The Divorce Cocoon: What Comes After the Fog How Martha Beck’s Change Cycle Helps My Clients Transform Their Lives

 There’s a reason I keep returning to Martha Beck’s Change Cycle in my coaching and workshops. It’s one of the most compassionate and clear frameworks I’ve found for navigating personal transformation, and it maps beautifully onto the emotional landscape of divorce.

Beck uses the metaphor of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. We all know the transformation is dramatic. What we forget is what happens in the middle. The caterpillar doesn’t simply sprout wings. It dissolves. It becomes what Beck calls “imaginal goo.” That part is not glamorous. It’s not graceful or linear. But it’s absolutely essential. The butterfly cannot skip that part.

Neither can we.

Applying the Change Cycle to Divorce

When clients first come to me, they are often in what Martha calls Stage One: Death and Rebirth. This stage is about endings. Not just the end of a marriage, but the end of the story they’ve been telling themselves about who they are and how life was supposed to go. They feel disoriented, ashamed, scared, and numb. Divorce forces a kind of reckoning that is as emotional as it is logistical.

One woman I worked with, whom I’ll call Sarah,* came to me completely depleted. She was exhausted and foggy, and though she couldn’t fully admit it out loud yet, part of her knew her marriage was over. She wasn’t quite ready to let go. There were children. There was guilt. There was fear. But something inside her was whispering that she couldn’t keep living like this.

She was in Stage One.

It took her two full years to move from that first stage into Stage Two: Dreaming and Dissolving. But during those two years, she was doing the work. She was letting herself grieve. She was unpacking the beliefs that told her divorce meant failure, that she wasn’t lovable, that she didn’t deserve to want more.

Stage Two is messy and quiet. You don’t look like you’re doing much on the outside. But inside, everything is shifting. And because she didn’t skip that stage, because she gave herself time to soften and reflect, the next stages came with surprising clarity.

From Fog to Flight

Stage Three: Reforming and Rebuilding was where she found her momentum. She cut her hair. Rearranged her home. Started a new morning routine. She set boundaries, created a budget, began imagining a future that wasn’t centered on pain.

And then came Stage Four: Flying and Flourishing.

This is where she lit up. She felt more alive at 55 than she had at 30. She had energy, joy, and confidence. She was dating, having great sex, laughing with her kids, and rediscovering parts of herself she had buried for years. She didn’t wake up anxious and unsure anymore. She was grounded. Grateful. Excited.

Divorce was not the end. It was the beginning of the life she was always meant to live.

You’re Not Behind. You’re Becoming.

I share this because so many people think something is wrong when the fog doesn’t lift right away. But that fog is part of the process. It’s what it feels like to be inside the cocoon. If you’re there, you’re not broken. You’re not behind. You’re becoming.

You don’t have to rush it. You don’t have to do it alone.

If you’re in any part of the Change Cycle, I’d be honored to walk with you.

* To protect confidentiality, I’ve woven together the experiences of several clients into one story. Though the details have been altered, the emotional truth remains. I’ve seen this arc—this transformation—play out in so many lives over the years.

** Infographic adapted from Martha Beck’s Change Cycle, available at marthabeck.com/change