in-between. The quiet, subterranean urgency of becoming.
Meanwhile, I’m reading The Book of Water by Stephen Forrest. In an early section he metaphorically describes a molting to explain an aspect of Cancers—how the crab must shed its hardened outer shell in order to grow. And how, for a period afterward, it’s soft. Exposed. Defenseless. It takes time for the new shell to form. Until then, it’s vulnerable by design.
That’s the cost of expansion.
That idea stopped me. Because I know that moment. Not as a crab—but as a person who’s outgrown something that once felt essential. A structure, a strategy, a way of being. And while it’s tempting to romanticize the growth arc, the truth is that in the middle, it doesn’t feel expansive. It feels disorienting. Skinless. Like you're supposed to be doing something monumental but all you want is to lie low and not be perceived.
Because there is a very specific ache to knowing you’ve outgrown something—and still being in it.
You haven’t collapsed. You’re not broken. But the thing you’re inside no longer feels like it can hold all of who you are, or who you are becoming. And staying in it starts to feel less like self-preservation and more like self-containment.
You could stay. Many do. It still functions. It still “works,” on some level. But it asks you to flatten yourself. To manage your own evolution. To tolerate the friction of being too big for a life that no longer fits. And you could choose that. You could let fine be enough—
After all, fine isn’t failure. But it’s not fulfillment either.
That middle space—the one after the old shell but before the new one—isn’t glamorous. It doesn’t sparkle. It doesn't document super well. There’s no clean journey for becoming who you are.
And while the crab may get to burrow beneath the sand, you? You probably still have to show up to Zoom calls. To post something to market your business. To hold space for clients, or lead a team, or to keep speaking in a voice that doesn’t match what’s happening in your body.
It’s easy to forget, in that space, that the softness isn’t a flaw in the process. It’s just a part of the process.
So, I’ve decided that vulnerability isn’t evidence you’re falling apart—it’s evidence you’re growing.
But we aren’t taught how to be in that space. We’re taught how to pivot, how to optimize, how to “build in public.” We’re trained to package our evolution as though it’s already complete. To offer lessons with a tidy little bow and a nice hook.
Which makes this phase—the liminal one—disorienting. Because it’s not failure. But it’s not clarity either. It’s something more raw. More intimate. More uncomfortable to explain, let alone be in.
And no, you’re not a crab. Your softness won’t get you devoured by a seabird or whatever eats a crab. But it might make you want to disappear for a while. To ghost your own ambitions. To delay the next step until you feel “ready” again—which, in this context, usually just means: armored. Settled. Complete. But are we ever really those things?
Here’s the reframe I keep coming back to: you don’t need to be invulnerable to move forward. You just need to be willing to be seen in process. To stay with yourself when the urge to self-protect is loudest.
For me, this is where support has become essential. Not performative support. Not the kind that tells you to manifest harder or “trust the timing” while quietly pressuring you to move faster. Not the girlbosses telling you that you aren’t “motivated enough” if you don’t show up as consistently as they do. Real support. The kind that makes it safe to not know yet. The kind that doesn’t flinch when you say, this isn’t working anymore, and I don’t know what comes next.
That moment—the soft one, the awkward one, the not-yet one—is sacred. But it’s not meant to be navigated alone.
We try to hide when we most need to be held. But the right support doesn’t interrupt the molting. It holds the space for it. It keeps you from abandoning the process just because you feel exposed.
The irony, of course, is that this is often the moment we isolate ourselves most. When things get soft and blurry. When we can’t articulate what’s happening yet. When we feel too fragile to be perceived, let alone held. We think: once I figure it out, then I’ll reach out. Once I have language. Once I’m clear. Or worse, we’ve been conditioned to think that we can only show up with a problem when we can offer a solution (an unbelievably problematic and oppressive concept) or that we have to bring good questions to support spaces (a lie told by coaches who don’t know how to actually hold space or help people).
But, I digress. That instinct—to wait until you're more put together before allowing yourself to be supported—is itself part of the shell.
We’re taught to equate self-trust with self-containment. Independence with invulnerability. But the truth is, being held doesn’t make you less powerful. It makes you a more effective and attuned leader. It makes you wiser and more capable of supporting others. It deepens your capacity to lead—because you’ve practiced being led. It makes your power more sustainable. Because the work of becoming—the actual, cellular work of it—is too heavy to carry alone.
The kind of support that matters here isn’t about fixing or solving or speeding things up. It’s about witnessing. It’s about spaciousness. It’s about being held in a field that doesn’t collapse under the weight of your in-between.
That’s what I’ve built my work around. Not quick wins or confidence hacks—but the kind of holding that allows for real, embodied transition. The kind that can stay steady while you’re soft. That can reflect you back to yourself when you’ve forgotten your shape. That can hold your ambition and your ambiguity in the same breath.
Because yes, this season might be uncomfortable. Yes, it might even be slower than you’d like. But it’s not confusion—it’s construction. And it’s a lot easier to stay with it when you’re not pretending to have your shit together for someone else’s approval.
You don’t need to have it all figured out to be worthy of being supported.
This is the space I hold. And if you're in this season—the shedding, the softening, the not-quite-there—I want to invite you into it.
On May 22nd, I’m hosting a live workshop called Your Personal Renaissance. It’s a space to land. To listen. To be supported as you step out of the shell you’ve outgrown—and into whatever’s next. We’ll explore the identity patterns that keep us tethered to what’s safe but stifling. We’ll examine the difference between strategy that serves and strategy that shackles. And we’ll begin to rebuild—not from pressure, but from presence.
This is for the coaches, creatives, and leaders who feel like they’re in-between selves. Who are starting to realize that the hustle, the over-giving, the borrowed blueprints never really fit—and who are ready to build a business that does.
If that’s you, I’d love for you to be there. It’s free. It’s live. And yes, there’s a bonus for those who join in real time—an RRT activation to release the old energetic patterns you’re done carrying.
Not because you’re broken. Not because you need fixing.
But because you’re ready to be met inside your becoming.
