Motivational speakers love butterflies. So do gurus and pastors and coaches. Butterflies offer a stirring metaphor for the potential of human transformation. You disappear into a chrysalis, do some mysterious inner work, and emerge shockingly upgraded, effortlessly beautiful, and ready to soar. It's a lovely image, but it has one glaring problem: Almost none of us experience change that way. Most of us don't wake up one morning with a brand-new identity. We wake up feeling oddly uncomfortable in the old one.

I recently stumbled onto a metaphor that feels much closer to real life while recording my podcast, Fifty Words for Snow. Every week, my friend Emily John Garcés and I invite a guest on to introduce us to a word from a language other than English or from the vernacular of a particular culture. The podcast is built around the idea that language gives us new ways of seeing ourselves, and sometimes a single word quietly rearranges how we think. This week, our guest, Ballona Wetlands tour guide and bird expert Susan Levinson, introduced us to the word molt: the process by which an animal sheds an outer layer that can no longer serve it.

The more I learned about molting, the more I wondered why we don't use it as our primary metaphor for change. Snakes shed their skin. Tarantulas crawl out of an entire exoskeleton. Deer lose their antlers. Birds replace their feathers because feathers cannot........

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