The Holes in the Leaves

Last summer, long-term treatment for incurable brain cancer and epilepsy left me disabled. I unexpectedly found myself asking who I was without the ability to do the work I loved. Because I could not drive and was often exhausted, I could no longer help my family in the ordinary, practical ways I once did. My body was recovering from months of chemotherapy and radiation, while I was trying to understand who I was in this changed landscape. I felt caught between the person I was and the person I was beginning to know.

Nevertheless, I’ve been grateful for the newfound time to rest and to deepen my daily practice of noticing by sitting in my sunroom and observing the garden. Last summer, I spent many hours watching the passionflower vine and the life it attracted. This year, when the weather allows, I can return to the garden, tending the plants I only observed before.

Late last summer, I watched dozens of caterpillars colonize our yard, drawn by their host plant, the native passionflower vine.

Passionflower is messy and wild, taking over an entire side of my manicured yard. Yet it attracts so many bees, birds, and other insects that I don’t care. I marveled the first day I saw spiny red-and-black Gulf fritillary caterpillars clinging to its tendrils and leaves. The insects looked quite threatening, so I was amazed to witness their transformation over the next few weeks into brilliant orange butterflies floating through our yard.

As its name suggests, the passionflower vine is far from passive. Its leaves contain cyanide-based compounds, toxic to most creatures, yet the Gulf fritillary caterpillars that feed on them store the poison in their bodies, rendering themselves unpalatable to predators. The vine tolerates these specialist caterpillars, allowing them to feed and transform, while keeping other herbivores at bay. Late in the summer the vine produces its signature fruit—the maypop—a green capsule that bursts open when ripe, scattering seeds that will give rise to more vines. Birds, squirrels, and other creatures carry the fruit away, dispersing the seeds of the beautiful flowering vine across my yard and beyond.

The passionflower’s fruit reflects the same cycles of survival and transformation as the caterpillars’ metamorphosis.

I feel a bit like these caterpillars—recovering from toxic chemotherapy, figuring out how to grow into this next stage of life. My body carries surgery and treatment-related fatigue, brain fog, joint pain, GI issues, and memory challenges. Yet I still walk, practice yoga, hike, and have new creative pursuits. I started pottery lessons—failing, experimenting, practicing intuition over instruction. Slow, awkward, imperfect—but profoundly present in the process.

I am learning to give myself more space to notice. I sit. I just am.

I struggle to enjoy my morning coffee because it aggravates heartburn, yet I drink a small cup anyway, savoring its warmth. I open the sunroom doors, listening to the birds. In the afternoons, I am often worn out, reading and resting more than doing.

Everything feels inverted from before. There’s no longer a focus on doing, only being.

The caterpillars carry the passionflower’s poison and yet remain intensely alive. The same compounds that would harm other creatures become part of the conditions that allow them to survive. So, too, chemotherapy is a paradoxical medicine—one that may extend my life while also leaving its mark on my body. I carry its effects but also the adaptations that have emerged from living through treatment.

In No Death, No Fear, Thich Nhat Hanh writes: “When conditions are sufficient things manifest. When conditions are no longer sufficient things withdraw. They wait until the moment is right for them to manifest again.” Watching the passionflower, I see the feeding caterpillars, their transformation into butterflies, and the web of life around them. I also see that transformation does not always reveal itself immediately. Some changes begin before we can understand what is happening.

I could imagine my current life as an ending—of productivity, identity, wellness. Last summer, those fears felt very close. Yet Thay’s teaching of interbeing reminds me that what appear to be endings are often part of larger cycles of change: All phenomena are impermanent, interdependent, and continuously transforming. A caterpillar is not separate from the butterfly it becomes, nor is the butterfly separate from the caterpillar it once was. Both are intimately connected to the passionflower vine that sustains them, offering nourishment and protection in equal measure.

A year later, the passionflower vine is beginning to grow again in my yard. I look closely at the plant’s leaves and notice holes where the caterpillars have started to feed. I have not yet seen them return, but the effect of their presence is already visible.

My own life has entered another uncertain season as well. My epilepsy is currently controlled, and I can drive again. I can help my family in ways I could not last year. My body has had time to recover from the intensity of treatment, even as I continue to live with its lasting effects.

However, my scans show that the tumor is growing again, and I do not know what will come next. I may need more treatment. I may face new limitations. I may continue as I am for a time. The future remains unwritten.

Every four months, I wait for another scan and the information it will bring—whether the tumor remains slow-growing or whether conditions have shifted enough to require another treatment. But the garden reminds me that change is always underway. Some transformations are visible and sudden; others happen beneath the surface, before we recognize them. Each scan feels like a threshold, a reminder of impermanence and the fragile balance of conditions that sustain my life in this moment.

When I sit waiting for my scan, I practice tonglen. I close my eyes and breathe in not just my own fear but the fear and suffering of everyone waiting around me: the woman sitting beside me with her daughter, the man staring blankly at the television, the technicians briskly moving patients from waiting rooms to machines. Breathing in, I take in our collective suffering. Breathing out, I imagine sending back steadiness, love, and ease. In those moments, the boundaries between us dissolve. Just as the caterpillar cannot be separated from the vine that nourishes it, I am not separate from those around me. Our fear is shared, and so is the compassion that can hold it.

The garden reminds me that knowing one part of a story does not mean knowing the whole. I can see the holes in the leaves, evidence that the caterpillars have been here, but I cannot see what will emerge next.

Sometimes my mind wants to rush ahead and write the ending. It tries to protect me by imagining what comes next and preparing for losses that have not yet arrived. I fear pain. I fear losing the healing that has slowly taken root. I fear losing the people I love. But the garden reminds me that knowing one part of a story does not mean knowing the whole. I can see the holes in the leaves, evidence that the caterpillars have been here, but I cannot see what will emerge next. I can sense that something is changing, but I cannot know what form that change will take.

Life continues, intertwined and miraculous. Every scan, every garden morning, every moment of noticing, is another opportunity to practice. Like the passionflower vine, like the caterpillar hidden among its leaves, I am part of a process I cannot fully understand. I do not know how I will emerge. I do not know what conditions will arise. For now, I can tend to what is here, just this moment, allowing life to be as it is while remaining open to what comes next.