The LAW Way

No one sees what happens inside the chrysalis.
The chrysalis is lived.
Bar prep looks like just studying, but in reality it is a process of transformation.

I began this process on December 15 knowing that. In fact, I named it that: chrysalis mode. And I was excited to see what the result of this rite of passage would be.

I imagined the result would be related to resilience and endurance. Because for those who don’t know, studying for the Bar means dedicating 6–7 hours a day (at minimum) to studying and memorizing federal laws, their exceptions and the exceptions to the exceptions, along with the corresponding state laws, each with their own layers of complexity. It means taking hundreds of practice exams for ten straight weeks, seven days a week.

All of this to sit for a two-day exam where you must answer 300 multiple-choice questions with about a minute and a half per question, and write several essays—all against the clock.

So doing something like this requires discipline, self-control, self-regulation, and an ecosystem of emotional support (which I wrote about in another post). That’s why I knew it would be a deeply transformative process: confronting yourself, holding yourself together on the hard days, and showing up again and again to a rigorous study routine.

But what I never imagined was that it would touch the deepest and most fundamental fibers of my identity.

During those ten weeks, there were days of silence, of sacrifice, of overwhelming information, of unexpected blows from life, days when I doubted myself. Life did not pause so I could study. And still, I continued. In my chrysalis mode. And it is in that darkness and solitude where layers begin to fall away.

The Breaking Point

I was behind in the rigorous program that must be followed day by day during this preparation. Looking for some direction, I came face to face with a truth that spoke from statistics and the calendar: that I no longer had enough time to reach the required level of preparation for the exam. That the best thing would be not to sit for it.

That night, I had a dream that answered that with:
“If you made it this far, you’re ready.” (post about the dream here)

I didn’t see it as a premonition. I saw it as recognition—of the road already walked, of the effort made, of the process begun. And the process was not testing how much I knew. It was revealing how much I doubted.

It was asking me:
Are you capable of believing in yourself?
Are you capable of trusting and living the experience?

And that was stronger than any subject.

The Unexpected

In the middle of all the pressure, something happened that I never imagined would become part of this process.

A powerful cultural performance shook me deeply. It wasn’t the music. It was the message. Watching someone hold their language, their culture, their identity—identities that are also mine—without apologizing or translating themselves confronted something inside me that I had been softening for years.

I realized how many narratives I had internalized without questioning them:

That you have to tone it down.
That you must adapt silently.
That taking up space is too much.
That Latin identity—especially Caribbean identity—must be softened in order to fit in.

Something began to restructure inside me that day.

Because we must understand something: those who stayed fight one way. Those who left fight twice as hard.

Migration is not just an economic shift, like many could think. It is living in a constant test of legitimacy.

Proving that you deserve to be here.
Proving that you are competent.
Proving that your accent does not make you less.
Proving that your culture is not vulgar.
Proving that your joy is not disorder.

And on top of that, carrying guilt:
Did I do the right thing by leaving?
Did my children lose something?
Did I betray something?

That is heavy.

So watching someone say—without saying it explicitly—“I didn’t sell out. I didn’t soften myself. I didn’t translate myself.” was not entertainment. It was collective symbolic validation. It was ancestral healing. And I cried.

Not just from nostalgia.

I was processing identity, migration, discrimination, coloniality, assimilation, historical pain.

And also something simpler: pride in having endured.

That was the nervous system saying: “We are alive. We survived. We did not extinguish ourselves.”

Integration

Days later, in a completely different setting, another piece of this integration happened.

I went to a concert with the music that marked my adolescence. Music that is part of my core memories, of irreplaceable friendships, of my character, my rebellion, my sensitivity. Friends who are no longer on this plane.

At one point in the show, we all turned on our phone lights while a song written from grief was performed. The singer invited us to raise that light for someone special who is no longer here.

I thought of my brother.
I thought of a friend who shared that music with me.
I thought of all the others who are gone.

I cried.

But it was not a cry of emptiness. It was a cry of presence.

Because I understood that they are gone, but they are not gone from me.

They are in my memories.
In my character.
In the way I see the world.
In the woman I am.

That light did not illuminate the night. It illuminated my memory.

And in that moment I internalized that this transformation was not only professional.

It was identity-level. It was historical. It was spiritual.

What Died in the Chrysalis

In the darkness, the essence does not die.
What dies are the structures that no longer serve.

The constant insecurity died.
The paralyzing doubt died.
The impatience died.
The judgment died.

But deeper things died too:

Old mental structures built on narratives of internalized colonialism, exclusion, and self-exclusion.

The idea that you must shrink to fit in.
That you must prove twice as much.
That you must ask permission to take up space.

I did not stop feeling fear.
I learned not to obey the fear that paralyzes.

I did not stop being who I was.
I stopped trying to diminish her.

The Return of the Butterfly

I don’t know what the result of the exam will be.
And it is no longer the center.

What matters is that the person who began on December 15 is not the same person who will return now.

Not because she became someone different.

But because she allowed to die what no longer served her in order to continue into this new stage of her life’s journey.

Transformation happens in silence. In solitude. In darkness.

From the outside, no one sees it. Just as it happens for caterpillars inside their chrysalis.

But it is real.

And that is something only butterflies know.